Wolfowitz is merely an example of Bush's continual bad judgement.

With Gonzales on the ropes, it seems only a matter of time before Paul Wolfowitz joins him in heading for the exit door.

The board of the World Bank Group are currently discussing what should be done about Wolfowitz, who is determined to cling to his post, although all indications from the board's members are that this is going to prove impossible for Wolfowitz to do.

“People feel paralyzed,” one official said. “No one is doing any work at all. This genie can never go back to the bottle.”

As the board met, officials said a separate review was being conducted by the vice presidents, who oversee specific countries, regions and subject matters, and who were polling their staffs. The overwhelming sentiment, officials said, was that Mr. Wolfowitz should step down.

Eckhardt Deutscher, of Germany, who worked with Wolfowitz in tackling corruption, has given strong hints that he now feels that Wolfowitz should go.

“The World Bank needs a strong leadership with compassion, integrity and vision,” Mr. Deutscher said in the speech, to the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. “The governance structures need a fundamental reform. And lastly, the World Bank needs credibility, credibility, credibility.”

The greatest charge against Wolfowitz is that his actions have severely damaged the World Bank's credibility.

Wolfowitz has recently been cleared of improperly suggesting Shaha Ali Riza should be awarded a contract to travel to Iraq, although that would appear to be the least of his problems right now.

In another sign of crumbling support, bank officials and others said that a consensus had emerged among European officials involved with the bank that Mr. Wolfowitz had lost his ability to lead the institution, not so much because of the issue of Ms. Riza but because of other policy disputes over the last two years.

The neo-con combative style was never going to go down well amongst what Rumsfeld would no doubt call, old Europeans. In many ways this eventual parting of the tides was totally predictable.

It is, like Gonzales and John Bolton, another classic example of Bush's total inability to appoint people to suitable positions for which they are qualified.

In the case of Bolton, this concerned the US's relationship with the UN. In the case of Gonzales, it concerned law enforcement in the United States. In the case of Wolfowitz it concerned matters which affect millions of the world's poorest people.

Neither of these are trifling appointments, and yet in each case, the President opted to push for cronyism rather than talent.

There is surely no more damning indictment of his judgement than the fact that all three of these men have proven to be spectacularly unfit for the role to which he promoted them.

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Tags: Bush, Wolfowitz, World Bank, Bolton, UN, Gonzales, Attorney General