George Soros' World Bank Conquest

George Soros must be giddy in anticipation; his conquest of the World Bank is nearly complete, it is almost his.

All he has to do is see to the removal of Paul Wolfowitz, a man whose beliefs are the opposite of his, and install the man who he's lent one of his homes to, a man who believes, like Soros, in world government with plenty of opportunity for anti-Americanism and corruption.

The Wolfowitz part is going well. There's a 600-page "indictment," complete with its own violation of World Bank rules, since it only gives Wolfowitz 72 hours to respond instead of the five business days allowed. That was a bit of a defeat for Soros; he was going for a 48 hour response window.

Should it prove persuasive, it should be easy to get Soros' man in at the helm of the World Bank. Mark Malloch Brown, Kofi Annan's former cover-up man, is waiting in the wings, pulling strings, calling favors and twisting arms. The WSJ opinion page summarizes Brown nicely:

The bank presidency would be a neat coup for Sir Mark, and not just because the post has heretofore gone to an American. He also stands for everything Mr. Wolfowitz opposes, beginning with the issue of corruption. Consider Mr. Malloch Brown's defense of the U.N.'s procurement practices.

"Not a penny was lost from the organization," he insisted last year, following an audit of the U.N.'s peacekeeping procurement by its Office of Internal Oversight Services. In fact, the office found that $7 million had been lost from overpayment; $50 million worth of contracts showed indications of bid rigging; $61 million had bypassed U.N. rules; $82 million had been lost to mismanagement; and $110 million had "insufficient" justification. That's $310 million out of a budget of $1.6 billion, and who knows what the auditors missed.

Mr. Malloch Brown also made curious use of English by insisting that Paul Volcker's investigation into Oil for Food had "fully exonerated" Mr. Annan. In fact, Mr. Volcker's report made an "adverse finding" against the then-Secretary-General. Among other details, the final report noted that Mr. Annan was "aware of [Saddam's] kickback scheme at least as early as February 2001," yet never reported it to the U.N. Security Council, much less the public, a clear breach of his fiduciary responsibilities as the U.N.'s chief administrative officer. Mr. Malloch Brown described the idea that Mr. Annan might resign as "inappropriate political assassination" -- a standard he apparently doesn't apply to political enemies like Mr. Wolfowitz.

In this odd couple, Soros is the loudmouth and Brown the subdued, but you can be sure their views are not far apart. Brown was a moving force behind the farcical reform of the U.N.'s Human Rights Council which, WSJ reminds us, so far has done nothing but castigate Israel. And he's at his best when he's lecturing America about the way it ought to behave.

I wasn't following this affair closely, naively thinking that if Wolfowitz is just another guy who thinks he's above the rules, then I wasn't going to burn electrons defending him. But there's more at stake here than whether he idiotically gave his squeeze a job.

He was trying to turn a powerful organization in a new direction and the forces of evil now see their opportunity to grab it back and use it for their gain. The fact that they're using corruption -- a tool they wield exceptionally well themselves -- as their mark on Wolfowitz makes the play all the more interesting and repulsive.

WSJ concludes:

If the Bush Administration now abandons Mr. Wolfowitz as he faces a decision from the bank's board of governors, it will not only betray a friend but hand the biggest victory yet to its audacious enemies in the George Soros axis.