Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Our title there is taken from an article in the current edition of The Economist. By the way, is it any wonder that the weekly's circulation topped the one million mark recently? Its prescience is simply uncanny. I mean, what a week to go with an article about the neo-con movement? The penultimate sentence of "Back in their pomp" reads: "The neo-conservatives have every reason to be feeling good about themselves at the moment." And, sure enough, as if to reward The Economist for its foresight, President Bush went ahead today and nominated Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank.

Sadly, not everyone was pleased with this decision. "We are horrified that the US is seriously nominating Wolfowitz to run the World Bank," said the sour pusses who run Who will be next? A blog devoted to World Bank succession race. They'd have been happier if Bono had landed the gig but he's booked out for years.

Expect lots of wailing from the usual quarters tomorrow, but maybe the Guardian will be a little more careful than it was in the past in re Wolfowitz. Two years ago, in June 2003, it ran a hit job under the headline "Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil". The paper reported that he had made a distinction between Iraq and North Korea based on the fact that Iraq "floats on a sea of oil." On the following day, the paper printed this humiliating climbdown:

"He did not say that. He said, according to the Department of Defense website: 'The difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq.' The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war."

If there's a reason why The Economist is regarded with more respect than the Guardian, you've just read it and you can confirm it here. Anyway, with Paul Wolfowitz nominated for the World Bank today and John Bolton getting the nod as America's ambassador to the United Nations last week, neo-cons will go to bed happy tonight.