Paul Wolfowitz's tenure as President of the World Bank is over. A 600-page internal report has found him guilty of a conflict of interest and of breaching bank rules. Germany is leading a European push for Wolfowitz to resign.

Senior Democrats have written to the Bush "urging decisive action to bring this crisis to a close".

The World Bank Staff Association said Wolfowitz "must acknowledge that his conduct has compromised the integrity and effectiveness of the World Bank Group and has destroyed the staff's trust in his leadership. He must act honourably and resign."

The Bush administration, true to form, is standing by their man.

Bank documents leaked in April revealed Wolfowitz had approved a generous pay rise to his lover, a World Bank employee, prior to her secondment to the State Department.

This is ironic, given Wolfowitz's crusade against corruption at the Bank. He has suspended aid projects to countries he declared corrupt. He has also created an ethics police to monitor bank employee's expenses.

Wolfowitz has resisted falling on his sword, instead accusing his critics of a smear campaign designed, "to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that I am an ineffective leader and must step down for that reason alone".

Biggest shareholder

The US government, as the World Bank's largest shareholder, has traditionally claimed the right to appoint its President. The 2005 appointment of Wolfowitz was widely attacked and rightly so-Wolfowitz is a leading neo-conservative and one of the architects of the Iraq war.

Ninety percent of World Bank staff opposed the nomination. It was widely believed Wolfowitz would use the position to further Bush administration foreign policy goals.

Wolfowitz hired Republican stalwarts as his aides. He insisted on the establishment of a permanent World Bank office in Baghdad. He expanded the bank's activities in countries the US military had intervened in, and suspended loans to countries unfriendly to US interests.

For example, in September 2005 Wolfowitz unilaterally withdrew an assistance package to Uzbekistan after the government asked the US to abandon its Uzbek military base, established after 9-11. Wolfowitz cancelled the loans just as it was to be presented to the board for approval.

Wolfowitz has a long and sordid history in US politics. During the Reagan era, he was a strong supporter of US aid to the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia. In 1992, he argued that the US needed to mount a second war in the Gulf to depose Saddam Hussein. He got his chance after the election of George Bush in 2000, when he was appointed Deputy Secretary of Defense.

His fall from grace in a sign of how bad things have become for the Bush administration and its dwindling circle of supporters. The trial and conviction of White House aide Scooter Libby revealed how far the Bush administration was prepared to go in 2003 to repress legitimate criticisms of the Iraq war. Libby was convicted of leaking the identity of a CIA agent whose husband, a high level diplomat, argued that Bush had "exaggerated the Iraqi threat".

Following the Republicans' drubbing at last year's congressional election, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was offered as a sacrificial lamb. The public corruption investigation focused on Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff has laid open the influence of lobby groups in Washington.

US Attorney-General, Guantanamo Bay defender, and Bush loyalist, Alberto Gonzales, is under pressure to resign over the sacking of eight US Attorneys actively involved in public corruption investigations.

The "neo-conservative moment" in US politics is collapsing under its own failures-a foreign policy based on delusion and greed, an economic policy that has increased wealth in the hands of the few; attacks on health insurance, social security and workers rights, and destructive environmental policies.

For six years, Bush was supported by a corrupt and compliant Republican Congress. Now he is mired in his own muck. The crisis created by the Iraq war has left Bush a lame duck and, with it, an opportunity for the left to advocate for true change.

By Ali Crofts