While a lot of Bush cronies seem to be heading for the exits, some just can’t stay away – Condi and George are welcoming one lost sheep back with open arms: Paul Wolfowitz.

Michael Isikoff reports in the new issue of Newsweek that:

Nearly three years after Paul Wolfowitz resigned as deputy Defense secretary and six months after his stormy departure as president of the World Bank—amid allegations that he improperly awarded a raise to his girlfriend—he's in line to return to public service. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has offered Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the Iraq War, a position as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board, a prestigious State Department panel, according to two department sources who declined to be identified discussing personnel matters. The 18-member panel, which has access to highly classified intelligence, advises Rice on disarmament, nuclear proliferation, WMD issues and other matters. "We think he is well suited and will do an excellent job," said one senior official.

The opening on the panel came up when Fred Thompson (yep, that Fred Thompson) left to run for president.

Isikoff goes on to note that:

his selection has raised more than eyebrows within State because he'll be providing advice on some of the same issues that critics say the administration got spectacularly wrong when Wolfowitz was pushing the case for the Iraq War at the Pentagon. (One of the department sources called the appointment "amazing.")

Wolfie hasn't just been loafing since his World Bank gig fell through. Along with his perch at the American Enterprise Institute, a recent sighting was recounted in a rather interesting piece about the ability of neocon hawks to thrive on failure in – of all places – The American Conservative:

It may surprise no one that former deputy secretary of defense and ousted World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz still enjoys the red-carpet treatment among Washington's elite. That he indulged in it at the screening of an HBO documentary about 10 wounded Iraq War veterans who barely made it home alive from the conflict Wolfowitz helped to engineer might raise an eyebrow.

Yet he was singled out as a VIP at the Sept. 5 premier of "Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq" and was still smiling after the screening, which featured insurgent footage of IED attacks, severed limbs, shredded brains, and left hardly a dry eye in the place. Organizers discreetly overlooked Wolfowitz's marquee role in justifying the invasion that brought them all together.

But along with his return to the inner sanctum of warmongering, Wolfie (and Condi) may be facing a little trip to court as well:

The government’s prosecution of two former pro-Israel lobbyists was dealt a major setback Friday when a federal judge authorized subpoenas for senior government officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz. (snip)

The judge accepted the defendants’ view that in order to prove guilt, the prosecution must show to the court that Rosen and Weissman had a criminal intent when they received and passed on classified information. If the defense can demonstrate, by subpoenaing Rice and other officials, that classified information was regularly conveyed to Aipac by the highest-ranking government officials, it would help them make the case that Rosen and Weissman had no way of knowing they were breaking the law by receiving other information from former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin. (emph added)

While Isikoff's piece proclaims the latest Wolfie news with the headline “An Old Face Resurfaces,” I much prefer the headline RememberingGiap used in his heads-up to this news over at Moon of Alabama: “Scum rises to surface again & again.”