Here come the Jets:
Little world, step aside!
In yesterday’s BooTrib story, “Conservative Warns Lugar: Bolton Is a True Force of Darkness,” I excised a bit about Armitage for brevity. Today’s NYT makes clear that there was war – more than we knew – in the State Dept. between Armitage’s and Bolton/Cheney’s gangs, and how!
ACTION: (Spoken) Tony don’t belong any more.
RIFF: Cut it, Action boy. I and Tony started the Jets.
ACTION: Well, he acts like he don’t wanna belong.
BABY JOHN: Who wouldn’t wanna belong to the Jets!
ACTION: Tony ain’t been with us for over a month.
Hum some mo’ “West Side Story” tunes as you read below:
This morning’s (May 10) NYT reports: No. 2 at State Dept. Was Said to Put Restrictions on Bolton
WASHINGTON, May 9 – A new portrayal of John R. Bolton describes him as having so angered senior State Department officials with his public comments that the deputy secretary of state, Richard L. Armitage, ordered two years ago that Mr. Bolton be blocked from delivering speeches and testimony unless they were personally approved by Mr. Armitage.
What was part of Armitage’s beef with Bolton? I’d excised this yesterday (for brevity) from Mr. Wanniski’s letter to Lugar:
“Bush the Horse, Cheney the Rider” Oct. 23, 2003
How did Bolton get the job at State in the first place. This is from Jim Lobe, a Washington correspondent:
Not only did Cheney personally intervene to ensure that Powell’s best friend, Richard Armitage, was denied the deputy defence secretary position, but he also played a key role in securing the post for Paul Wolfowitz. Moreover, it was Cheney who insisted that ultra-unilateralist John Bolton be placed in a top State Department arms position, from which he has pursued policies that run counter to Powell’s own preferences.
The May 10 NYT goes on:
“Therefore, the deputy made a decision, and communicated that decision to me, that John Bolton would not give any testimony, nor would he give any speech, that wasn’t cleared first by Rich,” Mr. Wilkerson said, according to a transcript of an hourlong interview with members of the committee staff last Thursday.
In an e-mail message on Monday, Mr. Wilkerson said of the restrictions imposed on Mr. Bolton that “if anything, they got more stringent” as time went on. “No one else was subjected to these tight restrictions,” he said.
Read the entire NYT article this morning (May 10).
The Jets are in gear,
Our cylinders are clickin’!
The Sharks’ll steer clear
‘Cause ev’ry Puerto Rican’s a lousy chicken!
Here come the Jets
Like a bat out of hell.
Someone gets in our way,
Someone don’t feel so well!
Here come the Jets:
Little world, step aside!
Better go underground,
Better run, better hide!
We’re drawin’ the line,
So keep your noses hidden!
We’re hangin’ a sign,
Says “Visitors forbidden”
And we ain’t kiddin’!
Here come the Jets,
Yeah! And we’re gonna beat
Ev’ry last buggin’ gang
On the whole buggin’ street!
On the whole!
Ever!
Mother!
Lovin’!
Street!
Yeah!
“West Side Story” lyrics
Someone at Kos just posted this:
WASHINGTON May 10, 2005 — The State Department won’t turn over more internal documents requested by Senate Democrats investigating John R. Bolton’s fitness to be U.N. ambassador, a spokesman said Monday.
“I don’t think we’re stiffing anybody here,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. “We feel we’ve given all of the information that’s required under those circumstances.”
Separately, a top intelligence officer prepared to brief several lawmakers about the embattled nominee’s requests for the names of U.S. officials whose communications were picked up by the secret National Security Agency. Both Democrats and Republicans have sought details about Bolton’s pursuit of the NSA information.
If Perle is the Prince of Darkness, Condi is the Queen.
Miami Herald goes deeper:
In an interview Monday, Rice dismissed allegations that Bolton tried to pressure intelligence analysts to change their assessments.
“I see nothing that suggests that John was anything but an interested consumer of intelligence and asked difficult questions,” Rice said in the CNN interview. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with someone, a policy-maker, asking difficult questions of the intelligence community.”
[…]
A transcript of an interview last week with Robert Hutchings, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, was released Monday. Hutchings described a testy debate between Bolton and intelligence analysts over Syrian weapons programs.
“I wouldn’t say he was making up facts. Let’s say that he took isolated facts and made much more of them to build a case than I thought the intelligence warranted,” Hutchings said. “It was a sort of cherry-picking of little factoids and little isolated bits that were drawn out to present the starkest-possible case.”
On Monday, 43 former U.S. ambassadors added their names to a letter signed earlier by 59 ex-ambassadors opposing the nomination. Most served in Republican administrations.
Count on it. He was making shit up, the paranoid, lying freak. Like all of our current foreign policy Like Condi makes shit up and stonewalls.
you’re on Bolton, because I keep feeling the need to write about him, and your diligence is freeing me up to write about less distressing things like philosophy and the Dead.
But Bolton IS the story this week. We can’t let filibuster talk distract us.
I view it somewhat philosophically as an exercise in educating ourselves about the bastard. If he makes it, as is very likely, at least we’ll know his nasty history and his history of internecine battles wherever he’s worked.
Susan, thanks for making it so much easier for the rest of us to learn just how bad Bolton really is. He is an incredible piece of work, even by Bush administration standards.
Thanks, Susan, for the West Side Story lyrics!
I like to be in America!
O.K. by me in America!
Ev’rything free in America
For a small fee in America!
Automobile in America,
Chromium steel in America,
Wire-spoke wheel in America,
Very big deal in America!
Immigrant goes to America,
Many hellos in America;
Nobody knows in America
Puerto Rico’s in America!
I like the shores of America!
Comfort is yours in America!
Knobs on the doors in America,
Wall-to-wall floors in America!
What inspired the lyrics: My very cool nephew is starring in a high school production of “West Side Story”! (He’s also a human rights activist and is going to get his teacher to help with Amina!)