As if we needed further proof that the Bush compliant GOP doesn’t want diplomacy to work…
Reuters reports that Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee want to keep John Bolton on as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton, you’ll recall, received a recess appointment to his present post from young Mister Bush back in August of 2005 after Senate Democrats blocked a final confirmation vote on his nomination.
The Bush administration wants Bolton confirmed now. A confirmation would keep Bolton in the UN for the remainder of Mister Bush’s term as president.
Reuters says that “About 60 retired diplomats who served in Republican and Democratic administrations signed letters to Foreign Relations Committee members calling Bolton unfit to keep the job and urging his rejection.”
The diplomats, who also opposed Bolton’s original nomination, said in their letter that Bolton’s conduct to date as UN ambassador “has confirmed our misgivings about his probable ineffectiveness and his tendency to alienate others.”
In other words, Bolton is an obnoxious, bullying jerk–which makes him the Bush GOP’s ideal choice for a key diplomatic position.
As a member of the Project for the New American Century, Bolton championed the policy of removing Saddam Hussein from power through military force. During his first job in the Bush administration as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Bolton helped fellow PNACer Dick Cheney cook the WMD intelligence on Iraq while letting Korea’s development of nuclear weapons slip under the radar.
And this is the guy who presently handles the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program in the UN, who insists that Iran has ambitions to possess nuclear weapons though Iran claims it only wants to develop nuclear technology for peaceful energy purposes, which the UN Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty defines as an “inalienable right.”
The neocons in the White House want war with Iran. What better way to ensure that happens than to keep John Bolton in charge of the UN diplomatic process?
Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-Rhode Island) is the lone Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee who hasn’t decided to back Bolton’s nomination. Let’s hope his decision isn’t influenced by fear of further insults from Ann Coulter.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.