Of course this could be satire, but considering John Bolton is not known for his sense of humor, I suspect he’s as serious as a Dick Cheney heart attack when he says Israel needs to blow s**t up bomb Iran ASAP if Mubarak is deposed:
Former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said the ouster of embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would speed the timetable for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“Do you think that the Israelis are going to have to strike — they are going to have to take action?” Fox News Republican opinion host Sean Hannity asked the former ambassador on his radio program Monday.
“I think that’s right,” Bolton responded. “I don’t think there’s much time to act. And I think the fall of a Egyptian government committed to the peace agreement will almost certainly speed that timetable up.”
The reason that Israel should attack Iran this time? It’s because Mohammed El Baradei, former head of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) has assumed a public role in calling for the ouster of Mubarak. Bolton especially hates El Baradei because every time the Bush adminstration claimed Iran was “this close” to firing nukes off at Israel, El Baradei poured cold water on their lust for military action by announcing that just the opposite was true:
As you pointed out, El Baradei, you know, ran cover for the Iranians for all those years that he was with the IAEA. And, I just don’t think the Israelis have much longer to wait…they’re going to have to act in fairly short order.
In short, in Bolton’s mind there’s never a bad time to bomb Iran and start another Mideast war, because in the mind of John Bolton diplomacy is just another word for … Actually, I don’t think Mr. Bolton acknowledges that the word diplomacy exists except as an expletive. It hardly need to be said, but Eric Dolan of Raw Story says it anyway:
Bolton, a neoconservative, has a long history of promoting military strikes on Iran.
Indeed, Bolton can find just about any excuse to bomb Iran, and has in the recent past when he claimed that the proper response to North Korea’s torpedo attack on a South Korean warship was to (wait for it) BOMB IRAN!
Like those of its predecessor, the efforts of the Obama administration to stop Iran’s nuclear program have failed. North Korea’s nuclear-weapons capability undergirds its belief that it can commit acts of aggression with impunity and therefore shows unambiguously why we must stop Iran. It also shows that the Security Council is gridlocked and impotent. The risks are growing as our president cheers on a world in which unilateral American power is diminished.
This is the man who still believes that our invasion Iraq was a good great idea spectacular success because Saddam had WMD could have potentially acquired WMD. He even blamed the Bush administration for promoting “democracy” in Iraq as the reason for the war after they didn’t find any WMD.
It should be added John Bolton is a prospective Republican candidate for President in 2012. I suspect he’s on Sarah Palin’s short list of potential candidates for Vice President and/or Secretary of Defense. Hey, at least he knows where Egypt is located, i.e., he isn’t an ignorant crazy Republican warmonger. He’s a well-informed, well-educated madman.
Which would make him the perfect front man for Palin and her infamous lack of knowledge about — well just about anything. You see, Bolton speaks in complete sentences and can play a well-reasoned articulate conservative intellectual on TV. That fact those sentences he speaks are based entirely on delusional thinking and an insatiable appetite for war against “Islamofascist Muslims” won’t bother most of the people who would vote for Palin anyway.
John Bolton, Secretary of State? Crazier things have happened in US politics, the most recent example, President George W. Bush. If the Neocons gain power again as they did during Bush’s administration, we and the world are in deep trouble.
Hopefully Palin will endorse him as her candidate for Secretary of State, as nothing could be more damaging to the future of a politician than Palin’s magic touch, henceforth, IMO (I’m thinking about polls here).
I personally think Bolton is angling for a spot in the next Republican administration, Palin or someone else.
Well I would say that pushing for an attack against Iran, which would likely cause oil shortages and worsen the US recession, is hardly a way to warm up to the American public.
As everyone knows, cheap gas is an American birthright and anyone messing with the flow of oil from the Middle East will be stoned politically.
The Peter Principle certainly proved itself with this nut job! A one-trick pony act.
That concept is well targeted. Bolton is also AIPAC’s boy. You would think that they would know better, but every year they drag him out to speak at the annual AIPAC convention.
Quite frankly, anyone who does not understand why we squandered billions in Vietnam deserves neither a microphone nor a seat anywhere near actual power. It is very clear that John Bolton seeks destruction not of Iran but of democracy in the United States of America.
He’s another national security peacock who did not support the war in Vietnam by going but feels obliged to see everything through that lens.
Mubarak staying in power guarantees a future revolution like the one in Iran in which the US, if it still is in the region, will be seen as the enemy. The end of the Mubarak regime and a democratic regime is in the long-term interests of the US in the region. And in the long-term interest of ending anti-democratic rule in Iran without the US having to commit any funds to the effort.
Like the entire “intellectual” base of the the GOP today, Bolton is a dangerous fool.
“another national security peacock”, oh God, that’s great. I agree with your assessment of John Bolton and the entire intellectual base of the GOP as a dangerous fool. Further, I think both Bolton and said base have a collective suicide wish which they are itching to resolve. Sure hope they don’t get the opportunity to indulge it.
I assume some of the potential candidates are being run by Koch bros and their ilk, Palin and Bachmann among them. Bolton also might have support from corporate puppetmasters.
I’m with Yglesias.