Daily Ramblings:
Feel Like A Fightin' Rooster ...03/07/2005 02:46:19 pm
Nominated today to be U.S.
Ambassador to the United Nations is John Bolton
(currently undersecretary for arms control and
international security). Message to the U.N.: let's
rumble!
WASHINGTON (AP) --
Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, an
outspoken arms control expert who rarely muffles
his views in diplomatic nuance, is President
Bush's choice to be U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations.
Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice made the announcement Monday with Bolton at
her side.
"The president and I have
asked John to do this work because he knows how
to get things done," Rice said at a State
Department news conference. "He is a
tough-minded diplomat, he has a strong record of
success, and he has a proven track record of
effective multilateralism."
Emphasis on effective multilateralism,
which does not include multilaterally sitting around
and pretending progress is being made while everyone
really knows (but just won't say) that a vicious
regime is putting the finishing touches on some
atomic bombs.
Maybe looking at what people who don't
like John Bolton have said about him is most
illustrative of what a great choice President Bush
and Condi Rice have made.
From "Right-Web," whose mission is
"heightening public awareness of the outrageous
policies advocated by the right," this short biography of John Bolton:
John Bolton , George W. Bush's
undersecretary of State for arms control and
international security, is the administration's
designated treaty killer. Since his nomination
(which was opposed by Secretary of State Colin
Powell), Bolton's reputation as a rabid
opponent of international agreements and
loose-lipped critic of foreign regimes has become
the stuff of legend, at times hampering
the State Department's ability to undertake
negotiations. In July 2003, during the run up to
the six-nation talks with North Korea, Bolton
described Korean head of state Kim Jong Il as a
"tyrannical dictator" of a country
where "life is a hellish nightmare."
North Korea responded in kind, saying that
"such human scum and bloodsucker is not
entitled to take part in the talks. ... We have
decided not to consider him as an official of the
U.S. administration any longer nor to deal
with." The State Department sent a
replacement for Bolton to the talks. (5)
Bolton 's penchant for going off half-cocked
extends well beyond North Korean issues. Some
notable examples:
At a 1994 panel discussion sponsored by
the World Federalist Association, Bolton claimed,
"There's no such thing as the United
Nations," saying that ''If the U.N.
secretary building in New York lost 10 stories,
it wouldn't make a bit of difference.'' (8)
During the July 2001 global U.N.
conference on small arms and light weapons, Bolton
told delegates that the United States was not
only opposed to any agreement restricting
civilian possession of small arms,
it also didn't appreciate "the promotion of
international advocacy activity by international
or non-governmental organizations." Bolton
's delegation was accompanied by that
distinguished American NGO the National Rifle
Association. (7)
In 1998, when he was senior vice
president of the American Enterprise Institute,
Bolton described the International Criminal Court
(ICC) as "a product of fuzzy-minded
romanticism [that] is not just naïve, but
dangerous." (6)
Bolton told the Wall Street Journal that
signing the letter informing the U.N. that
Washington was renouncing the Rome Treaty to
create the ICC "was the happiest moment of
my government service." (6)
Regarding efforts to add a verification
proposal to the bioweapons convention, Bolton
told colleagues in 2001, "It's dead, dead,
dead, and I don't want it coming back from the
dead." (6)
Now that's the kind of diplomacy that Right
Wing Bob can dig.
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