Frantic Smoke & Mirrors

Between the burgeoning "Armageddon" over the Dem anti-Bush judge blockade and the Tom DeLay kerfuffle, I've let the scarcely-any-more-palatable-to-the-Jackasses nomination of John Bolton to be our ambassador to the United Nations pass, to date, without comment.

The bottom line of this one is that Bolton is a nationalist and UN skeptic in the tradition of Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and the Donks want somebody who will pucker up and firmly affix his/her lips to Kofi Annan's anus for the duration.

Why they don't just come out and say that, the way they've candidly displayed their ideological rancor on the President's picks for the appellate bench, is anybody's guess. Maybe they fear having to answer the question, in the wake of the Oily Food and pedofile prostitution in Africa scandals, of how an ambassador to the UN who wasn't a cringing, sychophantic, masochistic bootlicker to the Turtle Bay crime family could really cause any damage to that dysfunctional rat's nest than the "multilateralist" crowd hasn't already.

Or maybe they actually have some nerve left to muster to extend their blanket filibuster to Executive Branch appointments as well. I'll believe that when I see it, but in the meantime their attempts at character assassination against Mr. Bolton are the epitome of partisan pathos.

The Wall Street Journal (summarized via Newsmax) tells the tale:

The chief witness Senate Democrats cite as proving charges against John Bolton, President Bush's nominee for the U.S. ambassadorship to the U.N., not only did the same thing Bolton is accused of doing but even backed the nominee in previous testimony.

In a scathing editorial today, the Wall Street Journal thoroughly discredited charges by one Carl Ford, a former Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research.

Noting that there are two principal charges against Bolton, first that Mr. Bolton distorted intelligence information in a public speech before the Heritage Foundation in which he warned of a possible biological weapons effort in Cuba, and second that he is said to have intimidated intelligence officials, the Journal proceeded to dismantle both accusations.

"Let's take the allegations about the Cuba speech first. In May 2002, Mr. Bolton told an audience at the Heritage Foundation that he believed Havana had "a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort" and has "provided dual-use technology to other rogue states." But, the Journal reports, had Bolton's Democrat critics done their homework, they would know that "Mr. Bolton wasn't the first U.S. government official to use such language." As the Journal's Latin America correspondent Mary Anastasia O'Grady reported at the time, Ford himself used nearly identical words when he testified before Congress two months earlier. [as well as a month afterwards - my emphasis]

Ford testified a second time at a hearing of the Senate Western Hemisphere subcommittee called for the purpose of investigating Bolton's Heritage comments. According to the editorial, "Connecticut Democrat Christopher Dodd - one of Mr. Bolton's fiercest critics - asked Mr. Ford: 'Did you have any disagreements with the draft [Heritage] speech?' Ford replied, 'On the intelligence side, we did not. We approved it. It was the language we had provided.'

So much for Mr. Ford's credibility. What about the allegation that Bolton is a partisan bully?

Yesterday, Dodd claimed that there is "credible information" that Bolton tried to have two intelligence analysts fired for raising objections in advance of his Heritage speech. Dodd seems to have forgotten that the Senate has already investigated these allegations. In a report issued by the Intelligence Committee last July, Bolton and other government officials were exonerated of the charges of trying to manipulate intelligence for political purposes. According to the Journal, the report concluded that none of the intelligence analysts it interviewed "provided any information to the Committee which showed that policymakers had attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their analysis or that any intelligence analysts had changed their intelligence judgments as a result of political pressure." Moreover, reported the Journal, "the Senate report specifically clears Mr. Bolton of charges relating to the Heritage speech. [my emphases]

This isn't a case of faulty memory or failure to "do homework." This is sheer straw-grasping. Or, as the WSJ concludes...

"All of this, in short, is political smoke designed to disguise what is really a policy dispute. Mr. Bolton's opponents don't want to promote a blunt-spoken supporter of Mr. Bush's foreign policy to help reform an obviously dysfunctional United Nations. They prefer someone who'll subjugate U.S. interests to the 'multilateralism' that is their, and the U.N.'s, dominant ethic. Democrats who vote against Mr. Bolton will be saying they want an Ambassador to the U.N. who represents Kofi Annan, not America."

And they (presumeably - Linc Chaffee is on the Foreign Relations Committee, and Chairman Dick Lugar has also been wobbly about the Bolton appointment) won't have the votes to defeat him.

Next stop: another filibuster.

At this rate, we'll end up with a Kerry administration that has everything except John Kerry.

Is this what the RINOs really wanted? We'll soon find out.