Yet Another Reason Why We Need John Bolton As UN Ambassador...

My asshat Senator - Christopher Dodd (D) of CT - hates him. Quoted in a WSJ piece today, Dodd made a baseless charge against Bolton that there is "credible evidence" that Bolton attempted to arrange the firing of two intelligence analysts because they raised objections to a speech he made on Cuba at the Heritage Foundation.

But the article notes:

As it happens, the Senate has also investigated these allegations. The Intelligence Committee issued a report last July exonerating Mr. Bolton and other government officials of trying to manipulate intelligence for political purposes. None of the intelligence analysts it interviewed, the report says, "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."

So Senate Democrats, led by a man with a penchant for coddling Latin American dictators, will try to use the old allegation in an attempt to smear Bolton at his confirmation hearing today. Dodd is nothing more than a partisan hack. But his actions hardly surprise me at this point.

Here's the nut of the opposition to John Bolton:

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.

UPDATE: 10:40am
Peter Brookes in the NY Post has an editorial making the case for John Bolton.

The United Nations is a mess, rocked by scandals and failure. The president picked Bolton because America needs a firm, outspoken statesman at Turtle Bay — someone who can advance American interests and drive U.N. reform.

Posted by: Gary at 09:19 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 354 words, total size 3 kb.