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The same John Bolton who, in 2003, was removed from the American delegation to a six-nation meeting about North Korea’s nuclear arms program after he antagonistically called North Korean President Kim Jong II a "tyrannical dictator." (Of course, it also didn’t help that his boss, George W. Bush, called Jong a "pygmy" a year earlier).
The same John Bolton who, in 2002, reportedly screamed at an intelligence analyst, when he refused to allow alarmist terminology regarding possible biological weapons in Cuba to be used in a speech Bolton was to give to the Heritage Foundation.
Bolton’s bullying of his State Department underling came to light last week during hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on whether to confirm Bolton as America’s ambassador to the U.N.
And who blew the whistle?
It must have been one of those bleeding heart liberals -- a Democrat, most likely.
In fact, it was Carl W. Ford Jr., former chief of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, who calls himself "a loyal Republican and conservative to the core."
"I’ve never seen anybody quite like Secretary Bolton. I don’t have a second, third or fourth in terms of the way that he abuses his power and authority with little people," said Ford.
He referred to Bolton as a "serial abuser."
"He’s a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy," said Ford.
Apparently that strategy has worked well for Bolton in winning plum positions with Republican presidents. The 55-year-old lawyer has held jobs in the State and Justice departments and in the U.S. Agency for International Development under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
Former ambassadors for those presidents as well as ones for Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are among 59 diplomats who have signed a letter to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., urging the committee to reject Bolton’s nomination as U.N. ambassador.
"He is the wrong man for this position," was the collective assessment of Bolton by the former diplomats.
They cited Bolton’s ineffectiveness in his current position as the State Department’s senior arms control official, saying he has an "exceptional record" of opposing U.S. efforts to improve national security through arms control.
They also criticized Bolton for his "insistence that the U.N. is valuable only when it directly serves the United States."
In 2001 at a Geneva conference, Bolton effectively scuttled a United Nations proposal on enforcing the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention by leading U.S. opposition to spot inspections of U.S. weapons sites. The proposal was meaningless without U.S. participation.
But what else would you expect from a man who, in his 1994 speech to the Federalist Society, said, "If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference."
When taken to task over that statement at the confirmation hearings, Bolton tried to backpedal, saying it was born of "what I thought was the lack of effective American leadership" -- translation: A Democrat was president then and Bolton was out of a government job.
Lugar and the foreign relations committee’s senior Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., were wise to delay voting on Bolton’s confirmation until this week.
Reportedly Democrats are hoping to convince Sen. Lincoln Chaffee, R-R.I., to reject Bolton, rendering a tie vote which could kill Bolton’s approval in a Senate where Republicans have a 10-8 edge.
Hopefully Pennsylvania’s own moderate Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter, will also be smart enough to heed the bipartisan warnings of former ambassadors and reject this bully as our U.N. representative.
Bolton’s hawkish philosophy is antithetical to the U.N.’s peacekeeping mission. His tunnel vision, lack of diplomacy and borderline xenophobia would only further alienate allies already alienated by the war in Iraq which he helped engineer.
To make John Bolton U.S. ambassador to the United Nations would dangerously fray the United States’ already eroding relations with the rest of the world.
