Grasping at straws So Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations committee gave a big "Woah thar" when they received a report that John Bolton may have harassed someone 20 years ago.
Democrats in Congress released a letter from a woman saying she was verbally abused by Bolton more than 20 years ago.
Additionally, there are reports that Mr Bolton fired people who disagreed with him.
Charges that Bolton yelled at subordinates and tried to fire those who disagreed with him have put the nomination into jeopardy and delayed a Senate committee vote until May 12.
But corroborative evidence seems to be hard to find.
Lynne Finney, a former legal adviser to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), sent a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. Finney wrote that Bolton "screamed that I was fired" when she refused to lobby for a weakening of restrictions on the sale of infant formula in the developing world. State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said "no one at USAID at the time has any recollection" of such an incident. Ereli denied that the Reagan administration tried to weaken a 1981 U.N.
But evidence that Mr Bolton did not try to fire people who disagreed with him comes from a fellow blogger. Victor Comras of the CounterTerrorism Blog recalls his encounter with Bolton
My encounter with John Bolton was at the 1992 London Conference on the Former Yugoslavia. Both John Bolton and I were there as members of Secretary Eagleburger's delegation. Bolton was then Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, and I was an underling in a different bureau. A key objective for Eagleburger at the London Conference was "putting some teeth" into the international sanctions on Serbia, and Eagleburger called one of his "rough elbow" delegation meetings to develop some ideas on how to handle this.
UN Sanctions normally fell within John Bolton's balliwick. and he made an eloquent presentation on the need for us to adopt a more activist approach in the Security Council to hold all countries accountable. Frankly, I did not agree with this approach. It ran counter to my own experience in dealing with various other UN sanctions programs. Eagleburger had invited dissenting views, and I gave mine.
I put forth a plan that would leave sanctions policy in the hands of the Security Council, but place sanctions enforcement in the hands of a separate independent regional mechanism. I suggested treating sanctions violations as border smuggling (that is customs issues) rather than political issues. My ideas ran directly counter to Bolton's presentation.
To my surprise Eagleburger agreed with me. And to my chagrin, he took the sanctions portfolio out of Bolton's hand and put me in charge of negotiating what I had described.
I remember very vividly John Bolton walking up to me after that meeting, extending his hand and telling me he wanted to help me anyway he could. He also directed his staff to provide me any needed assistance. His help and support during the London Conference, and afterward, were critical elements to my success. I will always remain grateful for his extended hand and his support.
I wonder if this will make it to the Senate committee.
That there are many within the State Department that do not like John Bolton should come as no surprise. Many in the State Department don't like Bush. And the fact that Powell couldn't clean house there and get everyone in line with Bush's Foreign Policy objectives is the main reason he's gone and Ms Rice is in.
So to tout 20 year old allegations, and weak allegations at that, from obvious political partisans is simply ridiculous. As Bill Kristol notes in the Weekly Standard
The notion that bureaucratic infighting and occasional abruptness of manner should disqualify one from high office is laughable. Unable to defeat Bolton in a debate on the merits of the foreign policies he has advocated or implemented, the Democrats, the media, and some in the foreign policy establishment have resorted to a childish form of character assassination. Bolton disagreed with--he even disliked!--a couple of bureaucrats. He challenged them. But no one has really accused Bolton of doing anything fundamentally inappropriate. In fact, so far as anyone can tell, there seem to have been almost no formal management complaints filed against him--and very few informal ones--in his 16 years in government, which is fairly amazing.
But Democrats who think the UN is the path to a better future can not be amazed.
Because if they can dismiss the Oil for Food scandal even though it is way larger than the Enron debacle, and they can dismiss the UN Sex scandal as just a matter of oversight, then I am not surprised that they can not be amazed that a man can exist at high levels of government with no real complaints against him.
Hell, not even John Kerry can claim that....
Who cares about Nukes? World Net Daily is reporting that there is evidence that Iran is developing an EMP weapon that could be delivered by a ballistic missile.
Iran is not only covertly developing nuclear weapons, it is already testing ballistic missiles specifically designed to destroy America's technical infrastructure, effectively neutralizing the world's lone superpower, say U.S. intelligence sources, top scientists and western missile industry experts.
The radical Shiite regime has conducted successful tests to determine if its Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, can be detonated by a remote-control device while still in high-altitude flight.
Scientists, including President Reagan's top science adviser, William R. Graham, say there is no other explanation for such tests than preparation for the deployment of Electromagnetic Pulse weapons – even one of which could knock out America's critical electrical and technological infrastructure, effectively sending the continental U.S. back to the 19th century with a recovery time of months or years.
Back to the 19th Century? Yikes! No Internet? No cell phone? No Star Wars?
Thankfully, it's not as far back as the 12th Centuray where al Qaeda would like the world to revert.
Nor is it as far back as the Earth Firsters would like us to go, which, as far as I can tell, is somewhere south of the Jurrasic Age.
