Fare thee well, John Bolton, we hardly knew ye... - Page 2 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Yakk · 12-06-2006, 08:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Again, I ask specific questions and those questions go unanswered.

Again, I answer your specific questions and my answers go unchallenged.

Bolton could not aquire the consent of the Senate, so Bush did an end-run around the constitution. Doing so was as stupid thing. Regardless of anything else, making a temporary appointment of an important diplomatic position that you do not have the support to get consent for is a stupid, arrogant, idotic thing. The executive branch is required to get the consent of the Senate, and is obligated to ask advice from the Senate about such appointments.

If one wanted a UN representative that had credibility, you don't grand-stand and use a loop-hole in the constitution to appoint him. It wasn't that he was undermined after he was appointed -- he did not have the support to get appointed in the first place.

He was opposed on a few issues. First, he had made quite dismissive comments about the UN -- and appointing someone who publicly has stated that he considers the position and the organization to be irrelivent is, how d you say, undiplomatic. But that isn't all.

There where some questions about his performance and honesty during his previous job -- issues that the Senate was looking into at the time that Bush did the end-run around the Senate, and did a "recess appointment".

aceventura3 · 12-06-2006, 11:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yakk

Again, I answer your specific questions and my answers go unchallenged.

I thought I responded in post #33

Quote:

Bolton could not aquire the consent of the Senate, so Bush did an end-run around the constitution. Doing so was as stupid thing. Regardless of anything else, making a temporary appointment of an important diplomatic position that you do not have the support to get consent for is a stupid, arrogant, idotic thing. The executive branch is required to get the consent of the Senate, and is obligated to ask advice from the Senate about such appointments.

Bush, at that time, would have gotten the same response from Democrats regardless of who he nominated. Sure I can't prove it, but you have to agree that Bolton was in step with Bush and odds are if he nominated someone else in-step with his view he would have received the same sophomoric response from the Democrats.

Quote:

If one wanted a UN representative that had credibility, you don't grand-stand and use a loop-hole in the constitution to appoint him. It wasn't that he was undermined after he was appointed -- he did not have the support to get appointed in the first place.

Bush was not playing partisan politics alone.

Quote:

He was opposed on a few issues. First, he had made quite dismissive comments about the UN -- and appointing someone who publicly has stated that he considers the position and the organization to be irrelivent is, how d you say, undiplomatic. But that isn't all.

There where some questions about his performance and honesty during his previous job -- issues that the Senate was looking into at the time that Bush did the end-run around the Senate, and did a "recess appointment".

I have made dismissive comments about the UN also. I don't have a problem with honest comments about ineffective, and sometimes corrupt organizations.

I am not aware of the past "issues" concerning Bolton.

Mojo_PeiPei · 12-06-2006, 11:09 AM

I realize the worthlessness of the comment I'm about to make but...

Get serious Rat. On the account of a recent democratic mid-term victory, you are saying we now have uniters, consensus builders, and across the aisle reachers? This coming from the party whose platform is/has been for 6 years ABB? I'm not saying republicans are reaching out, but at least they really make no qualms over there divisiveness.

I wonder if you will be singing the same tune in two years when Mccain probably gets elected president (judging by all current polls).

host · 12-06-2006, 11:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Here is the bottom line the way I see it.....

.....So you guys and gals go ahead and celebrate.

ace, I want to share the basis of what went into my decision that Bolton was the worst possible choice for US ambassador to the UN, with you.....

.....I was impressed by Powell's silence....he did not endorse Bolton's appointment, before the 2005 senate hearings.....but his former key assistant of 16 year, Col. Wilkerson, did offer his own opinion:

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/po...erland&emc=rss
Delay Is Sought in Vote on Nominee for U.N. Ambassador
By DOUGLAS JEHL and STEVEN R. WEISMAN Published: April 19, 2005

....On Monday, one of former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's top aides spoke out in opposition to Mr. Bolton.

"Under Secretary Bolton was never the formidable power that people are insinuating he was in terms of foreign policy, or blocking the policies that Secretary Powell wished to pursue," Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Mr. Powell's chief of staff, said in a telephone interview.

"But do I think John Bolton would make a good ambassador to the United Nations? Absolutely not," Mr. Wilkerson said. "He is incapable of listening to people and taking into account their views. He would be an abysmal ambassador."

Mr. Wilkerson said he had conveyed his views to senators and staff members on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Neither Mr. Powell nor Richard L. Armitage, who served as deputy secretary of state under Mr. Powell, have commented publicly about Mr. Bolton's nomination. Their offices have not replied to repeated inquiries. Mr. Powell was not among a group of five Republican former secretaries of state who sent the committee a letter that endorsed Mr. Bolton's nomination.......

in the post linked here,
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...ey#post2122019

and in other posts, I made a well supported case for the fact that Powell's entire pre-Iraq invasion UN presentation was inaccurate, misleading.....and an embarassment ot Powell, personally, and signfiigantly undermined the crdibility of the US, in the eyes of former allies around the world.

Mr. Bolton was part of the "inner circle" that made Powell's UN presentation, and the phoney, contrived, "grounds" for invading and occupying Iraq, possible. He is a posterboy for the failed Bush presidency......

Quote:

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/031027fa_fact

THE STOVEPIPE
How conflicts between the Bush Administration and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraq’s weapons.
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2003-10-27
Posted 2003-10-20

Since midsummer, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been attempting to solve the biggest mystery of the Iraq war: the disparity between the Bush Administration’s prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and what has actually been discovered.

The committee is concentrating on the last ten years’ worth of reports by the C.I.A. Preliminary findings, one intelligence official told me, are disquieting. “The intelligence community made all kinds of errors and handled things sloppily,” he said. The problems range from a lack of quality control to different agencies’ reporting contradictory assessments at the same time. One finding, the official went on, was that the intelligence reports about Iraq provided by the United Nations inspection teams and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitored Iraq’s nuclear-weapons programs, were far more accurate than the C.I.A. estimates. “Some of the old-timers in the community are appalled by how bad the analysis was,” the official said. “If you look at them side by side, C.I.A. versus United Nations, the U.N. agencies come out ahead across the board.”

There were, of course, good reasons to worry about Saddam Hussein’s possession of W.M.D.s. He had manufactured and used chemical weapons in the past, and had experimented with biological weapons; before the first Gulf War, he maintained a multibillion-dollar nuclear-weapons program. In addition, there were widespread doubts about the efficacy of the U.N. inspection teams, whose operations in Iraq were repeatedly challenged and disrupted by Saddam Hussein. Iraq was thought to have manufactured at least six thousand more chemical weapons than the U.N. could account for. And yet, as some former U.N. inspectors often predicted, the tons of chemical and biological weapons that the American public was led to expect have thus far proved illusory. As long as that remains the case, one question will be asked more and more insistently: How did the American intelligence community get it so wrong?

Part of the answer lies in decisions made early in the Bush Administration, before the events of September 11, 2001. In interviews with present and former intelligence officials, I was told that some senior Administration people, soon after coming to power, had bypassed the government’s customary procedures for vetting intelligence.

A retired C.I.A. officer described for me some of the questions that would normally arise in vetting: “Does dramatic information turned up by an overseas spy square with his access, or does it exceed his plausible reach? How does the agent behave? Is he on time for meetings?” The vetting process is especially important when one is dealing with foreign-agent reports—sensitive intelligence that can trigger profound policy decisions. In theory, no request for action should be taken directly to higher authorities—a process known as “stovepiping”—without the information on which it is based having been subjected to rigorous scrutiny.

The point is not that the President and his senior aides were consciously lying. What was taking place was much more systematic—and potentially just as troublesome. Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council expert on Iraq, whose book “The Threatening Storm” generally supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein, told me that what the Bush people did was “dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. Their position is that the professional bureaucracy is deliberately and maliciously keeping information from them.

“They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information,” Pollack continued. “They were forcing the intelligence community to defend its good information and good analysis so aggressively that the intelligence analysts didn’t have the time or the energy to go after the bad information.”

The Administration eventually got its way, a former C.I.A. official said. “The analysts at the C.I.A. were beaten down defending their assessments. And they blame George Tenet”—the C.I.A. director—“for not protecting them. I’ve never seen a government like this.”

A few months after George Bush took office, Greg Thielmann, an expert on disarmament with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or INR, was assigned to be the daily intelligence liaison to John Bolton, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control, who is a prominent conservative. Thielmann understood that his posting had been mandated by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who thought that every important State Department bureau should be assigned a daily intelligence officer. “Bolton was the guy with whom I had to do business,” Thielmann said. “We were going to provide him with all the information he was entitled to see. That’s what being a professional intelligence officer is all about.”

But, Thielmann told me, “Bolton seemed to be troubled because INR was not telling him what he wanted to hear.” Thielmann soon found himself shut out of Bolton’s early-morning staff meetings. “I was intercepted at the door of his office and told, ‘The Under-Secretary doesn’t need you to attend this meeting anymore.’ ” When Thielmann protested that he was there to provide intelligence input, the aide said, “The Under-Secretary wants to keep this in the family.”

Eventually, Thielmann said, Bolton demanded that he and his staff have direct electronic access to sensitive intelligence, such as foreign-agent reports and electronic intercepts. In previous Administrations, such data had been made available to under-secretaries only after it was analyzed, usually in the specially secured offices of INR. The whole point of the intelligence system in place, according to Thielmann, was “to prevent raw intelligence from getting to people who would be misled.” Bolton, however, wanted his aides to receive and assign intelligence analyses and assessments using the raw data. In essence, the under-secretary would be running his own intelligence operation, without any guidance or support. “He surrounded himself with a hand-chosen group of loyalists, and found a way to get C.I.A. information directly,” Thielmann said.

In a subsequent interview, Bolton acknowledged that he had changed the procedures for handling intelligence, in an effort to extend the scope of the classified materials available to his office. “I found that there was lots of stuff that I wasn’t getting and that the INR analysts weren’t including,” he told me. “I didn’t want it filtered. I wanted to see everything—to be fully informed. If that puts someone’s nose out of joint, sorry about that.” Bolton told me that he wanted to reach out to the intelligence community but that Thielmann had “invited himself” to his daily staff meetings. “This was my meeting with the four assistant secretaries who report to me, in preparation for the Secretary’s 8:30 a.m. staff meeting,” Bolton said. “This was within my family of bureaus. There was no place for INR or anyone else—the Human Resources Bureau or the Office of Foreign Buildings.”

There was also a change in procedure at the Pentagon under Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Douglas Feith, the Under-Secretary for Policy. In the early summer of 2001, a career official assigned to a Pentagon planning office undertook a routine evaluation of the assumption, adopted by Wolfowitz and Feith, that the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi, could play a major role in a coup d’état to oust Saddam Hussein. They also assumed that Chalabi, after the coup, would be welcomed by Iraqis as a hero.

An official familiar with the evaluation described how it subjected that scenario to the principle of what planners call “branches and sequels”—that is, “plan for what you expect not to happen.” The official said, “It was a ‘what could go wrong’ study. What if it turns out that Ahmad Chalabi is not so popular? What’s Plan B if you discover that Chalabi and his boys don’t have it in them to accomplish the overthrow?”

The people in the policy offices didn’t seem to care. When the official asked about the analysis, he was told by a colleague that the new Pentagon leadership wanted to focus not on what could go wrong but on what would go right. He was told that the study’s exploration of options amounted to planning for failure. “Their methodology was analogous to tossing a coin five times and assuming that it would always come up heads,” the official told me. “You need to think about what would happen if it comes up tails.”

Getting rid of Saddam Hussein and his regime had been a priority for Wolfowitz and others in and around the Administration since the end of the first Gulf War. For years, Iraq hawks had seen a coup led by Chalabi as the best means of achieving that goal. After September 11th, however, and the military’s quick victory in Afghanistan, the notion of a coup gave way to the idea of an American invasion.

In a speech on November 14, 2001, as the Taliban were being routed in Afghanistan, Richard Perle, a Pentagon consultant with long-standing ties to Wolfowitz, Feith, and Chalabi, articulated what would become the Bush Administration’s most compelling argument for going to war with Iraq: the possibility that, with enough time, Saddam Hussein would be capable of attacking the United States with a nuclear weapon. Perle cited testimony from Dr. Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi defector, who declared that Saddam Hussein, in response to the 1981 Israeli bombing of the Osiraq nuclear reactor, near Baghdad, had ordered future nuclear facilities to be dispersed at four hundred sites across the nation. “Every day,” Perle said, these sites “turn out a little bit of nuclear materials.” He told his audience, “Do we wait for Saddam and hope for the best, do we wait and hope he doesn’t do what we know he is capable of . . . or do we take some preemptive action?”

In fact, the best case for the success of the U.N. inspection process in Iraq was in the area of nuclear arms. In October, 1997, the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a definitive report declaring Iraq to be essentially free of nuclear weapons. The I.A.E.A.’s inspectors said, “There are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of amounts of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance.” The report noted that Iraq’s nuclear facilities had been destroyed by American bombs in the 1991 Gulf War.

The study’s main author, Garry Dillon, a British nuclear-safety engineer who spent twenty-three years working for the I.A.E.A. and retired as its chief of inspection, told me that it was “highly unlikely” that Iraq had been able to maintain a secret or hidden program to produce significant amounts of weapons-usable material, given the enormous progress in the past decade in the technical ability of I.A.E.A. inspectors to detect radioactivity in ground locations and in waterways. “This is not kitchen chemistry,” Dillon said. “You’re talking factory scale, and in any operation there are leaks.”

The Administration could offer little or no recent firsthand intelligence to contradict the I.A.E.A.’s 1997 conclusions. During the Clinton years, there had been a constant flow of troubling intelligence reports on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, but most were in the context of worst-case analyses—what Iraq could do without adequate United Nations inspections—and included few, if any, reliable reports from agents inside the country. The inspectors left in 1998. Many of the new reports that the Bush people were receiving came from defectors who had managed to flee Iraq with help from the Iraqi National Congress. The defectors gave dramatic accounts of Iraq’s efforts to reconstituteits nuclear-weapons program, and of its alleged production of chemical and biological weapons—but the accounts could not be corroborated by the available intelligence.

Greg Thielmann, after being turned away from Bolton’s office, worked with the INR staff on a major review of Iraq’s progress in developing W.M.D.s. The review, presented to Secretary of State Powell in December, 2001, echoed the earlier I.A.E.A. findings. According to Thielmann, “It basically said that there is no persuasive evidence that the Iraqi nuclear program is being reconstituted.”

The defectors, however, had an audience prepared to believe the worst. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had long complained about the limits of American intelligence. In the late nineteen-nineties, for example, he had chaired a commission on ballistic-missile programs that criticized the unwillingness of intelligence analysts “to make estimates that extended beyond the hard evidence they had in hand.” After he became Secretary of Defense, a separate intelligence unit was set up in the Pentagon’s policy office, under the control of William Luti, a senior aide to Feith. This office, which circumvented the usual procedures of vetting and transparency, stovepiped many of its findings to the highest-ranking officials.

In the fall of 2001, soon after the September 11th attacks, the C.I.A. received an intelligence report from Italy’s Military Intelligence and Security Service, or sismi, about a public visit that Wissam al-Zahawie, then the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican, had made to Niger and three other African nations two and a half years earlier, in February, 1999. The visit had been covered at the time by the local press in Niger and by a French press agency. The American Ambassador, Charles O. Cecil, filed a routine report to Washington on the visit, as did British intelligence. There was nothing untoward about the Zahawie visit. “We reported it because his picture appeared in the paper with the President,” Cecil, who is now retired, told me. There was no article accompanying the photograph, only the caption, and nothing significant to report. At the time, Niger, which had sent hundreds of troops in support of the American-led Gulf War in 1991, was actively seeking economic assistance from the United States.

None of the contemporaneous reports, as far as is known, made any mention of uranium. But now, apparently as part of a larger search for any pertinent information about terrorism, sismi dug the Zahawie-trip report out of its files and passed it along, with a suggestion that Zahawie’s real mission was to arrange the purchase of a form of uranium ore known as “yellowcake.” (Yellowcake, which has been a major Niger export for decades, can be used to make fuel for nuclear reactors. It can also be converted, if processed differently, into weapons-grade uranium.)

What made the two-and-a-half-year-old report stand out in Washington was its relative freshness. A 1999 attempt by Iraq to buy uranium ore, if verified, would seem to prove that Saddam had been working to reconstitute his nuclear program—and give the lie to the I.A.E.A. and to intelligence reports inside the American government that claimed otherwise.

The sismi report, however, was unpersuasive. Inside the American intelligence community, it was dismissed as amateurish and unsubstantiated. One former senior C.I.A. official told me that the initial report from Italy contained no documents but only a written summary of allegations. “I can fully believe that sismi would put out a piece of intelligence like that,” a C.I.A. consultant told me, “but why anybody would put credibility in it is beyond me.” No credible documents have emerged since to corroborate it.

The intelligence report was quickly stovepiped to those officials who had an intense interest in building the case against Iraq, including Vice-President Dick Cheney. “The Vice-President saw a piece of intelligence reporting that Niger was attempting to buy uranium,” Cathie Martin, the spokeswoman for Cheney, told me. Sometime after he first saw it, Cheney brought it up at his regularly scheduled daily briefing from the C.I.A., Martin said. “He asked the briefer a question. The briefer came back a day or two later and said, ‘We do have a report, but there’s a lack of details.’ ” The Vice-President was further told that it was known that Iraq had acquired uranium ore from Niger in the early nineteen-eighties but that that material had been placed in secure storage by the I.A.E.A., which was monitoring it. “End of story,” Martin added. “That’s all we know.” According to a former high-level C.I.A. official, however, Cheney was dissatisfied with the initial response, and asked the agency to review the matter once again. It was the beginning of what turned out to be a year-long tug-of-war between the C.I.A. and the Vice-President’s office.

As the campaign against Iraq intensified, a former aide to Cheney told me, the Vice-President’s office, run by his chief of staff, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, became increasingly secretive when it came to intelligence about Iraq’s W.M.D.s. As with Wolfowitz and Bolton, there was a reluctance to let the military and civilian analysts on the staff vet intelligence.

“It was an unbelievably closed and small group,” the former aide told me. Intelligence procedures were far more open during the Clinton Administration, he said, and professional staff members had been far more involved in assessing and evaluating the most sensitive data. “There’s so much intelligence out there that it’s easy to pick and choose your case,” the former aide told me. “It opens things up to cherry-picking.” (“Some reporting is sufficiently sensitive that it is restricted only to the very top officials of the government—as it should be,” Cathie Martin said. And any restrictions, she added, emanate from C.I.A. security requirements.)

By early 2002, the sismi intelligence—still unverified—had begun to play a role in the Administration’s warnings about the Iraqi nuclear threat. On January 30th, the C.I.A. published an unclassified report to Congress that stated, “Baghdad may be attempting to acquire materials that could aid in reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program.” A week later, Colin Powell told the House International Relations Committee, “With respect to the nuclear program, there is no doubt that the Iraqis are pursuing it.” ......

ace.....if Scooter Libby's trial begins, as scheduled, next month, and certainly when the details of the oft divided, Senate Intel. Committee Phase II report are disclosed, after obstructionist Sen. Pat Roberts is brushed aside as committee chair, next month, and when actual senate and house hearings are convened, and Bush admin, thugs, and their documents are subpoenaed, I suspect that we will have a better insight into how Bush, Bolton, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the neocons, falsely brought the US into war in Iraq.

Your denial is deep and is already showing, ace.....the future of your reputation here.....if you don't allow the growing body of material revelations of what the Bush admin. intentionally did to destroy the US intelligence gathering and analysis process.....and then....our military's ability to field sound, able, and properly equipped fighting forces of high morale and in good repair....in response to "real" threats to our national security......is going to diminish, much further, ace.....count on it!

ratbastid · 12-06-2006, 12:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

I realize the worthlessness of the comment I'm about to make but...

Get serious Rat. On the account of a recent democratic mid-term victory, you are saying we now have uniters, consensus builders, and across the aisle reachers? This coming from the party whose platform is/has been for 6 years ABB? I'm not saying republicans are reaching out, but at least they really make no qualms over there divisiveness.

I wonder if you will be singing the same tune in two years when Mccain probably gets elected president (judging by all current polls).

McCain has a strong history of bipartisanship. Frankly, if he's the Republican nominee, I'll have a very hard time casting my vote.

You're actually saying exactly what I'm saying, but you're dismissing the obvious conclusion. What America is rejecting is the govern-in-isolation approach that Bush and the congressional Republicans have taken. It's not that the country suddenly went Democrat, not at all. It's that the country is sick and tired of imperialism in its leadership, and has demanded a pluralistic, consensus-based approach. The congressional Democrats are clear about that. Every talking head I've seen who's commented on the midterm result is clear about that. Why aren't you clear about that?

Yakk · 12-06-2006, 12:47 PM

Quote:

I thought I responded in post #33

You did. My sincere apologies. I missed that response.

Quote:

I see no question of merit above. The question listed is of the nature "senator, when did you stop beating your wife"?

When a senator beat his wife in the past, doesn't the question become valid? I stand by my question as valid.

It is a poor question if the beating of the wife is in dispute.

If you want to claim your opponents are not looking at the big picture, using a "when did you stop beating your wife" style question is not the way to do it. It is an empty rhetorical attack that should be ignored, or at best replied with "I have always looked at the big picture".

Quote:

It doesn't ask a question, but rather implies that people who disagree with you are not looking at the big picture. If it asks anything, it asks for people to agree with you that anyone disagreeing with you is wrong.

The question was directly related to the OP. There is in fact a bigger picture. Our advesaries have used our division in this country to advance their agendas. So, I wonder what is being celebrated? We have taken a step in the wrong direction. Perhaps if the Democrats had been more diplomatic, they could have gotten Bolton to resign without the US taking a step in the wrong direction.

The way you avoid division isn't "do it my way or else". You avoid division by taking the positions and opinions of both sides into account.

If someone is putting forward the position "do it my way or else", the response of any free people with any self respect should be "I'll take else".

Anyone who says "we must all unite behind my ideology" is not to be trusted.

The President has the unilateral power to make temporary interm appointments, for the purpose of filling vacancies that the Senate doesn't have time to confirm. If he chooses to use this power irresponsibly, it is the responsibility of the Senate to call him on it, and upbraid him for his abuse of power.

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Lack of detail in the question. As far as I can tell, the only way to answer this question is to provide an exaustive list of situations in which the you should be insulted personally, and when you shouldn't give a flying fuck.

I agree here. I was thinking of the last time Bush addressed the UN, followed by the leaders of Iran and Venezuela. I don't care who the President is - those speeches were disrespectful in my view.

Sure. On the other hand, when your head of state calls a nation "a member of the Axis of Evil", you should not expect politeness from their diplomats towards that head of state.

The Venezualian government seems to believe that the USA regularly overthrew democratically elected governments in Latin America over the last 100 years or so, and that the same thing could quite possibly happen to him. He sees, in the current US government, indications that it would be willing to do it again. As far as Venezualian government is concerned, the USA is the axis of evil, and the greatest threat to their security.

That is what happens when one's government is willing to invade other nations on false pretenses. Nobody can trust the government to leave them alone, and you will be viewed as an imperialist war monger of a nation.

If the problem with the UN is that "people attack the USA for using false pretenses in invading other nations", and the problem with the US congress is that "members attack the President for using false pretenses to invade other nations"... Does the US Congress need be reformed just like the UN needs to be reformed?

Is the UN perfect? No. It was put together with the hope that the "Security Powers", with veto abilities, would use their military might to guarantee the borders of every nation in the UN. The Cold War -- a cold battle between two of the security powers -- ruined any hope of this working in the short term.

Now that the cold war is over...

Quote:

eems like this point is hypocritcal if it comes comes someone critical of Bolton's stlye, because it is the same as Bolton's stlye. Bolton goes in and bluntly says what he thinks about the UN. Those opposed to Bolton go in and bluntly say what they think of him and how he was appointed.

I'm not a diplomat. Just because I think a Professor shouldn't have sex with his undergrads doesn't mean I shouldn't have sex with his undergrads.

After insulting Bush and Bolton, I would think I would be a poor person to be placed in a position to negotiate/laise with Bush and/or Bolton.

Quote:

Why yes. Bush took a step in the wrong direction by not seeking the advice and consent of the Senate into account, and instead repeatedly relying on out-of-session appointment. This made his appointments provisional, not final. Appointing someone to the UN who has been quoted as saying the UN should be dismantled should not be done without the advice and consent of the Senate, because the Senate is well within it's rights to view such an appointment as temporary, and the end-run as an abuse of Presidential power.

Open to the possibility that some in the Senate were paying political games with the appointment?

Sure, some people will be playing political games. Open to the possibility that the President plays political games with the choice of his appointees? Open to the possibility that Bolton was central in an organization that generated biased intelligence to decieve the American public about Saddam's WMD programs? Open to the possibility that Bolton signed multiple documents pre-9/11 putting forward American Imperialist strategies to conquor Iraq for the then-professed purpose of oil security? Open to the possibility that Eisenhower was right in his farewell address, and we possibly have run into the very trap he warned the USA about?

(Eisenhower, President and General. Re-armed the USA following WW2 in response to Russian buildups and aquisition of nukes.)

Quote:

It would be equally stupid for the Senate or Congress to make major policy decisions that the President has veto power over without consulting the President. Ie -- Congress declairing war with another nation without asking the President to agree to go along with it first.

Sheer idiocy and bad governance.

This to me, seems to be a naive veiw given the adjectives used and the absolute nature of the statement.

Clarify? I'm saying that, if you want to have a united face to the world, you don't skip the consultation phase.

If you skip the consultation phase, you are doing so at the price of having a united face to the world.

Quote:

Bush, at that time, would have gotten the same response from Democrats regardless of who he nominated. Sure I can't prove it, but you have to agree that Bolton was in step with Bush and odds are if he nominated someone else in-step with his view he would have received the same sophomoric response from the Democrats.

In the interests of reducing political division, could he not have comprimised, and picked someone who would have enough support in the Senate to gain Congressional support?

Or is the kind of "lack of division" actually "do whatever the President says"?

The President is the commander and chief of the US military forces. The President is not the commander and chief of the Senate, or the House, or the American people.

Quote:

I am not aware of the past "issues" concerning Bolton.

John Bolton was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control.

He blocked OPCW from negotiating with Iraq about Chemical Weapons inspections by getting the head of the organization fired.

Thielmann, Bolton's daily intelligence liason from INR:

Quote:

Bolton seemed troubled because INR was not telling him what he wanted to hear ... I was intercepted at the door of his office and told, 'The Undersecretary doesn't need you to attend this meeting anymore.

Quote:

According to current and former coworkers, Bolton withheld information that ran counter to his goals from Secretary of State Colin Powell on multiple occasions, and from Powell's successor Condoleezza Rice on at least one occasion

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2005Apr17.html

Quote:

Bolton attempted to have the chief bioweapons analyst in the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research and the CIA's national intelligence officer for Latin America reassigned. Under oath at his Senate hearings for confirmation as Ambassador, he denied trying to have the men fired, but seven intelligence officials contradicted him.

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/21841/

Quote:

Bolton is alleged by Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman to have played a role in encouraging the inclusion of statement that British Intelligence had determined Iraq attempted to procure yellowcake uranium from Niger in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address. These statements were claimed by critics of the President to be partly based on documents later found to be forged. Waxman's allegations have no visible means of support as they are based on classified documents.

http://www.democrats.reform.house.go...2122-90349.pdf

aceventura3 · 12-06-2006, 01:22 PM

Just for the record I posted my final thoughts on this subject in post #39. Ultimately everyone involved (including Bush and Bolton) contributed to what I think has harmed an opportunity to change the UN and to move UN policy to be more in-line with my views. However, when Bush ran for President both times is views were well known and he acted in ways consistant with his views.

Host - you generally provide so much information, I don't know where to start in terms of a response. You think Bush is a war criminal, perhaps we should start a post on that premise. I find it amazing the number of times people try to read my mind or try to tell me what I really think, your suggestion that I am in denial is absurd. I am a realist and I believe all is fair in war, in or country we have constitutional imposed checks and balances. If Bush exercised more power than he had authority to excercise the problem is with the other branches. Also if you can prove Bush is a war criminal, applying your arguments I would bet that I could prove every President this country has ever had during war time was what you would consider a war criminal.

dc_dux · 12-06-2006, 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura
Bush, at that time, would have gotten the same response from Democrats regardless of who he nominated. Sure I can't prove it, but you have to agree that Bolton was in step with Bush and odds are if he nominated someone else in-step with his view he would have received the same sophomoric response from the Democrats.

Ace...you lose all credibility with this unsubstantiated partisan observation. Sure, you cant prove it because its bullshit.

The Dems did not prevent over 99% of Bush's diplomatic nominees from being approved (they blocked one - Otto Reich, as top State Dept. diplomat for South American affairs and a Repub blocked another - Boyden Gray as ambassador to the European Union).

Bush's two previous ambassadors to the UN - John Danforth and John Negroponte (the current director of national intelligence) , both of whom "were in step with his views" were confirmed with NO dissenting votes.

BTW, it was the Repubs who could not get a majority vote among their own for Bolton in the Foreign Relations Committee. Try sticking to the facts, if you want to be taken seriously.

You probably have another "sophomoric" analogy, but I dont see any need for further discussion on this thread.

aceventura3 · 12-07-2006, 09:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

Ace...you lose all credibility with this unsubstantiated partisan observation. Sure, you cant prove it because its bullshit.

The Dems did not prevent over 99% of Bush's diplomatic nominees from being approved (they blocked one - Otto Reich, as top State Dept. diplomat for South American affairs and a Repub blocked another - Boyden Gray as ambassador to the European Union).

Bush's two previous ambassadors to the UN - John Danforth and John Negroponte (the current director of national intelligence) , both of whom "were in step with his views" were confirmed with NO dissenting votes.

BTW, it was the Repubs who could not get a majority vote among their own for Bolton in the Foreign Relations Committee. Try sticking to the facts, if you want to be taken seriously.

You probably have another "sophomoric" analogy, but I dont see any need for further discussion on this thread.

I recall a great deal of Democratic leadership opposition to Negroponte. I don't remember much resistance for Dansforth, but I don't think he was really in-step with Bush. Dansforth was passed over a few times for what he thought were more important posts than the UN. After Bush picked Rice as SS, Dansforth choose to step down and spend more time with his wife. I think he was also upset with his party.

My comments about sophomoric reactions to Bush are unsubtatiated? Yea, right.

Why continue with personal attacks? If you want to know the basis of my view why not ask, rather than assume there is none? Why do you think I care if you take me seriously? Why do you think I am at all concerned about earning credibility on an anonymous forum? Why would you assume the reasons I post here are the same as yours?

You have proven to be a very interesting character based on what and how you respond to posts and more telling what you choose not to respond to. The above seemed pretty minor to me, I though more important points were on the table.

dc_dux · 12-07-2006, 09:54 AM

Ace.....by all means, carry on with your recollections, analogies and anecdotes in order to avoid acknowledging the facts when they dont comport with your world view... and I will pick and choose when to respond.

aceventura3 · 12-07-2006, 10:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

Ace.....by all means, carry on with your recollections, analogies and anecdotes in order to avoid acknowledging the facts when they dont comport with your world view... and I will pick and choose when to respond.

Sir, thanks for permission to carry on, sir!

Statistics, graphs, articles, recollections, analogies, anecdotes, doesn't matter does it? If I use one to support my position, I didn't use the other, etc, etc, etc. I recall that we (you and I) have been through this before. I will provide citations, with graphs and charts validated by an expert in the field if you need it.

mixedmedia · 12-07-2006, 10:46 AM

Oh, come on guys. I think we all had our say here. It's all just opinions anyway. Reflections off the surface of our own assumptions. Not a one of us has a truly clear vantage point for making solid claims about these all these problems we get so worked up about. Let it go.

loquitur · 12-11-2006, 11:49 AM

Actually, we could try sending Madeleine Albright back. Kofi Annan couldn't stand her, either. It wasn't just Bolton that he didn't like.

Apparently Americans who are assertive aren't welcome at the UN. They tend to interfere with the gravy train.

aceventura3 · 12-12-2006, 12:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

Actually, we could try sending Madeleine Albright back. Kofi Annan couldn't stand her, either. It wasn't just Bolton that he didn't like.

Apparently Americans who are assertive aren't welcome at the UN. They tend to interfere with the gravy train.

Not only that but did you hear Annan's recent critic of Bush in his farewell speech. He certainly didn't use"diplomacy". If Bolton or Bush said those things about Annan, the liberals would be going beserk. I am sure they don't even see the double standard.

loquitur · 12-12-2006, 01:27 PM

Annan is a ........... tragic? pathetic? ..... figure. I'm not sure which of the two is more accurate. So much good intention, so little delivery........... and so little self-awareness.

dc_dux · 12-13-2006, 06:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Not only that but did you hear Annan's recent critic of Bush in his farewell speech. He certainly didn't use"diplomacy". If Bolton or Bush said those things about Annan, the liberals would be going beserk. I am sure they don't even see the double standard.

Ace....did you read Annan's speech? Can you point to those sections where he criticized Bush in an undiplomatic manner.

IMO, it was the opposite. He was quite diplomatic in his criticism of current US policy....making infered references to our policy on prisoner interrogation (and the lack of basic rights) and our invasion of Iraq.

Quote:

...states need to play by the rules towards each other, as well as towards their own citizens. That can sometimes be inconvenient, but ultimately what matters is not convenience. It is doing the right thing. No state can make its own actions legitimate in the eyes of others. When power, especially military force, is used, the world will consider it legitimate only when convinced that it is being used for the right purpose — for broadly shared aims — in accordance with broadly accepted norms.

No community anywhere suffers from too much rule of law; many do suffer from too little — and the international community is among them. This we must change.

The U.S. has given the world an example of a democracy in which everyone, including the most powerful, is subject to legal restraint. Its current moment of world supremacy gives it a priceless opportunity to entrench the same principles at the global level. As Harry Truman said, "We all have to recognize, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please."

...

As President Truman said, "the responsibility of the great states is to serve and not dominate the peoples of the world." He showed what can be achieved when the U.S. assumes that responsibility. And still today, none of our global institutions can accomplish much when the U.S. remains aloof. But when it is fully engaged, the sky's the limit. (I think this particulary remark is more a criticism of Bolton, not Bush - but I still dont see it as undiplomatic.)

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/annan.htm

Where is he NOT diplomatic in this speech?

I would criticize Annan for many things. He ignored (or even fostered) corruption. He stiffled some efforts at reforming the UN. He rarely criticized the Arab nations for their lack of action on fostering terrorism.

But there is no double standard when it comes to reaction to this speech. IMO, the overreaction of the right is just another chance for them to slap the UN.

One can only hope that the next US ambassador and the next UN Secetary General (South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon) are both more effective in their respective jobs because the UN, with all its faults and the need for reform, still serves a valuable purpose for the US and the world.

aceventura3 · 12-13-2006, 08:09 AM

I am not really concerned about Annan's views I only mention them to point out what I see as a double standard.

In the quote you provided Annan is suggesting that the US is not playing by the "rules" with other "states" and with its own citizens, our use of military force has been illigitimate and outside of accepted norms. He seems to suggest that unlike Truman's view we are excercising a license to "do as we please" without legal constraint.

Reasonable people can disagree on all the issues in question referenced in the quote from Annan's speech. However, those who disagree with Annan's view would not be motivated to reconsider those views based on what he said and how he said it. Sorry for the anecdote, but if you use me as an example, what he said and how he said it simply made me think that Annan and those who share his point of view have failed to see the complexities in the issues we face. I would think a true "diplomat" would first focus on clearly defining the problems being faced, define where there is common ground, and define diferences in a manner to encourage debate and compromise. I did not see any of that in his speech. I am not saying I saw it from Bolton either, but that is not what I wanted from Bolton. Sorry for the analogy, but I wanted Bolton to go in and be the "bad cop" and perhaps England, France, Russia, or someone else would be the "good cop" and sincerely mediate differences.

12-06-2006, 11:09 AM	#43 (permalink)
Mojo_PeiPei Kiss of Death Location: Perpetual wind and sorrow	I realize the worthlessness of the comment I'm about to make but... Get serious Rat. On the account of a recent democratic mid-term victory, you are saying we now have uniters, consensus builders, and across the aisle reachers? This coming from the party whose platform is/has been for 6 years ABB? I'm not saying republicans are reaching out, but at least they really make no qualms over there divisiveness. I wonder if you will be singing the same tune in two years when Mccain probably gets elected president (judging by all current polls). __________________ To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

12-06-2006, 01:22 PM	#47 (permalink)
aceventura3 Junkie Location: Ventura County	Just for the record I posted my final thoughts on this subject in post #39. Ultimately everyone involved (including Bush and Bolton) contributed to what I think has harmed an opportunity to change the UN and to move UN policy to be more in-line with my views. However, when Bush ran for President both times is views were well known and he acted in ways consistant with his views. Host - you generally provide so much information, I don't know where to start in terms of a response. You think Bush is a war criminal, perhaps we should start a post on that premise. I find it amazing the number of times people try to read my mind or try to tell me what I really think, your suggestion that I am in denial is absurd. I am a realist and I believe all is fair in war, in or country we have constitutional imposed checks and balances. If Bush exercised more power than he had authority to excercise the problem is with the other branches. Also if you can prove Bush is a war criminal, applying your arguments I would bet that I could prove every President this country has ever had during war time was what you would consider a war criminal. __________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch." "It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion." "If you live among wolves you have to act like one." "A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

12-07-2006, 09:54 AM	#50 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	Ace.....by all means, carry on with your recollections, analogies and anecdotes in order to avoid acknowledging the facts when they dont comport with your world view... and I will pick and choose when to respond. __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire

12-07-2006, 10:46 AM	#52 (permalink)
mixedmedia has all her shots. Location: Florida	Oh, come on guys. I think we all had our say here. It's all just opinions anyway. Reflections off the surface of our own assumptions. Not a one of us has a truly clear vantage point for making solid claims about these all these problems we get so worked up about. Let it go. __________________ Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

12-11-2006, 11:49 AM	#53 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Actually, we could try sending Madeleine Albright back. Kofi Annan couldn't stand <i><b>her</i></b>, either. It wasn't just Bolton that he didn't like. Apparently Americans who are assertive aren't welcome at the UN. They tend to interfere with the gravy train.

12-12-2006, 01:27 PM	#55 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Annan is a ........... tragic? pathetic? ..... figure. I'm not sure which of the two is more accurate. So much good intention, so little delivery........... and so little self-awareness.

12-13-2006, 08:09 AM	#57 (permalink)
aceventura3 Junkie Location: Ventura County	I am not really concerned about Annan's views I only mention them to point out what I see as a double standard. In the quote you provided Annan is suggesting that the US is not playing by the "rules" with other "states" and with its own citizens, our use of military force has been illigitimate and outside of accepted norms. He seems to suggest that unlike Truman's view we are excercising a license to "do as we please" without legal constraint. Reasonable people can disagree on all the issues in question referenced in the quote from Annan's speech. However, those who disagree with Annan's view would not be motivated to reconsider those views based on what he said and how he said it. Sorry for the anecdote, but if you use me as an example, what he said and how he said it simply made me think that Annan and those who share his point of view have failed to see the complexities in the issues we face. I would think a true "diplomat" would first focus on clearly defining the problems being faced, define where there is common ground, and define diferences in a manner to encourage debate and compromise. I did not see any of that in his speech. I am not saying I saw it from Bolton either, but that is not what I wanted from Bolton. Sorry for the analogy, but I wanted Bolton to go in and be the "bad cop" and perhaps England, France, Russia, or someone else would be the "good cop" and sincerely mediate differences. __________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch." "It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion." "If you live among wolves you have to act like one." "A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers." Last edited by aceventura3; 12-13-2006 at 08:13 AM..