Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Bolton Losing Ground in Senate; Bush Threatening Recess Appointment

Bolton fares even worse in second vote

This nomination should be considered DOA. It always should have been. It is not a matter of Democrats "winning" a political battle and Republicans "losing" one. Bolton is bad news, and should never have been nominated.

It's not a matter of "bad management style," either. It's the ideology. It's the tendency to put administration (read: PNAC) policy over truth. Ray McGovern notes:
...John Bolton played a key role in ordering that discredited intelligence be used to support the president's case for war, three months before the attack on Iraq.

ReidBlog describes a similar policy of politicizing intelligence with regard to Cuba:
The correspondence provided to the Senate committee also includes a Feb. 12 message sent to Mr. Bolton by Mr. Fleitz, who disparages what he calls the "already cleared (wimpy) language on Cuba" that Mr. (Christian C.) Westermann (the State Department's top expert on biological weapons who clashed sharply with Mr. Bolton over Cuba) had recommended be used by Mr. Bolton in his planned speech...(Bolton:) "I explained to Christian that it was a political judgment as to how to interpret this data, and the I.C. (intelligence community) should do as we asked and sanitize my language as long as sources and methods are not compromised."

Bolton's nomination will not be approved. It should be dropped. But Bush is now entertaining the idea of appointing Bolton while Congress is in recess.
Bush has the power to install Bolton during the Senate's upcoming break. The so-called recess appointment would only last through the next one-year session of Congress -- in Bolton's case until January 2007.

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