When I'm Back On My Feet Again
Go git 'em, Democrats. Do not let this leech through to the UN:
The Bush administration on Friday rejected demands to turn over additional documents on John Bolton despite Democratic threats to delay a U.S. Senate vote on his troubled nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
The day after a Senate committee advanced Bolton's nomination to the full Senate -- but took the rare step of withholding its endorsement -- the White House defended its embattled nominee and said senators had all the information they needed.
Sen. Barbara Boxer of California said she would delay a Senate vote on Bolton, currently the top U.S. diplomat for arms control, until the administration turned over classified documents that Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee had sought before the committee's vote on Thursday.
Democrats said they have not decided yet whether to try to further delay the nomination, which would require 60 of the Senate's 100 votes to win confirmation. But Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, said Reid "supports Senator Boxer's attempt to get more information."
posted by General Stan at 7:03 PM
2 Comments:
What infuriates me about the entire Bolton saga is not that he's so supremely unqualified for the job, but that the entire confirmation process (which exists precisely to weed out people who are supremely unqualified for their positions)has been turned into a game where the two sides battle it out to determine who wins. I know, I know, politics as usual...but come on, people, this isn't a question of pork dollars to Idaho, this is our AMBASSADOR TO THE UN. Why does a Republican who is uncomfortable with appointing Bolton have to be strong-armed into falling in line with the party? Why is HE the traitor, and not the people who are doing everything in their (decreasing) power to undermine the entire point of our checks-and-balances system? Republicans aren't all idiots, I would have said a few years ago. But the longer the intelligent, conscientious ones remain quiet for fear of reprisal, the more I have to wonder.
I have to love the new Republican talking point on Bolton: that anybody who thinks one US ambassador is going to force the monolith that is the UN to its knees is an idiot who knows nothing about the gigantic institutional bureaucracy.
Of course this is a pointless statement. The US is by far the largest funder of the UN and her programs; the UN is based in NYC for Christ' sake.
The question isn't whether Bolton CAN bring the UN to it's knees. The question is Why the hell does he WANT TO? And the answer is two fold and simple: A) he and the Administration have little respect for international opinion as a general rule; B) he and the Administration desire not the active destruction of the UN but rather such an inconvenience that the very inefficiency of the UN in a Bolton world gives them legitamacy for this aforementioned hatred and allows them to bypass it without criticism. They want to, as Bush noted in 2002, render the UN "irrelevent."
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