[Peace-discuss] Bush gives the UN the finger

[ppatton at uiuc.edu]

Bush Gives the UN the Finger
by David Corn
 
If you were sitting in the Oval Office and George W. Bush
asked, "Hey, tell me, who could we appoint to the UN
ambassador job that would most piss off the UN and the rest of
the world," your job would be quite easy. You would simply
say, "That's a no-brainer, Mr. President, John Bolton." And on
Monday Bush took this no-brain advice and nominated Bolton to
the post, which requires Senate confirmation.

Bolton is the rightwing's leading declaimer of the United
Nations. He once said, "If the UN Secretariat building in New
York lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."
And when the Bush administration failed to persuade the UN to
back its war in Iraq, Bolton observed that was "further
evidence to many why nothing should be paid to the UN system."

Bolton has expressed much more vitriol for the UN than those
two (representative) remarks, for he has been a UN-basher for
years. Sure, the UN has many flaws and deserves reform. But
what message does it convey to the UN and the world to send to
the UN a fellow who has essentially called for total defunding
of the institution? And this move comes right after Bush went
to Europe to mend fences and after he has started working
closely with France in an admirable effort to push Syria out
of Lebanon. The Bolton appointment is unfathomable--except if
viewed as a payback to the neocons. This band of Bush-backers
were considered the losers when Bolton, formerly an
undersecretary at the State Department, was not appointed to
the number-two slot at Foggy Bottom when Condoleezza Rice took
over the State Department. But this is some consolation prize.
Imagine Jerry Falwell being placed in charge of marriage in
Massachusetts.

Bolton's extremism does not stop at the UN's front door. A
year and a half ago, I described Bolton, who's widely
considered the leading hard-ass of the neocon clan, this way:

Bolton is a hawk's hawk in the Bush administration. He is the
agent conservateurin Colin Powell's State Department. He has
led the administration's effort against the International
Criminal Court. Last year, he single-handedly tried to revise
U.S. nuclear policy by asserting that Washington no longer
felt bound to state that it would not use nuclear weapons
against nations that do not possess nuclear weapons. (A State
Department spokesman quickly claimed that Bolton had not said
what he had indeed said.) Bolton also claimed that Cuba was
developing biological weapons--a charge that was not
substantiated by any evidence and that was challenged by
experts. In July, he was about to allege in congressional
testimony that Syria posed a weapons-of-mass-destruction
threat before the CIA and other agencies, which considered his
threat assessment to be exaggerated, objected to his
statement. When England, France and Germany recently tried to
develop a carrot-and-stick approach in negotiating an end to
Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program, Bolton huffed, "I
don't do carrots."

And there are questions about his integrity. Three years ago,
Bolton was caught up in a little-covered scandal involving a
pro-Taiwan slush fund. Writing about this, I noted,

Some scandals find traction in Washington, others fizzle. The
Taiwangate affair--which involves a $100 million secret Taiwan
government slush fund that financed intelligence, propaganda,
and influence activities within the United States and
elsewhere--seems to be in the latter category at the moment.
The beneficiaries of the lack of attention include three
prominent Bush appointees at the State Department who, before
joining the Bush administration, received money from this
account. And one of these officials, John Bolton, the
undersecretary of state for arms control and international
security, submitted pro-Taiwan testimony to Congress in the
1990s without revealing he was a paid consultant to Taiwan.
His work for Taiwan, it turns out, was financed by this slush
fund.

Bolton escaped damage in this scandal that got away, even
though he arguably had acted as a foreign agent without having
registered as one--a potential violation of US law. When the
scandal broke in 2002--with Bolton then a senior official in
the Bush State Department--the State Department refused to
acknowledge Bolton's involvement in the scandal. And
Republicans on the Hill called for no investigations. (Click
here and here for previous columns on Bolton and the slush
fund affair. )

On December 2, after John Danforth resigned as Bush's UN
ambassador, I wrote on my blog:

So who is Bush going to name as a replacement? Paul Wolfowitz?
John Bolton? (If you don't know who Bolton is, you're lucky.
He's the neocon's sleeper-hawk/madman at the State
Department.) How about Bill Safire? Or one of the many
conservatives who have recently called for Kofi Annan's
resignation? Or...Alan Keyes?

I was trying to make a joke. But I suppose Bolton--who has
ducked scandal and has escaped punishment for his misleading
and false hawkish statements--is the one laughing now.

David Corn, the Washington editor of The Nation magazine, has
spent years analyzing the policies and pursuing the lies that
spew out of the nation's capital. He is a novelist,
biographer, and television and radio commentator who is able
to both decipher and scrutinize Washington.