Tag Archives: George W Bush

Memo to Sen. George Voinovich

Decision Brief     No. 05-D 22                                       2005-05-12


(Washington, D.C.): It is widely expected that, when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee meets today to finish its consideration of John Bolton’s nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, yours will be the deciding vote. The Center for Security Policy would respectfully suggest that the following should cause you to come down squarely in favor of Mr. Bolton:


First, the postponement you initiated last month has permitted the Committee’s staff to interview dozens of witnesses about Secretary Bolton’s interactions with various superiors, subordinates, intelligence personnel and others over the past few decades. It seems clear from the testimony thus accumulated that Mr. Bolton has enemies. Most of them, however, appear to have had substantive disagreements with him on matters of policy. And it was those disagreements – not his allegedly intemperate or “serially abusive” behavior – that has given rise to opposition to the Bolton nomination.


What is important about that observation is that the policies such individuals found so objectionable were not simply Mr. Bolton’s. They happened also to be those of the President of the United States. It was George W. Bush who told Bob Woodward he “loathed” North Korea’s monstrous dictator, Kim Jong-Il. It was Mr. Bush who ran for office in 2000 on a very hard line against Fidel Castro. It was the President who has made no secret of his antipathy towards a Syrian regime that gave aid and comfort to Saddam Hussein, his family and cadre, that poses a threat to Israel and the prospects for regional peace, that colonized and repressed Lebanon and that was pursuing weapons of mass destruction.


Were you to help Democratic opponents of this President reject a man who has faithfully helped to devise and carry out his policies, in the face of steadfast opposition from the bureaucracy (both Foreign Service and intelligence) and from political appointees who aligned themselves with the permanent government, you will do more than reward insubordination to our elected chief executive. You will be making it infinitely more difficult for any future conservative president to recruit like-minded individuals to work for policies supported by the public who elected him.


Second, the principal claim that Mr. Bolton mistreated intelligence officers arises from interactions he and his staff had with a State Department analyst and the former National Intelligence Officer for Latin America. It is impossible to understand the nature of the relevant interactions – which had to do with the clearance of a speech by Mr. Bolton that alluded to Fidel Castro’s potential to manufacture offensive biological weapons – without knowing a critical fact: U.S. intelligence had been penetrated and disinformed for the better part of a decade by a spy, Ana Belen Montes, who had become the Defense Intelligence Agency’s senior expert on Cuba.


As a result of Ms. Montes’ activities on Castro’s behalf, every intelligence community assessment in which she participated required review and reconsideration. Mr. Bolton and his staff quite properly pressed for such steps to be taken. He found his efforts not only to be resisted by the State Department analyst and the NIO, but to be actively sabotaged by them. It is unlikely that you – or, for that matter, any other Senator – would not, at a minimum, experience what John Bolton did: a loss of confidence in these individuals.


Mr. Bolton’s conduct seems, moreover, entirely consistent with what one of your former colleagues, Senator Chuck Robb, recently determined along with other members of the blue-ribbon commission on U.S. intelligence capabilities that he co-chaired with Judge Lawrence Silberman:


The intelligence community needs to be pushed. It will not do its best unless it is pressed by policy-makers – sometimes to the point of discomfort. Analysts must be pressed to explain how much they don’t know; the collection agencies must be pressed to explain why they don’t have better information on key topics. While policy-makers must be prepared to credit intelligence that doesn’t fit their preferences, no important intelligence assessment should be accepted without sharp questioning that forces the community to explain exactly how it came to that assessment and what alternatives might also be true. This is not ‘politicization’; it is a necessary part of the intelligence process.”


Third, everyone says the United Nations needs to be “reformed.” It is far from clear whether everyone agrees as to what reforms are in order, or even that everyone who currently feels compelled to call for change at a clearly dysfunctional organization actually means it.


What is certain is that President Bush is determined to try to bring the organization back closer to its founding principles – principles it shared with those of this country: namely, to protect and promote freedom. John Bolton is a man who has long recognized the defects that have made the UN more than dysfunctional. It has become a reliable instrument for dictators to preserve their power and to impede efforts that would advance the liberties they detest.


Ask yourself: Is the United States more likely to see reform achieved at the United Nations if a man long committed to bringing it about – and who has actually done so with great distinction in the past (notably, in accomplishing the repeal of the UN’s odious Zionism is racism resolution) – is repudiated by the Senate, or approved by it?


The bottom line is this: President Bush defeated John Kerry and his party last Fall in part by running on a platform of American leadership and by repudiating the notion that the United States must bow to some “global test” administered by a legitimating United Nations. The Democrats’ attacks on John Bolton’s personality, conduct and integrity are a smokescreen designed to obscure their determination to refight the battle they lost in 2004 and to produce a different outcome.


Please do your part, together with every other Republican member of the Foreign Relations Committee to reject such efforts, to support President Bush and his determination to exercise the responsibility for America’s security policy vested in him and to realize the necessary goal of truly transforming the United Nations.

Press conference shows strong U.N.-Bolton support

Tomorrow, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to vote on President Bush’s nomination of John Bolton to become the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. On the eve of that historic event, the Center for Security Policy and the Wilberforce Forum this morning co-sponsored a Capitol Hill press conference that forcefully urged Mr. Bolton’s confirmation.

The participants collectively represent millions of Americans who support the Bush policy of promoting international peace through the effective marshalling and use of American strength — and who appreciate that John Bolton is one of the President’s most effective advocates for, and implementers of, that policy. They argued that the opposition to Mr. Bolton stems from policy disagreements, specifically over the degree to which the United States must submit to the United Nations on matters of vital importance to its security, not the ostensible objections (i.e., disputed or unconfirmed claims about the nominee’s temperament, comportment and treatment of those with whom he disagrees).

Among the speakers supporting the Bolton nomination were: Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), chairman of the Republican Policy Committee; Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President of the Center for Security Policy; Mariam Bell, Director of the Wilberforce Forum, a project of the Prison Fellowship; Paul Weyrich, President of the Free Congress Foundation, David Keene, Chairman of the American Conservative Union; Gary Bauer, President of American Values; Amb. Otto Reich, former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela and Assistant Secretary of State for Hemispheric Affairs; and Wendy Wright, Senior Policy Director of Concerned Women of America.

The press conference also featured the tv ad below, produced by the Center for Security Policy.

Sore Losers

Decision Brief     No. 05-D 21                                       2005-05-09


(Washington, D.C.): So, where are we? After weeks of attacks on John Bolton’s character, integrity, temperament and conduct by John Kerry, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and other Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, what do they have to show for it all?


Answer: The Nation would be lucky to have Mr. Bolton represent it at the United Nations as President Bush has proposed – and as affirmed in a recently-released “web ad” by the Center.


What “Abuse”?


As the Foreign Relations Committee prepares for what is supposed to be D-Day on the Bolton nomination – a business meeting of the panel scheduled for Thursday morning – here’s a round-up of what has been learned over the month that Democrats have been campaigning against Secretary Bolton:


If John Bolton were actually a “serial abuser,” as one witness claimed, he would have plenty of company in official Washington. For example, as reported by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough in Friday’s Washington Times, a former subordinate of Mr. Bolton’s, John Wolf, who has testified against the nominee, “on several occasions lost his temper and screamed at co-workers over policy issues.” One of them, a fellow Assistant Secretary of State, Paula DeSutter, reportedly “was so shaken by [one such] outburst that she feared for her safety.”


Interestingly, intemperate behavior towards staff is also not unknown among the Senators who profess such concern about Mr. Bolton’s conduct. In fact, during a recent TV interview about the Bolton nomination, Senator Biden seemingly hoped to neutralize any criticism of his own highhanded behavior towards his subordinates. He contended that speaking sharply to a staffer who failed to get him to a presidential appointment on time was different than what Mr. Bolton is alleged to have done – namely, expressing displeasure with an intelligence officer who engaged in professional misconduct that even the officer’s boss agreed was “unacceptable.” Both are understandable, but of the two the latter would seem far more justified.


Testimony taken by the Foreign Relations Committee makes it quite clear that Mr. Bolton was not in the habit of abusing intelligence officers . To the contrary, Alan Foley, the director of the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center, told the Committee’s staff that Secretary Bolton was “quite supportive of my guys” and engaged with them regularly and appropriately in the course of “normal negotiations” over intelligence conclusions and how they could be described in public.


The Missing Woman: Castro’s Mole at D.I.A.


It is clear, however, that Mr. Bolton had plenty of grounds for losing confidence in two individual intelligence officers involved with Cuba-related assessments. The Foreign Relations Committee has evidence that State Department analyst Christian Westermann and Fulton Armstrong, the one-time National Intelligence Officer for Latin America, took it upon themselves improperly and personally to assail Mr. Bolton over their disagreements concerning the state of Castro’s biological weapons research and development efforts.


Almost entirely absent from the discussion of these actions has been an important – and highly relevant – fact: U.S. intelligence about Cuba had been penetrated and influenced for years by one of Castro’s operatives, Anna Belen Montes, Mr. Armstrong’s counterpart at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Secretary Bolton’s efforts to revisit assumptions and conclusions about Cuba’s covert weapons of mass destruction capabilities found in and derived from a National Intelligence Estimate written by Ms. Montes is not a case of manipulating or “politicizing” intelligence.


Rather, it is, as Andy McCarthy recently noted in National Review Online, the sort of role the blue-ribbon Silberman-Robb Commission on U.S. intelligence capabilities thought officials like Mr. Bolton should play:


The intelligence community needs to be pushed. It will not do its best unless it is pressed by policy-makers – sometimes to the point of discomfort. Analysts must be pressed to explain how much they don’t know; the collection agencies must be pressed to explain why they don’t have better information on key topics. While policy-makers must be prepared to credit intelligence that doesn’t fit their preferences, no important intelligence assessment should be accepted without sharp questioning that forces the community to explain exactly how it came to that assessment and what alternatives might also be true. This is not “politicization”; it is a necessary part of the intelligence process.


Let the Record Show


There seems to be nothing more to charges that Mr. Bolton improperly sought the identities of U.S. officials monitored in conversations with foreign nationals of interest that were intercepted by the National Security Agency. These requests were done by the book, approved each time by the relevant authorities and occurred infrequently.


Finally, even a man who in the past frequently and bitterly clashed with Secretary Bolton — former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s deputy, Richard Armitage – has publicly supported President Bush’s choice of Mr. Bolton, declaring him “eminently qualified” for the UN post and “one of the smartest guys in Washington.”


The Bottom Line


So where does all this leave us? Back at the beginning. Clearly, Senate Democrats – and a number of other people – don’t like John Bolton. But the real reason for their opposition remains what it has always been: He is a competent, effective advocate for policies espoused by a President they don’t like either, and who they unsuccessfully tried to defeat last November.


The Democrats leading the charge against Secretary Bolton are sore losers. They are entitled to be unhappy. They are today, as they were last Fall, in the minority, however. Consequently, they are not entitled endlessly to obstruct the confirmation of a highly qualified and distinguished public servant, especially now that their defamatory gambits can be seen for what they always have been – a smokescreen for the Democrats’ repudiated foreign policy agenda.  

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Fighting ‘global test’ over Bolton

In a new ad released today, the Center for Security Policy clarified what is really going on in the fight being mounted by Democratic Senators, led by John Kerry and Joe Biden, against John Bolton’s nomination to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. As the 1-minute-13-second video spot observes, "John Kerry and his friends are sore losers. They’re unhappy that the American people last Fall rejected the idea of making the U.S. submit to the UN and its so-called ‘global test.’"

 Of course, the Democrats can’t come right out and say this is their real objection to Mr. Bolton. After all, President Bush offered the American people a clear alternative — rooted in a "policy of strong U.S. leadership in world affairs." And three-and-a-half million more voters agreed with Mr. Bush’s stance — a stance embraced and epitomized by one of his most able and tenacious subordinates, John Bolton — and rejected Sen. Kerry’s world view.

So, in the hope of winning in the Senate what they lost at the ballot box — and, thereby, helping the UN become ascendant and remain unreformed — Senators. Kerry, Biden, et.al. have adopted the "kitchen sink" strategy: Throw every charge imaginable at John Bolton, including impugning his character, integrity, judgment and competence, in the hope that something, anything, will stick and cause at least one Republican to join them.

This strategy has defamed a distinguished and selfless public servant. It has demeaned the Senate and its deliberations on an important appointment. And it has caused one or more Republicans temporarily to consider voting against the Bolton nomination.

Center for Security President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. said in releasing the new video: In the end, the sore losers will not succeed in altering the results of the 2004 election or the determination of its victor to ensure the United States can protect itself from international threats, with the UN’s help if possible and without if necessary. They will not prevent the United States from pressing hard, not just for cosmetic "reforms" at the UN, but for that dysfunctional and corrupt organization’s wholesale "transformation." And they will not succeed in depriving this country of the stalwart advocate needed to achieve these goals, John Bolton.

 

 

The script reads as follows:

John Kerry and his friends are sore losers.

    They’re unhappy that the American people last Fall rejected the idea of making the U.S. submit to the UN and its so-called "global test."

    Instead, the American people voted for George Bush and his policy of strong U.S. leadership in world affairs.

    The voters understood that the UN is broken, with anti-American dictators and bureaucrats calling the shots.

    It needs more than reform. The UN needs to be transformed if it is going to be of any help in promoting freedom and securing peace.

    Now, President Bush wants to have a U.S. ambassador who is dedicated to UN reform, John Bolton.

    But, Senator Kerry and his friends think that if they can block John Bolton’s nomination, they will succeed where they failed last November.

    Then they will help a dysfunctional UN stave off real change and continue its anti-American agenda.

    The Democrats to should stop using the politics of personal destruction.

    George Bush is right. It’s time to start transforming the United Nations.

    And John Bolton is the man to do it.

 

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Broken treaty

Decision Brief     No. 05-D 20                                       2005-05-02


(Washington, D.C.): Starting this week, the United Nations will engage in one of the activities that has caused the organization to fall into disrepute and prompted the Bush Administration to insist on its systemic reform: the quintennial review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).


Past as Prelude?


If past practice is any guide, the conferees will refuse to acknowledge, let alone address, the obvious – the NPT is failing to stop nuclear wannabes from getting the Bomb. They will once again studiously try to ignore the fact that the Treaty itself has helped enable such proliferation. Its central bargain – which President Bush has charitably called a “loophole” – is that if manifestly untrustworthy states like North Korea and Iran promise not to pursue nuclear weapons, the industrialized world will provide all the technology and know-how needed to acquire such weapons under the guise of cooperation on “peaceful” uses of nuclear energy.


Instead of correcting this fatal flaw and taking to task those who have exploited it, the RevCon’s participants will likely use the occasion to rail against the United States for its alleged failure to disarm fast enough to suit its enemies and other critics. They will press for fresh commitments from Washington that would make it still harder for the U.S. to maintain, let alone to update, its aging nuclear arsenal.


A Bill of Particulars


Recent events underscore the absurdity of such a conclave and its topsy-turvy agenda. Consider the following:



  • North Korea has withdrawn from the NPT and is moving forward with a now-acknowledged nuclear weapons program. A few weeks ago, Pyongyang shut down another reactor and apparently has begun mining its plutonium to build more bombs. There are indications it may soon conduct a test of a nuclear device. And Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, the head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, revealed last week that Pyongyang has the capacity to mate nuclear warheads on its ballistic missiles – one of which was flown near Japan on Sunday. The DIA assesses that some of these are already capable of reaching parts of the United States.


  • Iran has not yet formally followed North Korea out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty but it is clearly preparing to do so. For nearly twenty years, Tehran has concealed from international inspectors the full scope and character of its nuclear program, parts of which have been conducted in a large number of dispersed facilities, a number of them covert sites that have been buried deep underground in hardened shelters.

The mullahs are skillfully employing the techniques of the bazaar to buy time to complete their weapons program. Negotiations that three European states – France, Germany and Britain – hope will induce Tehran to give up its nuclear ambitions in exchange for political, economic and technological concessions are going nowhere. In fact, assorted Iranian spokesmen keep announcing that nothing is going to prevent the regime from realizing the “right” to nuclear power to which it is entitled under the NPT. Only the most na?ve or self-deluded believe the “power” to which the mullahs aspire is purely civilian.



  • Worse yet, evidence continues to accumulate that both North Korea and Iran are interested in a nuclear weapons application that poses a particular and extraordinary danger to the United States: a ballistic missile-delivered warhead that would cause an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) capable of inflicting what a blue-ribbon commission recently called “catastrophic” damage to the electric grid and electronic systems across the country.

Former Soviet experts in EMP effects are said to be in North Korea, where they may be advising not only Kim Jong-Il’s regime but prospective terrorist clients about how such an attack might be accomplished.


Not to be outdone, Iran has, according to testimony before Senator Jon Kyl’s Terrorism Subcommittee in March, performed mid-air detonations over the Caspian Sea using ship-launched ballistic missiles – a flight profile consistent with an EMP attack. Worse yet, WorldNetDaily reports that an Iranian military journal has published an article entitled “Electronics to Determine Fate of Future Wars,” which “explains how an EMP attack on America’s electronic infrastructure, caused by the detonation of a nuclear weapon high above the U.S., would bring the country to its knees.”



  • Incredibly, in the face of these emerging threats, the United States continues to neglect its nuclear deterrent. Unlike North Korea (and probably Iran), it has no active production line for manufacturing modern nuclear weapons. Unlike North Korea, it could not conduct an underground nuclear test anytime soon. America’s thermonuclear arsenal is relatively large but it is obsolescent, having been subjected to over a decade of malign neglect that has rendered our deterrent less safe, reliable and credible than we can make it – and than it needs to be.

The Bottom Line


The appalling state of the U.S. nuclear weapons program makes all the more absurd the harsh criticism to which it and this country will be subjected by the NPT conference. The United States is well on its way – through a process the former Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Floyd Spence, once called “erosion by design” – of: systematically eviscerating its deterrent; dissipating the talented workforce and eliminating the industrial infrastructure needed to ensure its viability; and compounding the Nation’s vulnerability to electro-magnetic pulse attacks by failing to conduct tests necessary properly to understand the threat and our vulnerabilities to it.


America is a legal nuclear power under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Review Conference needs to be told we intend to do what we must to remain one, including the development and testing of the sorts of nuclear weapons needed to deter nations who have exploited a broken treaty in order to threaten us.


 

What to do about Venezuela

What to Do About Venezuela

By J. Michael Waller

Introduction

Among the more troubling legacies Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has inherited is one of neglect towards the Western Hemisphere, a legacy that has seriously diminished the United States’ stature and influence in most of the Americas.  This is due, in part, to the self-imposed abdication of the Nation’s hemispheric security obligations.  Secretary Rice has signaled by her recent trip to the region and a major address on the subject delivered today that she intends to address the problem – and not a moment too soon.

Today, Washington’s friends in Latin America stand isolated, disillusioned, and bewildered.  At the same time, the foes of freedom are advancing their objectives in our hemisphere with an effectiveness unseen since the presidency of Jimmy Carter in the 1970s. Lack of a coherent U.S. strategy toward the region since the end of the Cold War, no less so since 2001, has allowed other actors to enter and dominate the scene.

These actors range from old, obsessed figures like Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and warmed-over ’70s terrorists-turned-politicians like Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, to Carter himself, whose continued international work certifying election results has provided essential political cover to anti-democratic forces in the region.  Indeed, it might be said that over the past four years, Jimmy Carter has been the most visible and arguably most influential U.S. leader in Latin America.

Nowhere is the lack of a U.S. strategic approach to the Western Hemisphere more evident than in the unchecked rise of a self-absorbed, unstable strongman in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, who has made common cause with terrorists and the regimes that support them, and has developed a revolutionary ideology that has begun to plunge the Americas again into violence and chaos. It is necessary for the democratic nations of the hemisphere to come together and stop this rising threat to peace before it is too late.

 

 

_____________________

J. Michael Waller, Ph.D., is the Center for Security Policy’s Vice President for Information Operations.

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General Peter Pace: Why we serve

Decision Brief     No. 05-D 18                                        2005-04-21


(Washington, D.C.): The Center for Security Policy is delighted by President Bush’s reported intention to nominate the current Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace to be the Nation’s senior military officer as that organization’s next Chairman.


The Center has long believed that General Pace is an exceptional human being and a remarkable leader of men and women. These qualities were much in evidence last October when General Pace accepted the Center for Security Policy’s 2004 “Keeper of the Flame” Award on behalf of the Defenders of Freedom.


In extemporaneously delivered remarks on that occasion, the next JCS Chairman delivered one of the most extraordinary addresses in memory. Highlights of his address, which spoke movingly about the reasons the Defenders of Freedom serve as they do included the following:



  • “If you go to Iraq or Afghanistan and you look [great young men and women in the field] in the eye they will not ask you about personal things. There may be one or two questions about when that unit might be going home. That’s natural. What they want to know is: are the American people behind us? They want to know that what they are doing is as honest and as good, and is recognized to be as honest and as good, as they understand it to be. They get it.

They may not be thinking every night about their oath, but they understand because they’re living amongst people who have never understood freedom, and are living in an environment that reminds them every day of how lucky each of us is to be an American and how wonderful it is to serve this country. They just want a little assurance every now and then that the folks back home appreciate it….



  • A vital part of who we are as your military is our families. Now when you’re in combat you have days that are really intense and there are days that are very dangerous, but you know when you’re in trouble and you can fight your way out of it. Our families don’t know that. If we’re gone a year, our families every day are thinking today their son, their daughter, their husband, their wife, their mom, their dad is being shot at or is in some kind of danger. In Pete Pace’s mind it is so much more difficult to be a family member than it is to be the one in uniform. We owe our families an incredible debt. My wife and daughter are here tonight; there’s no way that I can thank them. Jim Jones’ wife and son and daughter-in-law are here tonight. There’s no way he can thank them. But these families of ours are patriots in a quiet, strong way that promises the tomorrow that we all strive for….


  • [Supreme Allied Commander General] Jim Jones has said some amazingly nice words tonight. I am probably the only guy in the room, who truly knows in his heart of hearts, I do not deserve those words. I stand before you tonight because in 1968 and 1969 young men – Lance Corporal Guido Farinaro, Lance Corporal Chubby Hale, Corporal Mike Witt, Lance Corporal Whitey Travis, Staff Sergeant Willie Williams, Lance Corporal Little Joe Arnold — and the list goes on. Those men took my orders in combat and as a result, died for their country. I owe them a debt I can never repay.

People say to me today, how do you do it? The implication being there’s some burden here. This is not a burden. This is a privilege to serve this country, to do it in their honor and their memory.


I will accept this award tonight in their memory and the memory of all who have served this country and died, and in tribute today and tonight for the incredibly wonderful young men and women who serve our country right now.


I thank you for this opportunity to publicly say to them we love them, we cherish them, and we support them.

The Bolton vote

Decision Brief     No. 05-D 17                                       2005-04-18 


(Washington, D.C.): The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is ready to vote on President Bush’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Democrats have lined up to oppose Under Secretary of State John Bolton’s appointment. Committee Republicans are expected to support it.


For two weeks, however, the former have hoped to pick off one or more of the latter by subjecting Mr. Bolton to a series of allegations and charges that call into question his judgment, integrity and conduct. As the votes on the Bolton nomination are cast, Senators should bear in mind the following:



  • John Bolton is eminently qualified . He has worked for years – including in the first Bush Administration and throughout the current presidency, as well as during the years between – on matters directly relevant to his future assignment. Even his critics acknowledge that Secretary Bolton is deeply knowledgeable about the organization and reform of the United Nations, coalition-building diplomacy and some of the most pressing problems confronting this country and the UN – notably, state-sponsorship of terror and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.


  • Secretary Bolton’s intimate understanding of these subjects has caused him to have strong views about them . On occasion, he has expressed those views forcefully and with a measure of rhetorical hyperbole. While some have seized upon his choice of words to disqualify Mr. Bolton, he is indisputably correct in arguing that the UN has rarely been united in the way and for the purposes its founders envisioned. He is also correct in noting that the international community has generally proven most effective in dealing with international crises when led by the United States. It would serve U.S. interests well to have the man charged with shaping efforts to reform and revitalize the United Nations guided by these insights.


  • John Bolton has been a steady and effective advocate for President Bush’s policies inside often-hostile bureaucracies . That should hardly be a disqualifier for his promotion given that, in our government, agencies like the State Department are supposed to be part of an executive branch led by the President.

There is no getting around it, though: In the course of advancing Mr. Bush’s agenda inside a State Department often overtly hostile to this administration’s security policies, Mr. Bolton has made many enemies. A few have come forward publicly; others have talked to the press only on an off-the-record basis.



  • The sum and substance of the charges leveled by such individuals seem to come down to this: For the past four years, Secretary Bolton has worked tirelessly to use diplomatic and other tools to call attention to and ameliorate pressing national security problems. Doing so has required him to overcome considerable institutional inertia, ideologically motivated opposition and chronic bureaucratic skullduggery.

Along the way, Mr. Bolton has clearly bruised some egos. But he did not manufacture or distort intelligence, get people fired for actions that even their supervisors considered to be inappropriate or engage in punitive measures that could conceivably be accurately characterized as “serial abuse” of subordinates.


Last-Gasp Attack


At the eleventh hour, the attack on Secretary Bolton has come up with a heretofore unknown charge: According to today’s Washington Post, unnamed State Department sources claim that the Under Secretary deliberately withheld information from his superiors related to diplomatic and other aspects of Iran’s proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.


There is a certain irony to this accusation, whose timing smacks of a last-gasp bid to derail the Bolton nomination: It ostensibly rests on information “back-channeled” to those superiors by Mr. Bolton’s subordinates in order to circumvent him and the normal reporting channels. At the same time, Secretary Bolton is being taken to task for allegedly circumventing similar channels to secure information from the Central Intelligence Agency. He is said to have done so in order to ensure that intelligence information he was relying upon was not being distorted by analysts with their own agenda in Foggy Bottom’s Office of Intelligence and Research.


Generally speaking, government works best when there is an abundance of information. Intelligence analysts are seconded to agencies like the State Department – and not just John Bolton’s office – precisely in order to facilitate the timely sharing of relevant data with policy-makers. And, while senior officials are entitled to make decisions about which of the countless number of memos generated every day they deem worthy of passing up the line and when, Secretaries of State generally rely as much on direct contacts with their counterparts as staff memoranda to keep them apprized of allied views about pending issues.


The Bottom Line


Mr. Bolton’s experiences and conduct under clearly very difficult circumstances in the State Department over the past four years are, if anything, evidence that he is the right man for the UN job. After all, he is accustomed to dealing with institutions hostile to President Bush, his administration and its security policies. He has demonstrated the necessary diplomatic and bureaucratic skills needed to overcome myriad obstacles thrown in his way by opponents, foreign and domestic. And he has displayed the sort of principled tenacity that will certainly be even more necessary to truly reforming the United Nations than it has been to trying to get, and keep, the State Department on the President’s team.  

What the world (body) needs now

Decision Brief     No. 05-D 16                                           2005-04-11


(Washington, D.C.): The early returns are in: A number of retired U.S. diplomats, George Soros and the renamed World Federalist Association (now doing business as Citizens for Global Solutions) think what is needed now is less an American ambassador to the United Nations than an advocate for the UN’s dismal status quo assigned as a representative to the Bush Administration.


Fortunately, President Bush believes very differently. He understands that the United Nations needs – now more than ever – the United States to have as its ambassador there someone who is not only a seasoned and highly skilled diplomat, deeply knowledgeable about the institution and the preeminent organizational and substantive challenges it faces. The times also require an individual who will represent with energy, intellectual prowess, articulateness and, yes, when necessary, assertiveness the interests of the United States at UN headquarters.


What Ails the UN


Specifically, as Mr. Bush has made clear repeatedly – and most pointedly in his past three annual appearances before the UN General Assembly – the United States wants to realize the promise of the founding principles of the so-called “world body.” These are enshrined in the inspiring opening phrases of the UN Charter that speak of “the peoples of the United Nations'” determination to spare future generations the “scourge of war” by: “reaffirm[ing] faith in fundamental human rights…, establish[ing] conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and…promot[ing] social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom….” (Emphasis added.)


As Mr. Bush put it on September 21, 2004: “Both the American Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaim the equal value and dignity of every human life. That dignity is honored by the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, protection of private property, free speech, equal justice, and religious tolerance. That dignity is dishonored by oppression, corruption, tyranny, bigotry, terrorism and all violence against the innocent. And both of our founding documents affirm that this bright line between justice and injustice – between right and wrong – is the same in every age, and every culture, and every nation.”


The Bush-Bolton View


To be sure, this is a very different vision of what the UN is supposed to be – and can yet become. Some diplomats, international bureaucrats and other practitioners of real politique effectively insist that the duty of the United Nations is not to advance freedom, but to enshrine and protect the status quo. Regrettably, for most of the UN’s history, the only exception has been in cases where Communists and other authoritarians of the Left (notably, the likes of Leonid Brezhnev, Fidel Castro, Yasser Arafat and Hafez Assad) were at best accommodated and at worst lionized by the “world body” for their aggression at freedom’s expense.


President Bush is clearly committed to having the United Nations, with the active and constructive support of the United States, return to first principles. He appreciates that this is perhaps the most promising moment in the nearly sixty years since the UN was created to effect the sorts of systemic reforms that would be entailed.


Mr. Bush appreciates that such reforms are needed not only to correct the worst abuses in the organization’s history (the notorious Oil-for-Food program that corruptly kept Saddam Hussein a going concern, the UN peacekeeper rape squads in Congo and elsewhere, the acts of corruption, misconduct and malfeasance at the highest levels of the institution’s bureaucracy, including the Secretary General’s own family, etc.) They are also needed if the United Nations is to help promote freedom by ending tyranny, protecting human dignity, encouraging economic opportunity and creating the conditions under which international law deserves – and actually enjoys – widespread respect.


Tough Love for the UN


To advance this quintessentially American, and most necessary, agenda at the UN, President Bush has wisely chosen John Bolton. Like Mr. Bush, Secretary Bolton recognizes how far from its founding principles the UN has strayed. Like Mr. Bush, Mr. Bolton believes that the UN could be a force for real good in the world if it were able to return to and act upon those principles. And Mr. Bolton may be uniquely capable of assuring the continuing support of many millions of Americans disaffected by what has become of this “world body” – by demonstrating, in the exemplary tradition at the UN of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick, that our ambassador there will fearlessly say and do what he must to effect such change.


The Bottom Line


Perhaps the most eloquent recognition of the value of John Bolton’s appointment came last month from Tim Wirth, Bill Clinton’s Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs and now the president of the Ted Turner-financed UN Foundation:

“In the past, Mr. Bolton has been tough on the UN; we hope that if he is confirmed by the Senate, he will be an advocate for improving the vital U.S.-UN relationship, and for helping the UN to achieve its many complex missions, ranging from global health to advancing democracy, strengthening human rights and forging stronger global environmental standards, caring for refugees and feeding millions of disaster-stricken people. The UN needs the support of the U.S. both to sustain its mission, and to reform itself for the demands of the 21st century.”

Amnesty by any other name

Hundreds of "Minuteman" volunteers are fanning out this week across the Arizona-Mexico border. They hope, by so doing, to help the authorities reduce somewhat the human tsunami of illegal aliens crossing into America. More importantly, perhaps, they seek in the process to call to the attention of our leaders the public’s rising anger about this invasion of our territory – and its huge national security, social, economic and other costs.

The full extent of those costs may yet to be tallied. By some estimates, there were 75,000 "other-than-Mexican" illegals among those who sneaked into the United States last year. A growing number of them are known to be from the Middle East and may well be Islamists using well-established alien-smuggling routes as the first step to perpetrating new acts of terror in this country.

Lest there be any lingering doubt, however, that politicians need the sort of pointed reminder the Minutemen are currently offering that, as they say in the movies, the American people are "mad as hell and not going to take it any more," consider the likely scenario on the floor of the United States Senate this week.

How the Troops’ Bill Became a Vehicle for the Craig-Kennedy AgAmnesty

The scheduled business is urgent action on an emergency supplemental appropriations measure meant to provide funding needed now by our troops in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the absence of such funding, critical war materiel will begin to run short – jeopardizing the mission, and possibly the lives, of our servicemen and women on the front lines.

This priority legislation became the vehicle the House of Representatives used last month to fulfill a promise made in December by its leadership and by President Bush: In exchange for passing last year a bill intended to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, but that failed to address several of the most important ones – in particular, those dealing with the need to enhance the authenticity and security of driver’s licenses, the "REAL ID" bill fixing the latter would be given expedited consideration.

The REAL ID legislation is aimed at denying future terrorists the ability exploited by the 9/11 hijackers (even those in this country illegally) – namely, to hold numerous valid driver’s licenses, which they used to gain murderous access to airports and their targeted aircraft. It is no small irony, therefore, that the presence of the REAL ID provisions on the military’s supplemental funding bill is being cited by the Senate parliamentarian as grounds for Senator Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho, to try to attach to it legislation that would help eviscerate what currently passes for restrictions on illegal immigration.

Rewarding Illegal Behavior, Again

Sen. Craig, an otherwise very sensible and responsible Republican legislator from Idaho, has an idee fixe which he shares with, his co-sponsor, Sen. Teddy Kennedy: The agricultural sector of the U.S. economy needs cheap labor. So, let’s legalize the presence in this country of anyone who can claim to have once worked for a little more than three months in that sector.

If that were not bad enough, their families would be allowed to become legal residents, too, even if they are not currently in the United States. The same would apply for illegals who had ostensibly been agricultural workers here in the past, but who have gone home. They can all become "temporarily" legit, a status the notoriously left-wing, yet federally funded, Legal Services Corporation will be happy to help them subsequently adjust to permanent resident status.

In short, S.359, the Craig-Kennedy Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits, and Security Act of 2005 (better known as the AgJobs bill), amounts to an amnesty for a class of illegal aliens. While the proponents insist it is something else – for example, "hard-earned legalization" – there is no getting around the fact that it hugely rewards people for coming to this country illegally. And, as we have seen with previous, misbegotten immigration amnesties, the effect is to encourage more people to do so.

That will surely be the case with the Craig-Kennedy AgJobs bill, too. Even though it requires the illegal alien’s 100 days of agricultural work in the U.S. to have occurred during any 12 month period between February 2002 and August 2003 – and, therefore, is not something new "invaders" could cash in on – this legislation further reinforces the expectation that, if you can get into this country by whatever means, you will at some point likely be allowed to stay legally.

Interestingly, Messrs. Craig and Kennedy have significantly fewer co-sponsors (43) on their legislation this year than they did in the last session of Congress (62). At this writing, it is unclear whether many of those Senators who no longer want to be publicly associated with this amnesty bill will nonetheless vote for it.

The Bottom Line

We can only hope that they have heard the Minutemen’s message on behalf of the vast majority of Americans of just about every walk of life and political persuasion: The time has come to take effective action to secure our borders against the swelling tide of people trying to get into this country illegally; to find ways to decrease, not increase, the numbers already here unlawfully; and to ensure that documents needed to access airports, government buildings, bank accounts, etc. are valid and held only by those entitled to carry them. And get all this done now, without hurting our troops.