USA: UN Ambassador: John Bolton seems a shoo-in on Monday

Congress seems set for adjournment for its summer break on Saturday or Sunday. And the media are giving the distinct impression that President Bush will be naming John R. Bolton, formerly in an important post in the State Department as Undersecretrary of State for Arms Control, to become US Ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton pursued his task with vigour and is now paying the price for it in the rearguard opposition launched against his confirmation in the Senate. Lacking formal confirmation, Bush it seems now that will be free on Monday to make an appointment of one and a half years's duration, until the beginning of 2007. At that time, a new Congress will be sworn in, Bolton will have a 17-month record of performance on the job, and just possibly there will be more Republicans in the Senate itself. In other words, there could be a new round of nomination, scrutiny, and vote for or against confirmation.

Bolton's nomination did get to the Senate floor and he did garner a majority vote in favour of his confirmation, but not the full 60 votes out of 100 that the rules at the time required. The Delaycrats dredged up all sorts of excuses to deny consent to his nomination, a veritable smoke screen, but a good number of the negative arguments adduced then proved to be false or seriously inaccurate. The remainder seem baseless allegations, and the source of some of the canards must be taken into account before they can be given any crediblity - that is, they don't have crediblity once one considers the motives and agenda of the sources of each of the remainder.

"I would anticipate an interim appointment," said Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., one of Bolton's main supporters on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "We have a conference on U.N. reform in September. The president is going to be speaking at that conference. We're going to need an ambassador. We're going to need John Bolton there."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seemed to be saying much the same thing in an interview Thursday on PBS' "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."

While she avoided a direct answer when asked whether Bush would make Bolton a recess appointment, she emphasized that "what we can't be is without leadership at the United Nations. I can tell you, Jim, that I'm spending an awful lot of time these days preparing for the high-level meetings that are going to take place in September ... about refreshing the United Nations after 60 years. The United States needs to be active in that and ... we need our permanent representative to the United Nations."

I think the UN would be a much more interesting and self-critical institution with Bolton there to add a voice that has been lacking in the smug self-congratulatory atmosphere that has prevailed there for some time now. Unfortunately, Canada has been on the smug side for some time at the UN. - Politicarp

Bolton appointment to UN Ambassador anticipated