Senator Boxer has launched a campaign to have citizens try to talk sense to Chafee on all things Bolton.
Here is a letter she sent out yesterday — and yes, there is still time to encourage Chafee to realize that a vote to confirm Bolton will be consequential for him. . .and remembered.
Our effort to stop John Bolton’s confirmation as UN Ambassador is at a critical point. Please take action — today — to make a difference.
Thursday morning, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be meeting to vote on John Bolton’s nomination. As it stands, a 10-8 party line vote of the Republican-controlled committee would favorably send Bolton’s nomination to the Senate floor for a final vote by the full body, where confirmation is likely.
But we still have a chance to stop the Bolton nomination in Thursday’s committee meeting before it reaches the Senate floor.
My Democratic colleagues and I have been working overtime to try to convince at least one fellow Republican committee member to join with us — to resist the arm-twisting from the White House and the Senate Republican leadership, and to instead do the right thing by rejecting this terrible nomination.
At this point, our best chance may well rest with Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee from Rhode Island. Unfortunately, Senator Chafee has decided to reluctantly support the Bolton nomination, despite the fact that a new Zogby poll shows over 80% of Rhode Islanders oppose the nomination. I need your help right now and over the next 24 hours to personally lobby Senator Chafee to change his mind:
Sign my petition to Senator Chafee now, urging him to vote down Bolton’s nomination.
Call Lincoln Chafee’s Senate office at (202) 224-2921 and log your opposition to John Bolton.
We all know that John Bolton is absolutely the wrong choice to be America’s next UN Ambassador. But before you call Senator Chafee’s office, I wanted to remind you of a few of the many reasons why:John Bolton has politicized the intelligence-gathering process. The last thing we should be doing is promoting officials who try to twist intelligence in order to create “imminent threats” to our country — especially in light of the debacle in Iraq, where over 1,600 soldiers have died, over 12,000 soldiers have been injured, plus countless other innocents of the war.
John Bolton has shown disdain for the United Nations throughout his career. We all want to reform the UN. But why would we send someone who is so disrespected — someone who said “there is no United Nations” and “if [the UN Headquarters] lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”
John Bolton has shown a pattern of trying to fire subordinates for no good reason. In every case he was overruled, but his behavior and vindictiveness had a chilling effect on independent intelligence analysts. It got so bad at one point that Secretary of State Colin Powell himself had to make a special trip to visit the analysts and boost their morale.
John Bolton has not been truthful with the Foreign Relations Committee. He led the committee to falsely believe that he didn’t really care that these intelligence analysts didn’t give him the information he wanted and he just “shrugged it off”. Nothing could be further from the truth — he went after them aggressively. He also didn’t tell the truth about the comments he said he received from the Ambassador to South Korea whom he said complimented him. In fact, the Ambassador was very critical of him.
Many leading opponents to the Bolton nomination come from within the Bush Administration. The strongest criticism of John Bolton comes from Republicans, including self-described conservative Carl Ford, who called Bolton a “serial abuser.”It’s remarkable to me that despite all of this evidence and so much more, not a single Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee has been willing to oppose this ill-conceived nomination — yet.
Help change Senator Chafee’s mind. Please sign my petition and call him today!
Lincoln Chafee has always said that he is independent minded. Well, today I publicly call on him to step out front on this — to do the right thing and oppose John Bolton’s nomination.
And your follow-up to Senator Chafee’s office by signing my petition and making a phone call may well make the difference.
Thanks for your help on this critical issue!
In Friendship,
Barbara Boxer
P.S. After signing this petition, don’t forget to phone Senator Chafee’s office at (202) 224-2921!
Nicely done letter.
There are a great number of reasons to oppose John Bolton — mix and match.
I won’t discourage last minute calls for civic action — but I do think that this is a calculus now between a few people. It’s important for the public to make clear that this Ambassadorial appointment matters and reflects on American society as a whole.
However, if folks want to sign the Boxer petition, here is the link. Beware that signing up may also lead to one receiving other email in the future.
— Steve Clemons
