The following is Senator Lincoln Chafee’s letter to Condoleezza Rice, implying in the first paragraph that if a vote had been held on September 7th, Bolton would have received a “no” vote from the Senator. The pdf of the letter is here.
Several well-placed sources close to the Bolton nomination process have reported to me that the Bolton confirmation process is now dead. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is “highly unlikely” to reconsider Bolton’s confirmation again as things now stand. One insider reported, as far as the Committee is concerned, “we consider the confirmation over. It’s dead.
(State Department Legal Adviser John Bellinger III outflanks Cheney Chief of Staff David Addington) George Bush has just taken a first step, a big step in my view, in bringing America a notch back towards democracy by bringing all of America’s “off the books” prisoners into the daylight and towards a more transparent legal process….
What kind of Republicans do Rhode Islanders want? Pugnacious, anti-internationalists who despise global institutions of all sorts? That sounds like Lincoln Chafee’s primary challenger in the Rhode Island Republican primary — Steve Laffey.
Senator Lincoln Chafee impressed just about everyone during the recent testimony of John Bolton before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He pushed Bolton for hard answers to important questions, and did not yield when Bolton tried to duck and swerve Chafee’s queries.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will take up the matter of John Bolton’s confirmation today. He has been working at the United Nations without the blessing of the U.S. Senate for the past year as a recess appointee.
I learned last night that President Bush will be speaking today, and the White House may ask networks to break into programming to run his remarks live. Word is that he will be addressing the Supreme Court decision on Hamdi and military commissions.
As the Pulitzer Prize winning historian John Dower tells the story so well about Japan and the United States, states that move towards war often demonize each other’s leaders and whole societies in order to stir and consolidate public opinion and steel their citizens for big sacrifices ahead.
The New America Foundation American Strategy Program will host a meeting tomorrow with the guy the White House should have advising George W. Bush on a new track to take to salvage America’s position in the Middle East.
Sidney Blumenthal holds forth on yet another (regrettably believable) Cheney-esque insult to Americans in his effort to whitewash and propagandize his place in U.S. history.
