President Bush seems poised to appoint John Bolton UN Ambassador on Monday. Read Jeremy’s excellent post from last night. While Jeremy’s right that Senate opposition to Bolton has lost its momentum (excepting Biden’s superb last minute squeeze of the State Department), Dodd makes exactly the right point in calling Bolton “damaged goods.
According to today’s Times, despite previous announced extension, Iraqis are promising to stick to a US-desired Aug. 15 deadline for a working constitution. “Among the most divisive issues are the rights of women, the role of Islam and the scope and reach of Kurdish self-rule.
The Whitehouse press release is here. The AP story on the appointment doesn’t do justice to the severity of Bolton’s problems, and doesn’t get into the challenges he’s now going to face at the UN. I have mixed feelings.
Reuters’ write-up of the most recent Bolton events is a fairly good one, both as a wrap-up of the Sunday shows and as a decent overview of where things stand overall.
It’s Charles Kupchan here, filling in for Steve Clemons, to whom I am grateful for my first opportunity to be a blogger. I am a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
It’s good news that British authorities apparently have nabbed the four men who launched the most recent (unsuccessful) bombings in London. But the threat of terrorism will go on. And security professionals, in contrast to politicians, acknowledge how the Iraq conflict is encouraging additional violent attacks. Evidence of the connection keeps accumulating.
As most everyone knows, the Army and Marine Corps and Army National Guard and Reserves have been running into recruiting problems. The cause isn’t difficult to understand.
The other day Josh Marshall asked an important question about the growing controversy over giving the Senate Judiciary Committee access to the memos John Roberts wrote when he worked in the Reagan and Bush 41 Administrations. In short, Josh wondered why the Senate should be any less informed about Roberts’ past than the President.
A couple of characteristics seem to set apart the neocons and their allies who so readily, indeed, enthusiastically, make war. One, of course, is to avoid actually serving in combat. Vice President Dick Cheney famously allowed that he had “other priorities” — evidenced by his five deferments.
As I noted late last night, Senator Chafee of Rhode Island told the Associated Press that the newest revelations about John Bolton were enough to make him withdraw his support for the nomination and oppose a recess appointment.
