I heard Chuck Hagel on National Public Radio yesterday continue the line that he still had not heard anything that would compel him to vote against Bolton — but that he had not studied all of the “facts.

Very high-handed politics have erupted in the Bolton Battle. All players must take a step back and consider options, figure out how much they want to gamble to make a point and secure victory.

Richard Lugar and others have been commenting that Bolton’s worst traits may be good skills for the Ambassadorial position in the United Nations. They argue that his combativeness and tendency towards abuse of people may help him turn the U.N. in directios it needs to go.

I have been at a foreing policy conference with a few people — including Andy Moravscik and G. John Ikenberry of Princeton, Charles Kupchan of Georgetown, Michael Cox of the LSE and other really smart folks — but I’m heading back now.

The word is out. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will not get the much-wanted National Security Agency intercepts in which John Bolton expressed so much interest during his tenure as Under Secretary of State for International Security and Arms Control.

The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler reveals today the story running around town about Richard Armitage “endorsing” John Bolton. Kessler writes: In a boost for Bolton, however, Powell’s closest friend, former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage, endorsed Bolton in a statement to the Associated Press.

Warren Strobel and John Wolcott hit a homer with this piece today. Given President Bush’s predisposition in the Summer of 2002 to go to war before the intelligence on WMDs and Iraq had really come in (around October 2002), it is not surprising that Bolton demonstrated the same patterns of behavior.

One of the things that most bothered me about the beginning of the opposition efforts to John Bolton’s nomination is that so few thought that just opposing him because he didn’t seem to believe in the very concept of the United Nations was enough to make him unfit.

Senator Lugar was on the side of democracy in the Philippines before it became fashionable. But apparently Bolton “management advisor” Matthew Freedman was not. This just came to me from a reliable source who knew Freedman two decades ago: Steve, Your penultimate post (on Matthew Freedman) triggered long-stored memories.

Senator Biden wrote yesterday to Condoleeza Rice indicating that he and Senator Lugar disagree as to the importance of the information requests that the minority staff has made of the State Department in the John Bolton investigation. Here is the letter.