Many Overseas Worried by Bush's U.N. Pick

[True_Blue]

LONDON - President Bush (news - web sites)'s nomination of a tough-talking conservative as ambassador to the United Nations (news - web sites) set off ripples of worry in some of America's allies Tuesday.

Critics who had hoped Bush would tend more carefully to ties with overseas friends in his second term feared the selection of John R. Bolton called into question the president's intention to do so.

Bolton, now undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, is known for his vocal criticism of the United Nations and sometimes caustic language. He is likely to face a tough confirmation hearing in the Senate, where even some Republicans have wondered aloud about his suitability for the job.

Few governments commented publicly on the president's pick. But many in foreign policy circles were wary of Bolton, seeing him as a staunch unilateralist indifferent to allies' views.

more....
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=723&e=10&u=/ap/20050308/ap_on_re_mi_ea/un_us_ambassador_world_view

[SupormomFreeAtLast]

1. Many here ar worried as well.

[Enquiringkitty]

2. Can't wait till he goes into the UN and verbally slaps someone in the face

and they walk out.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. kick.

[Pallas180]

4. The UK Guardian really lays out who Bolton is, & it's not pretty

catch the reference to being anti "non-proliferation". now you know who revealed Valerie Plame.

Wow. All hell is breaking loose...no real al queda in the US, and who Bolton really is ... this is getting pleasantly hopeful
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The enemy within

How an Americanist devoted to destroying international alliances became the US envoy to the UN

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday March 10, 2005
The Guardian

In the heat of the battle over the Florida vote after the 2000 US presidential election, a burly, mustachioed man burst into the room where the ballots for Miami-Dade County were being tabulated, like John Wayne barging into a saloon for a shoot-out. "I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count," drawled John Bolton. And those ballots from Miami-Dade were not counted.
Now that same John Bolton has been named by President Bush as the US ambassador to the UN. "If I were redoing the security council today, I'd have one permanent member because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world," Bolton once said. Lately, as undersecretary of state for arms control, he has wrecked all the nonproliferation diplomacy within his reach. Over the past two decades he has been the person most dedicated to trying to discredit the UN. George Orwell's clock of 1984 is striking 13.

The euphoria that Bush's European trip marked a conversion on the road to Brussels is fading. For it was Bush himself who decided to reward Bolton with a position where he could continue his crusade as a "convinced Americanist" against the "globalists," especially those at the UN and the EU. "

"Bolton made a play to become deputy secretary of state after the 2004 election, but was blocked by Condoleezza Rice, who understood that his love of bureaucratic infighting would have undermined her authority. Dick Cheney privately promised Bolton that if all else failed he would give him a job on his vice presidential staff, but that proved unnecessary when Bush nominated him to the UN post. Rice announced his appointment, symbolically demonstrating that he reports to her. But Bolton has deep support within the White House, and Rice is very much a work-in-progress."
________

There's more...about some of his dirty work...go to the UK Guardian

[AlCzervik]

5. i posted some of this the other day but it's worth looking at

these older articles are a trove of info. Here is a snip

So who is Bolton?

In Washington, he is widely regarded as Senator Jesse Helms' political heir. The two men share the same contempt for the United Nations, and most of the rest of the world. Helms once praised Bolton as "a treasured friend" and "patriot" and "a brilliant thinker and writer." He also served in the first Bush administration as assistant secretary of state for international organizations under another key Republican mentor, James Baker.

During the Clinton years, he served as vice president at the American Enterprise Institute -- the conservative think tank that houses Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Lynne Cheney – where he made no effort to hide his deep contempt for the United Nations. In 1994 he said "there is no such thing as the United Nations" and "if the UN Secretariat building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

But his disdain for the organization did not stop him from taking a job as James Baker’s assistant on the egregiously stalled UN mission to the Western Sahara in 1997. He was also happy to pocket $30,000 in fees from the Taiwanese to write position papers for them on how they should go about becoming members of the very organization whose credibility and very existence he questioned.

http://www.alternet.org/story/13256/