News from Australia: UN envoy choice fuels fury at Bush

[Bluebear]

Appointment as ambassador to the United Nations of a fierce critic of the organisation opens a can of worms for the President.

While George Bush and Condoleezza Rice were in Rome to attend the funeral of the Pope, John Bolton, their choice as the next US ambassador to the United Nations had more earthly political issues on his mind. Mr Bolton is at the centre of an increasingly fierce debate between Republicans and Democrats over the direction of US foreign policy. Even moderate Republicans have openly questioned the Bolton nomination.

Mr Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control, is the most militant unilateralist and the most outspoken critic of the UN in the Bush Administration. That's saying something, given some of the things that George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney had to say about the United Nations in the lead-up to the war in Iraq.

Defeat for Mr Bush on the Bolton nomination would be particularly damaging at a time when the polls show that, at 45 per cent, he has the lowest approval rating of a recently elected second-term president in postwar history.

Only 35 per cent of Americans, according to the latest poll, believe the country is heading in the right direction. The intervention by Mr Bush and senior Republicans in the Schiavo case was overwhelmingly rejected by Americans, say the polls, and it is only on foreign policy and keeping America safe from terrorism that Mr Bush has maintained majority approval.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/UN-envoy-choice-fuels-fury-at-Bush/2005/04/08/1112815725543.html?oneclick=true

[mom cat]

1. Call your Senator on this one. Flood them with calls!