 |
| |
|
|
Admiral
|
 |
of the peace and coexistance movement
Feb 2001
time: 00:20
|
|
quote:
May 11 - George W. Bush has said it often enough. The No. 1 security challenge for America post-9/11 is to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue regimes. In a landmark speech at the National Defense University in February 2004, the president called for a toughened Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other new initiatives. “There is a consensus among nations that proliferation cannot be tolerated,” Bush said. “Yet this consensus means little unless it is translated into action.”
advertisement
By action Bush meant the hard work of diplomacy, John Bolton, the president’s point man on nuclear arms control, told Congress a month later. For one thing, America needed to lead an effort at “closing a loophole” in the 35-year-old NPT, Bolton testified back then. The treaty’s provisions had to be updated to prevent countries like Iran from enriching uranium under cover of a peaceful civilian program—which is technically permitted under the NPT—when what Tehran really sought was a bomb, according to the administration.
But if the NPT needed so much fixing under U.S. leadership, why was the United States so shockingly unprepared when the treaty came up for its five-year review at a major conference in New York this month, in the view of many delegates? And why has the United States been losing control of the conference’s agenda this week to Iran and other countries—a potentially serious setback to U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran?
Part of the answer, several sources close to the negotiations tell NEWSWEEK, lies with Bolton, the undersecretary of State for arms control. Since last fall Bolton, Bush’s embattled nominee to be America’s ambassador to the United Nations, has aggressively lobbied for a senior job in the second Bush administration. During that time, Bolton did almost no diplomatic groundwork for the NPT conference, these officials say.
“John was absent without leave” when it came to implementing the agenda that the president laid out in his February 2004 speech, a former senior Bush official declares flatly. Another former government official with experience in nonproliferation agrees. “Everyone knew the conference was coming and that it would be contentious. But Bolton stopped all diplomacy on this six months ago,” this official said. “The White House and the National Security Council started worrying, wondering what was going on. So a few months ago the NSC had to step in and get things going themselves. The NPT regime is full of holes—it's very hard for the U.S. to meet our objectives—it takes diplomacy.”
Diplomacy is just a fancy word for salesmanship—making phone calls, working the corridors, listening to and poking holes in opposing arguments, lobbying others to back one’s position. But “delegates didn’t hear a peep from the U.S. until a week before the conference,” says Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “There’s no sign of any coordinated U.S. effort to develop a positive program.” One diplomat involved with the conference agrees. “There were a number of the issues Bush raised in his February 2004 speech that needed to be taken up here, like the establishment of a special committee at the IAEA [the International Atomic Energy Agency] to go after [treaty] noncompliers. But painfully little has been done on that a year later.”
A spokesperson for the NSC referred all questions about Bolton and its own role to the State Department. Asked to respond to the criticism, a State Department official denied that the United States had been unprepared for the conference or was underplaying it. He said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice couldn’t attend because she was caught in between back-to-back foreign trips to Latin America and to Russia. Bolton himself was preoccupied with his Senate confirmation, and Robert Joseph has yet to be confirmed as Bolton’s replacement as undersecretary, the State official said, adding, “We had several prep conferences for the NPT.”
Bolton, who faces a scheduled confirmation vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, has been savaged by critics in recent weeks over his alleged manipulation of intelligence, his sometimes tempestuous efforts to sideline officials who disagreed with him, his statements under oath and other complaints. Throughout the Bolton controversy, his backers in the Bush administration have argued that though he may need better people skills, he has been very effective as a public official. Yet some critics of Bolton say that his alleged mishandling of the NPT conference and other initiatives show that he has sometimes botched the administration’s business as well.
advertisement
Bolton, for instance, often takes and is given credit for the administration’s Proliferation Security Initiative—an agreement to interdict suspected WMD shipments on the high seas—and the deal to dismantle Libya’s nuclear program (a deal that Bolton had sought to block). But the former senior Bush official who criticized Bolton’s performance on the NPT conference says that in fact Bolton’s successor, Robert Joseph, deserves most of the credit for those achievements. This official adds that it was Joseph, who was in charge of counterproliferation at the NSC, who had to pitch in when Bolton fumbled preparations for the NPT conference, as well. Bush, in his February 2004 speech, also sought to give new powers to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which enforces the treaty. But Bolton, says the former Bush official, “focused much more time and attention trying to deny Mohammed elBaradei a third term” as head of the IAEA. The effort failed, and it was considered another international humiliation for the United States. (Ironically, elBaradei has been one of Washington’s chief allies at the NPT conference, pushing for parts of the Bush agenda.)
Critics of Bolton acknowledge that even in the best of times the ongoing NPT review conference—which lasts for a month—is a “painful mess” at which little of substance is achieved, as one international diplomat involved puts it. And today the negative sentiment against the United States is so strong, one Bush official said, that “not even Metternich could win an agreement here.” Mitchell Reiss, the former policy-planning chief at State, says that “one of the real challenges is trying to persuade the non-aligned movement [a caucus of non-nuclear developing countries] that nonproliferation is not a gift to the United States, but that it’s fundamentally in their national-security interests.”
Still, in past decades Washington has signaled its seriousness about the NPT by sending heavy hitters—Vice President Al Gore went in 1995, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 2000. At the ’95 conference in particular, Washington won kudos for leading the fight to extend the NPT’s life.
The NPT, perhaps the most successful arms-control treaty in history, has been in effect since 1970. It permits the already declared nuclear states—the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China—to keep their nuclear arsenals while forbidding such weapons to everyone else—as long as all parties strive “in good faith” to achieve nuclear disarmament and the non-nuclear states get access to civilian nuclear power. The treaty has 188 signatories and only a few detractors, among them North Korea and potentially Iran (Israel, Pakistan and India also refuse to sign.) But in recent years the “loophole” in this grand bargain has become more apparent: the treaty contains worrisome ambiguities that may allow states like Iran to legally pursue a nuclear arms capability disguised as a civilian program.
All signs are that by the end of the month, that loophole will remain. The Bush administration has achieved, for the moment, a united front with France, Germany and Britain in seeking to pressure the Iranians to open up and cease uranium enrichment. But now the administration finds itself outflanked at the conference as it seeks to win a wider international consensus in favor of a hard line against Iran. Bush officials have said that if they must eventually confront Tehran, they want to correct the unilateralist mistakes made in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Yet in the last week, as the conference began, the United States found it had to concede a key point on the agenda. It had to drop its demands for a veiled reference to the threats from rogue states and terrorism since 2000, including the covert development of an Iranian nuclear program. Talks have been all but paralyzed since, to the point where the delegates can’t even agree on a basic agenda for the conference.
Iranian officials at the conference say they are happily signing onto the agenda of the “nuclear have-nots” led by the non-aligned movement, which insists the United States and other nuclear states hold to their side of the NPT bargain. This includes supplying civilian nuclear technology and committing to an eventual dismantling of their nuclear arsenals. It is this agenda, one Iranian official involved in the discussions told NEWSWEEK, that is likely to dominate the meeting “despite the U.S. attempt to divert attention by focusing on Iran.” |
Interesting to see that Bolton not only is a very blunt and offensive diplomat, he's also a straight-up bad diplomat. One wonder what Bush gains from appointing him to the UN, other than annoying the world.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Riesstiu IV
|
|
Bush wants to make himself look better by appointing morons to diplomatic posts.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Oerdin
|
 |
of Internet Music.
Sep 2001
time: 21:20
|
|
Larry Flint has made it a side business to dig up dirt on hypocrites and his last gold mine has been finding out about how Bolten's ex-wife made claims that Bolten forced her to have sex with other men at a famous swinger's club in the 1980's while Bolten had sex with various other women. Apparently you could only get in the swingers club if you were a couple who was willing to take all comers and when his wife expressed reservations he threatened her to such an extent that she says she felt fear for her physical well being. Part of this maybe just sour grapes from an ex-wife but at a minimum it does show Bolten's pattern of not getting along with people extended even into all parts of his life.
It is also interesting that the "family values" party has nominated a swinger and thus an adulterer. One of Clinton's nominees for Ambassador to Luxemburg got torpedoed but Republicans because he was a gay man in a 20 year long relationship while Bolten, who is/was a swinger who threatened to beat his wife if she didn't agree to have sex with other men, is such a noble nominee in Republican eyes. 
quote:
The controversial Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt has waded into the conflict surrounding the nomination of Bush hawk John Bolton to a UN post by revealing Bolton's divorce records and unanswered questions about his sexual past, RAW STORY has learned.
The following release was issued early this afternoon. RAW STORY will provide more details as they become available. We will be publishing excerpts of the Bolton divorce record shortly.
The records show that Bolton's wife left him during a trip to Vienna in two weeks in 1982 and never returned. The records further show that she took most of the couple’s furniture.
###
From Mr. Flynt's release:
Corroborated allegations that Mr. Bolton’s first wife, Christina Bolton, was forced to engage in group sex have not been refuted by the State Department despite inquires posed by Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt concerning the allegations. Mr. Flynt has obtained information from numerous sources that Mr. Bolton participated in paid visits to Plato’s Retreat, the popular swingers club that operated in New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
“The first Mrs. Bolton’s conduct raises the presumption that she fled out of fear for her safety or, at a minimum, it demonstrates that Mr. Bolton’s established inability to communicate or work respectfully with others extended to his intimate family relations,” said Mr. Flynt. “The court records alone provide sufficient basis for further investigation of nominee Bolton by the Senate.” These court records are enclosed here as an attachment. Mr. Flynt continued, “The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations must be free of any potential source of disrepute or blackmail.”
Mr. Flynt has contacted the State Department asking that they confirm or deny the allegations of Mr. Bolton’s prior conduct concerning his wife and the alleged paid visits to Plato’s Retreat. He has also called upon the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to conduct an inquiry into the very serious evidence concerning his first wife’s fear of him.
Much more at link. |
http://rawstory.com/exclusives/byrn...lynt_bolton_511
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
Admiral
|
|
of the peace and coexistance movement
Feb 2001
time: 00:20
|
|
What's scary is that a number of respected journals (ie, I either read it in the Times or the Post, but don't remember which) consider Kerry the frontrunner for 2008, or at worst, tied with Hillary.
But res polarization, we are increasingly moving into communities of people who only share our political viewpoint. My college, for instance, has 2400 students, and among them are 15 conservatives. The College Democrats had to create a College Republicans (run by the Democrats, naturally) in order to host a bipartisan forum. This is true on a greater scale, and the result is that when we think of Republicans, we don't think Philip from across the road. Rather, we construct some hypothetical Republican, who is only vaguely personlike. The other side does the same thing, and the result is the polarization that we're seeing now.
|
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:20.
Apolyton Time is 00:20. |
top of page
|
|
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
12-05-2005 06:37
|