Why The Bolton Recess Appointment Will Be Damaging To The U.S. And Bush

You can mark this down. The Bush recess appointment of John Bolton will be one of Bush's greatest mistakes, and will further hurt not only Bush, but further weaken the foreign policy clout of the U.S. in the world community.

With the announcement of this recess appointment today, the public was witness to a whole different Bush than is usually presented by his handlers like Karl Rove, who are greatly concerned about the image of Bush rather than the true substance. Usually the Bush that handler Rove allows for public view is one of some sense of quasireasonableness, that sometimes even clashes with the simplistic hard right attitudes within some deeply partisan members of the Republican party. The Bush today,was angry and defiant, an arrogant man who believes in his self-righteousness to make a decision that no one else is capable of. This was Bush at his absolute worst.

And this self-righteousness Bush is obsessed with corruption in the U.N.'s Oil For Food, program, yet cannot see the corruption in his own house that since 1997 with Project For The New American Century, a defense contractor funded "think tank", has sought to rig an argument to restart the old 1990-91 Gulf War with Iraq. Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, Saddam Hussein was proclaimed as "courageous" in CIA documents and manuals. After the end of the Cold War, Hussein was suddenly vilified by some seeking to create a new villain to justify defense spending based on generated public fear based policy. And the outrageous invasion of Kuwait by Iraq presented a wealth of anger and the argument for propaganda against Saddam Hussein to start a collision path between the U.S. and Iraq, that would lead to the U.S. overthrow of the Iraq government.

Because of a promise of Saudi Arabian support for the first Gulf War by the first Bush Administration, which included a promise to the Saudi Arabian monarchs not to overthrow Hussein, only to remove him from Iraq, Hussein remained for years as a focal point for U.S. anger. Yet with years of U.N. sanctions against Iraq, and enough U.N. weapons inspections by the UNSCOM organization, the dangerous long range weapons of Iraq were almost completely destroyed. During the 2003 Iraq War, few longer range or Scud type missiles existed by Iraq, and only the old stock of chemical suits and no large stock of chemical or biological weapons were found, only the evidence of one old sarin shell and another old mustard gas shell, probably dating back to the 1980's Iran-Iraq War. Probably to avoid war crimes arrest and trial, Saddam Husein had any chemical or biological weapons destroyed to avoid any evidence recovery by the UNSCOM arms inspections.

Yet despite a serious weapons weakened Iraq, by an arms embargo by the Soviet Union to both Iran and Iraq during their 1980's war, The first Gulf War, the U.N sanctions, and the UNSCOM arms inspections, Saddam Hussein ruled over a very weak nation, that was certainly no real regional military threat. Yet it was the right wing of the Government of Israel that continued to promote the logic of a grave threat to Israel by Saddam Hussein, even though no such real threat actually existed. Among some American Jewish neoconservatives, the same message was echoed, and formally enshrined in the Project For The New American Century. This organization was founded by William Kristol, but also drew in Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, John Bolton, Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams, Richard Armitage, and others into an organization that welded together antiSaddam Hussein Jewish neoconservative thinkers with a very proIsrael foreign policy with defense industry paid consultants, military contractor executives and interests into a quasipolicy "institute" that reverse engineered arguments to restart the old 1990-91 Gulf War to serve that interests of not only ridding Israel of any remote threat from the mostly toothless Saddam Hussein Iraq military and government, which was weakened down only to support of the terrorist organizatioin, Hezbollah, but would allow defense contractors a handsome profit in a war with excessive "shock & awe" warfare of $1 million dollar cruise missile launches against Saddam's palaces that served no real military importance or benefit, and if anything may have destroyed some evidence of Saddam's crimes against his own people. Yet this mega-priced excessive war would allow corporations such as the former one run by Dick Cheney, Halliburton to charge excessively high fees to rebuild the destroyed buildings and excessive damage in huge reconstruction contracts that would bring in billions of dollars.

During the 2000 presidential campaign and debates, candidate George Bush claimed to be opposed to "nation building", and made himself falsely appear to the public as a candidate opposed to the minor military actions of the Clinton Administration. Yet the real George Bush was planning with members of the PNAC, such as Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Rumsfeld and others all along to engage America in a string of wars to overthrow the governments of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia and Sudan. But with the 9/11 attacks, a necessary military effort to prevent further Al Qaeda attacks from bases protected by the radical Taliban government in Afghanistan delayed this action. But soon after the Afghanistan situation was somewhat stablized, a steady stream of White House falsehoods by Bush, Condoleeza Rice, and others was promoted to make Americans feel that a "nuclear mushroom" or other serious threat from Iraq was very possibl likely unless the U.S. quickly acted with military action regardless of whether the U.N. agreed with the effort or not. Only reluctantly did the Bush Administration go through some of the motions to "seek" U.N. approval, but no serious real intent not to avoid a military conflict with Iraq was really avoided by the Bush Administration.

Despite this record of lies to justify a highly profitable war against a weakened Iraq, the Bush Administration is obsesesed with the Oil For Food program corruption. But cannot see it's own path of lies and falsehoods. It is much like the warning of Jesus to those who look for a "speck" in the eyes of others, but cannot see the "log" on their own eye. John Bolton was a party to all the nonsense of the Project For The New American Century, with it's many falsehoods and fearmongering nonsense against the weakened Iraq. Now John Bolton is like a "dirty mayor" claiming he'll reform city hall. With the positions of Vice President under Dick Cheney, former Halliburtin CEO, and PNAC member, Defense Secretary with Rumsfeld, a PNAC member, the Secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force, all controlled by defense contractor executives or consultants, the position of Secretary of State given to former Chevron Oil board of Directors member, Dr. Condoleeza Rice, and now the U.N. Ambassador post handed to John Bolton, another PNAC member, the defense contractor and oil industry control of the Bush government is nearcompete. 42 members of the Bush Administration are oil company executives, major stockholders or paid consultants. And 32 members of the Bush Administration have similar ties to defense contrators as either executives, paid consultants or major stockholders. Even Lynne Cheney, the wife of Dick Cheney held a major block of Lockheed stock, and stood to benefit from the start of a second war with Iraq.

Unlike about 50% of Americans that are still fooled by Bush, much of the world does not like Bush and now has equally negative feelings about the U.S., which compares badly with the higher respect for President Clinton and a far stronger U.S. image among world states in those days. And Bolton as U.N. Ambassador will certainly lower the U.S. respect in the 191 member U.N. organization. This will further isolate America from the rest of the world, as his confrontational military style and the world view of U.S. arrogance and corruption will be perfectly represented by the arrogant and confrontational style of Bolton. Rather than rebuild the U.S. image that the Bush Administration has effectively tattered, Bolton will further sink the U.S. image with many world states.

And Bolton tends to understand the world in old fashioned, almost 1950's "Joe McCarthy" Cold War terms. While some states just miles from the shores of America such as Haiti suffer from terrible poverty, where children scavenge garbage thrown in the public streets for food scraps, and religious organizations such as Feed The Children decry such poverty, Bolton only understands the region in terms of 1962 "missile crisis" Cold War, Cuba. Bolton has hardly advanced his thought beyond this logic level. He is a primitive Cold War thinker, who offers no compassionate or advanced logic on poverty issues in the developing world, only a militaristic attitude of Cold Warism against Cuba.

The only fortunate thing about the Democrats and some Republicans delaying a vote on Bolton this long is that six party international talks on the serious issues of North Korean nuclear arms and an EU effort to prevent Iran from nuclear energy abuse into a weapons program are now well under way. If Bolton had been confirmed months ago, these international efforts may have fallen apart and the U.S. have lost additional world clout with Bolton's confrontational style, and the nuclear threat from both countries far more serious than it is right now. The delay in the Bolton vote may have prevented a nuclear conflict with North Korea and Iran, as international efforts forged ahead, with U.S. support to prevent the worst possible outcomes. But for continued or future crisises, Bolton is not a helpful factor.

Bolton will not elevate the image of the United States, or do much to bring together the world community behind efforts of the United States. Instead it will promote more seperate foreign policy by the EU and othe states and make the the United States more irrevelant as a factor of main world foreign policy. Bolton's "walruslike" appearance and arrogant personality will put just the wrong sort of face on America's role in world affairs and encourage more and more of 191 U.N. members to follow their own paths, not America's . Next to the Iraq War quagmire mistake, Bolton's efforts at the U.N. will backfire and further hurt both Bush and the U.S., yet you couldn't get see that in the face of Bush today. Bush was completely intoxicated in his own self-righteousness today when he announced the recess appointment of John Bolton to the U.N. today.