Patting the wrists, rolling the eyes.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Hey, this is fun!

" . . . Whatever President Bush's motive, the fact remains that he has not sent the United Nations an ambassador so much as a poke in the eye. . . . "

See, our difference is very basic here. You would read that sentence as a slam on Bolton. I read it as a sign of his qualification. Not much use debating his characteristics if we haven't even settled on the requirements yet, i suppose.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by bilmore
See, our difference is very basic here. You would read that sentence as a slam on Bolton. I read it as a sign of his qualification. Not much use debating his characteristics if we haven't even settled on the requirements yet, i suppose.

I agree, our difference is very basic. I agree with you that Bolton rather blunt style is reflective of what the Administration wants here.

You think it's a good thing based on the theory that it'll give the UN the shakeup that it needs. I agree with you that the UN needs reform, but think that Bolton's affection for grenade-throwing is, to put it mildly, something of a minus for diplomats. I therefore have reconciled myself to this nomination, and plan to watch with some amusement weekly snippets to be played on Hannity and Colmes of, say, Bolton setting fire to the German Ambassador's office door.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Since I don't think bilmore is going to be particularly convinced by Gatti's use of Richard Cohen, maybe David Ignatius -- not exactly a liberal -- will help:

• Bolton's Biggest Problem
  
  By David Ignatius
  Friday, April 22, 2005; Page A17
  
  "My conscience got me," Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich said this week in explaining why he wanted to delay a vote on the Bush administration's nominee for U.N. ambassador, John Bolton. That's a sentence you don't hear often in Washington, and it suggests that there's more going on with the Bolton nomination than a mere partisan squabble.
  
  The problem with Bolton, in fact , is that he epitomizes the politicization of intelligence that helped produce the fiasco over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration has so far managed to evade any real accounting for its role in the Iraqi WMD blunder, letting the intelligence community take the hit. But the Bolton saga is a microcosm of that larger failure: It's the story of a policymaker who tried to pressure intelligence analysts into supporting WMD views that turned out to be wrong.
  
  I've read hundreds of pages of testimony gathered by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in its review of the Bolton nomination. It's a fascinating account -- not simply in its documentation of how Bolton tried to intimidate the analysts when he was undersecretary of state but in showing how the analysts refused to buckle under pressure. In that sense, it's a lesson in how to improve the performance of the intelligence community.
  
  The most damaging allegation about Bolton involves his 2002 efforts to prod the intelligence community to back his allegation that Cuba might be seeking to export weapons of mass destruction from a biowarfare program. In February 2002, he prepared a speech that, according to an unclassified Senate intelligence committee report, "contained a sentence which said that the U.S. believes Cuba has a developmental, offensive biological warfare program and is providing assistance to other rogue state programs."
  
  The problem was that Bolton's charges went well beyond what the intelligence community viewed as solid evidence. The agencies' cautious judgment, expressed in a 1999 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was still classified in 2002, was that Cuba had a "limited, developmental, offensive biological warfare research and development effort."
  
  Bolton wanted to sound the alarm about Cuba, regardless of what the NIE said. So he asked his chief of staff to submit his proposed language to the intelligence community for clearance. The request went to the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), where it was given to the chief biological weapons analyst, Christian Westermann. And there the battle was joined.
  
  To appreciate the story, it's important to see Bolton and Westermann as Washington archetypes. Bolton is a political appointee who has made his career delivering broadsides at think tanks. Westermann, by contrast, is a career man. He served 20 years in the Navy, including combat time, before joining INR as a weapons analyst. He took his job as an intelligence gatekeeper seriously.
  
  Westermann sent Bolton's proposed speech language about Cuban biowarfare efforts to the intelligence community for clearance the afternoon of Feb. 12, 2002. With it, he attached alternative language that in his view accorded better with the NIE. Westermann had frequently suggested similar changes for other colleagues and saw it as part of his job. But Bolton seemed convinced that it was a stab in the back. His chief of staff fired off an e-mail complaining about the alternative language and summoning the analyst to Bolton's office immediately. Westermann e-mailed back meekly that he had provided the same language a few months before for Secretary of State Colin Powell.
  
  Bolton was enraged when Westermann arrived: "He wanted to know what right I had trying to change an undersecretary's language. . . . And he got very red in the face and shaking his finger at me and explained that I was acting way beyond my position. . . . And so, he basically threw me out of his office and told me to get Tom Fingar up there," Westermann testified.
  
  Fingar at the time was acting head of INR and now has the job full-time. He testified that when he arrived, Bolton was still furious, saying that "he wasn't going to be told what he could say by a midlevel INR munchkin analyst," and "that he wanted Westermann taken off his accounts." To their immense credit, Fingar and his boss, INR chief Carl Ford, refused to cave to continuing pressure from Bolton to transfer Westermann. He's still on the job.
  
  And what about the Cuban biological weapons program that had Bolton so exercised? In 2004 the intelligence community revised its 1999 estimate because it was even less sure that Cuba had any such effort to develop offensive weapons of mass destruction. In other words, the mercurial, finger-wagging policymaker appears to have had it wrong, and the cautious analyst who refused to be intimidated had it right.

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by bilmore
See, our difference is very basic here. You would read that sentence as a slam on Bolton. I read it as a sign of his qualification. Not much use debating his characteristics if we haven't even settled on the requirements yet, i suppose.

There's a difference between Bolton and Jeanne Kirkpatrick or Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- both of whom who were intended by the presidents who appointed them (Nixon and Reagan) to do a little eye-poking at the UN. Bolton is an intended eye-poker who (based upon sworn testimony) seems to have some real issues with judgment and interpersonal relationships.

And the truth, perhaps.

[Spanky]

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/m...20050422.shtml

Mona Charen is one of my favorite conservative authors. Her book Useful Idiots was pretty good. It is interesting to contrast it with Treason by Ann Coulter. They both pretty much address the same subject. Where Mona's book is very straightforward, and gives credit where credit is due, Ann Coulter takes the position that Conservatives are absolutely right all the time and Democrats are always wrong. She edits quotes to reverse their meaning and leaves misleading footnotes to support her positions. In Coulter's book she paints McCarthy as a saint that was struggling for a good cause, who always did the right thing for the right reasons, and was wrongfully and evily brought down by the liberals. Mona ,on the other hands points out that there are a lot of Myths about McCarthy that everyone assumes that are true because they have been repeated so much, but she also points out some of McCarthy's flaws. Ann Coulter is just a screeching banshee, but Mona Charen is actually a responsible writer. But of course, Ann Coulter's books sell much better.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Spanky
Mona Charen is one of my favorite conservative authors.

Charen = analysis

Coulter = entertainment

No one should ever confuse the two.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by bilmore
Charen = analysis

Coulter = entertainment

No one should ever confuse the two.

The problem is that many conservatives do.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Spanky
The problem is that many conservatives do.

Real conservatives wouldn't read a woman's writing.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Spanky
The problem is that many conservatives do.

No way. Michael Moore told me conservatives can't read. And he uses footnotes, so I know he's always accurate.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by bilmore
No way. Michael Moore told me conservatives can't read. And he uses footnotes, so I know he's always accurate.

Mona Charen = Analysis

Ann Coulter = entertaiment

Michael Moore = pulp fiction

[Spanky]

If China invaded Taiwan, who thinks that the US would respond militarily?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Spanky
If China invaded Taiwan, who thinks that the US would respond militarily?

Fuck em. We carpet bomb a few cities, and they'll surrender.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Spanky
If China invaded Taiwan, who thinks that the US would respond militarily?

Why did everyone ignore my French post on this yeasterday? It seems nuts that France would give China an apparent green light.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
It seems nuts that France would give China an apparent green light.

And your point would be . . . ?

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Spanky
If China invaded Taiwan, who thinks that the US would respond militarily?

Me.