Bolton Knows America's Enemies - (yes indeed....right on the money!)

There has been a lot of fuss about what Under Secretary of State John Bolton did say or should not have said when he spoke to the Heritage Foundation a few years ago. Well, I know what he said because I was there. (See my write-up of the speech, "U.S. Says China, Russia, Cuba, Syria, Libya Abet Terrorism.") Bolton issued warnings about what America's enemies were up to. If his words are deemed "undiplomatic," it's because the mushy-mouthed striped-pants types at the State Department have a heart attack whenever they hear someone in their midst using plain English to stand up for America against its enemies.

More on that below. Right now, let's deal with the kinds of people lined up against confirming Bolton to be our ambassador to the United Nations.

Here's the short list, just a cross-section: Every terrorist; every terrorist-aiding communist ruler around the globe; every one-worlder on the planet; every Third World tinpot dictator; every globalist United Nations bureaucrat; every sixties-style loudmouth with a bullhorn; every left-wing elitist from the salons of Park Avenue, Georgetown and Beverly Hills; every embittered partisan out to undo the election results of last November; every America-hater here at home and in the far corners of the earth.

What do they have in common? Every one of them knows that John Bolton has his or her number.

So, why should anyone be surprised at the smear campaign going full tilt and nonstop since President Bush nominated him to be U.N. ambassador? The very notion that Bolton is not fit to be included in the deliberations of the pure high-minded councils of the United Nations is an Orwellianism that turns reality on its head.

Actually, John Bolton, backed by five former secretaries of state, is a brave, self-sacrificing soul to be willing to attempt to reform that cesspool of corruption on the East River. "Insider" diplomats there are not fit to shine John Bolton's shoes.

That goes, too, for the smear artists who sit on the Democratic side of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the two or three timid souls on the Republican side who run like scared rabbits every time Christopher Dodd, John Kerry, Joe Biden or Barbara Boxer looks at them cross-eyed.

Dodd has been pushing for normalization of relations with Fidel Castro's Communist Cuba for years. Ironic, given that it was his father, the late Senator Tom Dodd, who warned John F. Kennedy of the danger of Soviet missiles being shipped to Cuba weeks before JFK acted. Go figure. Maybe today's Senator Dodd remembers all the soccer games the old man missed and is out to discredit his legacy.

Kerry, of course, follows the pattern of most Democrat losers. Whenever the Republicans pull off a big win (and a three-and-a-half-million-vote margin is nothing to sneeze at) the losers set about the business of lecturing the winners on how to behave.

As for Boxer ... well, let's put it this way. Utterly humorless and, some say, intellectually challenged, the senator from the left coast showed her respect for the cheap shot when she accused Condoleezza Rice of lying on the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Nowhere did she mention that President Bush and Rice had depended not only on our own intelligence data, but also on intelligence from other countries, the United Nations and the opinions of many on the senator's side of the aisle.

In fact, Boxer herself said in November of 2002, "Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its commitment."

The rump section of the GOP side on the committee is represented by Lincoln Chaffee, Chuck Hagel and George Voinovich. Chaffee is a liberal who makes his late father, the moderate Senator John Chaffee, look like a conservative by comparison.

(Children are not meant to be carbon copies of their parents, but it appears these kids who follow in their dads' footsteps in the Senate have some kind of hang-up that only a psychologist can analyze. The only problem is their hang-ups are driving their policy, which makes it our business.)

Hagel and Voinovich saw how John McCain gets good press by straying off the GOP reservation, so they're apparently staking out positions with a message that says: "Hey, don't forget to pay attention to me. I'm a maverick too."

Victor Davis Hanson, a historian at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, has recently explored some fairly recent history on Boxer, Dodd and Biden.

Writing in the Washington Times, Hanson notes that Boxer rammed through special legislation favoring an Indian tribe that wanted a gaming franchise. And who do you suppose turned up later on the tribe's payroll as a consultant? The son of Senator Barbara Boxer. Pure coincidence, of course. And that same offspring of the senator was given a six-figure fee out of her publicly raised campaign funds.

Tom DeLay, of course, has been the subject of New York Times and Washington Post front pagers because his wife and daughter were paid out of campaign funds for work they did for the campaign. DeLay says they did honest work to earn the money, and that could well be the case with Boxer's son too. But why hasn't she been accorded the blaring headlines to match those of DeLay? Oh, excuse me, I forgot. He's a Republican, isn't he?

Dodd has suggested that Bolton's conduct – daring to challenge intelligence analysts whom he deemed to be incompetent – is indictable. But what about the Connecticut senator's conduct in "sponsoring unusual legislation for his own mega-dollar campaign donors" (to quote Hanson)? Dodd's input resulted in relaxed auditing, which made it easier for the likes of Arthur Anderson to escape legal accountability, with results that spelled disaster.

Biden's judgment was perhaps best reflected in his pronouncing the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan as being that of "a high-tech bully." His penchant for threats showed up when he told representatives of the airlines, "I will [hurt] you." As Hanson puts it, Biden's intellectual misrepresentations go all the way back to law school, and as we remember, the character issue derailed his 1988 presidential bid.

One can say we all make mistakes, but these same flawed lawmakers make no such allowance for those they grill before the committee. The Washington Times recently front-paged a story showing that committee Democrats were determined from day 1 to derail Bolton's nomination. From that starting point (shoot first and ask questions later), they sought to dig up dirt on the nominee.

The big brouhaha over John Bolton basically stems from the fact that he holds views that differ from the "enlightened wisdom" of the liberal establishment that hangs on to the old myth that the United Nations is the "last best hope of mankind," and thus immune from criticism. The American people know better. Recent polls show only 37 percent of them trust the U.N. – and this following decades of pro- U.N. propaganda morning, noon and night.

"My overall assessment, Mr. Bolton, is that you have nothing but disdain for the United Nations," Senator Boxer said at a hearing.

Of course, that is in tune with (coordinated with?) the Foreign Service careerists at the State Department. They are the "real State Department." They dismiss the views of presidents and their appointees (particularly conservatives) who try to implement policies that differ from their own "one world" outlook. Never mind that presidents are elected and they're not. They know better, you see.

Many of their ilk clashed with Bolton over such issues as the ABM treaty (which would have tied America's hands in defending itself), the anti-American International Criminal Court, and the Kyoto "Global Warming" treaty, which threatened to throw more than a million Americans out on the street without jobs.

Former Democratic Senator Zell Miller, in his book "A Deficit of Decency," calls the U.N. a "Useless Nuisance." That is on target, for starters. Some of us would almost settle for a U.N. that is no more than that, but its actions over the years clearly suggest that shrine before which they (figuratively) bow actually rises to the level of a danger. That is why America needs a gutsy ambassador like John Bolton to represent its interests.

It would be interesting to nail Boxer down on the question of whether she herself "disdains" the U.N.'s long list of damaging scandals including (but not limited to) the oil-for-food scam, sexual misconduct by its troops in Africa, and putting communist and bloodthirsty regimes (such as Syria's) on its Human Rights Commission. Are these not truly worthy of "disdain"?

That the knives of faceless State Department bureaucrats are out to get Bolton was again demonstrated when one of them anonymously told Newsweek that British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw complained to then Secretary of State Colin Powell that Under Secretary Bolton was being too tough regarding the nuclear weapons program. That was at a time when Britain, France and Germany had negotiated a deal on nuclear weapons with Iran. Shortly thereafter, Iran broke its word (surprise!) and Bolton's skepticism was vindicated.

Straw, by the way, denies he ever said any such thing. Apparently it was another anonymous cheap shot from the unaccountable bowels of State.

On April 18, a long list of citizens groups sent a letter to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar saying in part: "John Bolton is perhaps known by his enemies. When speaking in Seoul two years ago, Bolton truthfully called life in North Korea a ‘hellish nightmare' and described the hundreds of thousands of people Kim Jong-Il had ‘locked in prison camps with millions more mired in abject poverty, scrounging around for food.' As a result, the North Korean regime railed against Bolton. Unshaken by intimidation tactics, Bolton continues to speak eloquently and effectively against that country's tyranny."

This brings us to the Bolton speech of May 2002, which is the subject of current attacks by the "moral cowards" (a term used by Bolton's friend and former colleague Otto Reich) who want to bring him down. I covered that speech for NewsMax.

He told the gathering that China and Russia "are unquestionably the two largest sources" of weapons of mass destruction that end up in the hands of rogue nations that want to destroy the United States. It was at that meeting that he added Cuba, Libya and Syria to the list of terrorist nations, second only to the "axis of evil" of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. It was beyond him, the under secretary of state said, "how a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile-capable Iran is in Russia's national interest."

Bolton flatly rejected the Clinton administration report that Cuba did not represent a significant military threat to the U.S. Cuba, he said, had directed "aggressive intelligence operations against these United States" that kept Americans largely in the dark about Castro's communist tyranny. After all, the previous year, a Cuban agent working in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was exposed and arrested. And that's just one example of how this nation was lulled into complacency.

And here we come to the part of Bolton's remarks that has caused the Castro-trusting Dodds of the world to panic.

"The United States," he said, "believes that Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological research and development effort." He added that "Castro collaborates with other state sponsors of terror," and further that "Analysts and Cuban defectors have long cast suspicion on the activities conducted in these biomedical facilities."

The New York Times for April 24 did a long story noting that Christian P. Westerman (described by the Times as the State Department's "top expert on biological weapons") had wanted watered-down language on Cuba that reflected the "consensus" of State's own intelligence, the CIA, the DIA and the super-secret National Security Agency (NSA). If you're looking for consensus in government, you will get the metaphoric equivalent of a camel, i.e. a horse put together by a committee.

Bolton on that day, nearly eight months after 9/11, believed it was his duty to speak plainly about the dangers posed by an island just 90 miles from our shores. He did not believe the American people needed more mealy-mouthed gibberish.

I asked Bolton at the time at what point he believed all diplomacy with Havana was likely to be exhausted, given the potential threat there. Any thought of military action, he reminded the audience, is a matter for the Defense Department. His job at State was on the diplomatic side.

That is just one of many statements that should put to rest the notion that the man is something of a trigger-happy hothead.

Moreover, NewsMax has reported that CIA career officer Fulton Armstrong – a major critic of Bolton – has said America's anti-Castro policy can be traced to contributions from Cuban-Americans to the Republican Party. The very fact the people with that mindset are in our CIA should be a cause for sleepless nights on the part of many Americans.

As President Bush said the other night at his televised news conference, "It makes sense to put somebody who is skilled and who's not afraid to speak his mind at the United Nations." Adding that he had asked Bolton in the Oval Office whether he thought the United Nations was "important," Mr. Bush told reporters, "See, I didn't want to send somebody up there who said, ‘Well, it's not worth a darn; I don't think I need to go.' But he said, ‘No, it's important, but it needs to be reformed.'"

Reform is obviously what the U.N. needs. For that John Bolton is the man for this job. True reform requires an acknowledgment that much about the world body is worthy of "disdain."

What I'm more concerned about is this "abuse of power" pattern now being revealed.

Boxer sponsors legislation to help an Indian tribe who hires her son.

Dodd sponsors legislation to help out Arthur Anderson with fewer auditing regulations - and it ended in a disaster for Arthur Anderson.

Pelosi funneled illegal campaign contributions to the tune of a hundred grand to other Democrats from her PAC at a time she was seeking a leadership position in the House of Representatives. She was in effect buying support.

Reid: Reid, assured colleagues that his bill was a bipartisan measure to protect the environment and help the economy in America's fastest-growing state. What Reid did not explain was that the bill promised a cavalcade of benefits to real estate developers, corporations and local institutions that were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees to his sons' and son-in-law's firms, federal lobbyist reports show. The Howard Hughes Corp. alone paid $300,000 to the tiny Washington consulting firm of son-in-law Steven Barringer to push a provision allowing the company to acquire 998 acres of federal land ripe for development in the exploding Las Vegas metropolitan area."

This is in legislation sponsored and written by Harry Reid. He's writing Senate legislation that gets 300 grand from the Hughes corporation, ends up in his son-in-law's firm. "Barringer is listed in federal lobbyist reports as one of Hughes' representatives on the measure that his father-in-law introduced. Other provisions were intended to benefit a real estate development headed by a senior partner in the Nevada law firm that employs all four of Reid's sons — by moving the right-of-way for a federal power-transmission line off his property and onto what had been protected federal wilderness. The governments of three of Nevada's biggest cities — Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson — also gained from the legislation, which freed up tens of thousands of acres of federal land for development and annexation. All three were represented by Reid's family members who contacted his staff on their clients' behalf. The Clark County land bill, which was approved in a late-night session just before Congress recessed in October, reflects a new twist in an old game: These days, when corporations and other interests want to cement a vital relationship with someone in Congress, they're likely to reach out to hire a member of the family."

I love it when the democrats yell ABUSE OF POWER about the republicans - but it's not the republicans who are writing legislation to benefit their families.

And .. now we have the Kerry/Dorgan Amendment SA-399 which was added to the HR-1268 House Appropriations bill. An amendment to help hide criminal activity by other democrats. And .. what was that Kerry said about republicans - "they're a corrupt, lying bunch". Looks like Kerry was really talking about his own party.

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