Bush names hardliner as UN envoy

[eek.]

Here come the buckeroos. yee-hah!

He was excluded from talks on North Korea's nuclear
programme after trading insults with the country's ruler, Kim Jong-Il.

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=629 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD colSpan=3>Bush names hardliner as UN envoy

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Bolton has been a tough critic of the United Nations

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA -->US President George W Bush has named Undersecretary of State John Bolton as his choice to be US ambassador to the United Nations.

Mr Bolton, currently the top US arms control expert, is known to be a harsh critic of the UN.

His appointment was quickly criticised by opposition Democrats, who said the move sent out "all the wrong signals".

Mr Bolton must be confirmed by the US Senate before he can succeed John Danforth, who retired in January.

His nomination was announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who described him as a "tough-minded diplomat" who "knew how to get things done".

His track record, she said, was proof of his commitment to multilateral action and reform of the UN.

But Senator John Kerry, defeated in last year's presidential election, asked: "Why would [President Bush] choose someone who has expressed such disdain for working with our allies?"

'No such thing as UN'

BBC state department correspondent Jonathan Beale says Mr Bolton's confirmation hearing in the Senate is likely to be stormy.

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</TD><TD class=sibtbg> The president and I have asked John to do this work because he knows how to get things done


Condoleezza Rice

<!-- S ILIN -->Profile: John Bolton
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He has been a leading hawk on Iran, Iraq and North Korea, admired by many Republicans and neo-conservatives, but not seen as particularly close to former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

He has in the past been quoted as saying there is no such thing as the United Nations.

At the UN, diplomats gave the appointment a cautious welcome.

"I hope that once he is here he will have a deeper perception of what the UN is about," said Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya.

A spokesman for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said: "We have nothing against people who hold us accountable."

'Tough-minded diplomat'

Mr Bolton has recently been involved in multilateral talks with North Korea over its nuclear programme.

He has often accused UN bodies of not taking a tough enough stance against nations such as Iran and North Korea.

He was excluded from talks on North Korea's nuclear programme after trading insults with the country's ruler, Kim Jong-Il.

But the US administration says Mr Bolton will work well at the UN.

According to Ms Rice, he will be a "strong voice for reform", while also helping "to build a broader base of support" for the UN in the US.

Mr Bolton has been undersecretary of state for arms control and international security since May 2001.

Before that, he held a variety of senior positions in the State and Justice departments under Republican administrations.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4326943.stm <!-- E BO -->


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[eek.]

Bush the International statesman strikes again!

:lolBIG:

John Bolton, the nominee and a former undersecretary of state
for arms control, has built a reputation for public disdain for
international treaties and organisations, including the UN.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1432701,00.html

He sounds like he could be pretty entertaining.

Mr Bolton's nomination, which is likely to be the subject of a bitter

confirmation fight in the Senate, is potentially bad news for British

diplomats at the UN. Their Washington colleagues dreaded dealing with him, because of his
sometimes blustering manner and his vigorous opposition to international
conventions Britain supports, such as the international criminal court,
the comprehensive test ban treaty and the anti-ballistic missile ban.

 

[eek.]

breaking news...

...reports are coming in that his internet posting handle is GAMEFACE

arty:

 

[stucco43]

:lolBIG:

 

[Shotgun]

Anyone that pisses off North Korea gets an A from me. I'm sure the UN isn't happy with this choice. The Oil-for Food scam, pedophilia rings run by the 'peacekeepers', widespread corruption, cronyism, sexual harassment, and coddling to dictators are all in danger now. Goodbye status quo.

 

[xpanda]

Bolton is another member of the PNAC and was a signatory to the now-famous letter to Clinton in 1998 urging him to take out Saddam.

While the neocons have been quiet of late, their fearless leader has been bringing more and more of them into the fold. Good on ya', Georgie.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

This appointment is like sending an atheist to counsel Catholics on birth control. I think we can all imagine how that would turn out.

widespread corruption, cronyism, sexual harrassment, and coddling to dictators are all in danger now.

Get rid of the UN, let the US run the world unfettered and all of these things will be in the past? Okey dokey, there, pooper doo.

 

[919]

Anyone that pisses off North Korea gets an A from me. I'm sure the UN isn't happy with this choice. The Oil-for Food scam, pedophilia rings run by the 'peacekeepers', widespread corruption, cronyism, sexual harassment, and coddling to dictators are all in danger now. Goodbye status quo.

wow...i could have sworn you were talking about the Bush White House...

 

[Shotgun]

This appointment is like sending an atheist to counsel Catholics on birth control. I think we can all imagine how that would turn out.

I don't like that analogy. Naming Bolten to the UN is more like sending a Catholic to tell a wayward priest that molesting kids is wrong. The UN will have a choice to make; choose wrongly and the 'Catholic' will quit the church.

Get rid of the UN, let the US run the world unfettered and all of these things will be in the past? Okey dokey, there, pooper doo.

Life would be grand then wouldn't it? Just a note though; if the US wanted to run the world unfettered the UN would be the last thing to stop us. The people here care far more about what Canada, Britian, Japan, China and Australia think than what Kofi Annan and his gang of thieves believe.

I would hope other countries might be offended by the corruption going on in the UN; are you letting your fear of American hegenomy blind you to what is happening there?

 

[xpanda]

I don't like that analogy. Naming Bolten to the UN is more like sending a Catholic to tell a wayward priest that molesting kids is wrong. The UN will have a choice to make; choose wrongly and the 'Catholic' will quit the church.

Bollocks. Your good Catholic believes in the entity upon which the Priest based his life -- it's only his actions he disagrees with. Bolton and his other neocon penpals don't believe in the UN to begin with. They fully believe in American withdrawal from the UN and a de facto American World Order.

I would hope other countries might be offended by the corruption going on in the UN; are you letting your fear of American hegenomy blind you to what is happening there?

Two things:
1. I don't think the US (or 90% of countries out there) is any less corrupt than the UN. In fact, it may be moreso. Certainly her impact is far greater.
2. I believe a big chunk of what is wrong with the UN is it's capitulation to American demands and the very fact that it can do nothing to stop her.

The UN is largely a debating society ... but not simply because the US said so but because the US has contributed to making it so. Is your disdain for the UN blinding you to the global realities of American hegemony? Corruption and power are virtually synonymous, as you well know.

I would rather live in a world with a corrupt UN where there is at least some degree of balance, than live in a world run by a corrupt US where the rest of us have zero say, despite your cute attempt to pretend any of you care what we think. (Which was very nice, btw, just not believable these days.)

 

[stucco43]

here's another slim ball

Negroponte Nomination
Bemoaned

By Tim Rogers
Tico Times Nicaragua Correspondent
trogers@ticotimes.net

GRANADA – U.S. President George W. Bush's Feb. 17 nomination of John Negroponte as the United States' first National Intelligence Director is turning heads – and stomachs – in Nicaragua, a country all too familiar with this former Cold War warrior's human-rights track record.

While the mainstream U.S. media has largely whitewashed Negroponte's dark past in Central America (“[Negroponte's] entire life has been a lesson in quiet and measured diplomacy,” Robin Roberts, of ABC's Good Morning America, cheerfully reported on Feb. 18), many Nicaraguans who remember him from when he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s are being less kind in their assessment of the newest Bush appointee.

<TABLE width=200 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD height=198>

</TD></TR><TR><TD height=36>BACK to the Future? John Negroponte and George W. Bush.
Tim Sloan/AFP

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>“Negroponte is one of the leading terrorists at the service of U.S. expansionism,” Father Miguel D'Escoto, Nicaragua's former Minister of Foreign Relations under the Sandinista government, told The Nica Times this week. “His nomination is further evidence that Bush is one of the principal terrorists in the world.”

NEGROPONTE, 65, was the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985, during which time he helped to carry out the U.S.-sponsored counterrevolutionary war in Nicaragua, which claimed some 30,000 lives during the ‘80s.

Negroponte reportedly oversaw the training of Contra rebels at Honduras' El Aguacate Airbase, a secret detention and torture center where the corpses of 185 people – including two U.S. citizens – were uncovered in 2001, according to human rights group Equipo Nizkor.

The ambassador was also allegedly involved with Honduras' notoriously brutal Battalion 3-16 death squad, which kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of Hondurans in the early ‘80s. According to a 1995 investigation by the Baltimore Sun, Battalion 3-16 used “shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves.”

The Baltimore Sun also reported that Rick Chidester, a former Negroponte aide in Honduras, said he had been ordered to remove allegations of torture and executions from his draft of the 1982 human rights report on Honduras. The omission served to justify an increase in U.S. military aid to that Central American country from $4 million to $77.4 million during Negroponte's tenure there.

NEGROPONTE'S actions in supervising the U.S.' war against Nicaragua were condemned as an “unlawful use of force” by the World Court, in a judgment backed by two U.N. Security Council resolutions and vetoed by the United States.

While Negroponte's grisly past in Central America was the topic of heated debate in the U.S. Senate, following Negroponte's 2001 nomination to the post of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, ultimately it did not block his confirmation.

Negroponte, the current U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, has consistently denied any knowledge of Honduran death squad activity during his tenure there, and he was never called in as a defendant in the Iran-Contra Hearings.

ALTHOUGH Negroponte has now survived three Senate confirmations since his post in Honduras, his recent nomination to the post of U.S. Intelligence Director, where he would oversee 15 U.S. intelligence agencies, has raised new fears in Central America of a return to aggressive U.S. policies of the past.

“The naming of Negroponte by George W. Bush is consistent with a policy of terror and imperialist expansionism characterized by (Bush's) government,” charged Celia Medrano, the former director of the Central American Human Rights Commission. “Negroponte is being positioned as a strategic piece in the U.S.' game of global domination. Nothing good can come of this.”

Tómas Borge, the only surviving founder of the Sandinista National Liberation Front and former Minister of the Interior, told The Nica Times this week that Negroponte “is the perfect politician to carry out the U.S.' politics of global domination, international repression, foreign occupation and destabilization.”

Borge, who was in charge of domestic security policies during the war against the Contra rebels in the 1980s, added sardonically: “I would like to congratulate Bush for picking the perfect man for the job.”

SOME Nicaraguans remember Negroponte fondly.

Adolfo Calero, the former head of the northern front Contras, remembers Negroponte “with much respect” as an ambassador who was “very prepared” and politically savvy.

Calero told The Nica Times this week that Negroponte was his “contact point” with the U.S. government during the Contra war. Calero said Negroponte set up several meetings in Honduras between him and U.S. congressmen and members of the U.S. National Security Agency in the 1980s.

The former Contra and Nicaraguan congressman said his relationship with Negroponte was positive because their interests “coincided.” Calero qualifies the U.S. ambassador's nomination as intelligence czar as a “definite positive.”

BUT most seem to view Negroponte's nomination as the next step in an Orwellian script.

“How much longer can the world allow the rogue behavior of the United States?” lamented Father D'Escoto, the Maryknoll priest-turned revolutionary. “The United States is the biggest lie ever; it is nothing of what it claims to be. It is a sad, sad, sad situation.”

​

 

[Woody0]

...reports are coming in that his internet posting handle is GAMEFACE

ROTFLMFAO.