Monday, May 09, 2005

Excitable Boy, They All Said

For those who may think that John Bolton's issues are merely those of temperament, here's another example of how, behind that gruff facade, Bolton was actively undermining policies he didn't agree with:
As it turned out, administration policy that Bolton was articulating, reluctantly as he did not support it, is that the administration was communicating to Europe that while it suspected and predicted that the negotiation process between the EU and Iran would fail, the U.S. would not object to what was underway.
The wording of the once-read statement of policy by Bolton was carefully crafted so as to give the Europeans license, from the American point of view, to proceed with Iran -- without formally attaching a positive expectation from the U.S. about the process.
Bolton didn't like the policy, so he wouldn't hand out copies of it. And he would only read the statement once. . .fast.
This is behavior one might expect inside the Soviet Politburo rather than the U.S. State Department. Accountability is essential to our system of government; those who serve need to be trusted to carry out the policies adopted by the executive authorities who run the government and the legislative authorities who oversee the executive.
Now that accountability is being undermined on behalf of Bolton by an administration that thinks the U.S. Senate is not entitled to review materials that may document further examples of Bolton's contempt for established authority.

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