It's been curious this trend in the Bush Administration to put people in charge of organizations they had previously slammed.
Case in point is this Bolton fellow who had famously been slamming the United Nations for years. Yet, GW Bush has nominated him to be the U.N. Ambassador. Curious, that.
But there is interesting opposition happening in the nomination hearings.
Bolton's Fitness for UN Post Challenged at Hearing ( April 12 (Bloomberg) )
Carl Ford, former head of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research ... Bolton ``abuses his authority and power'' over subordinates. Ford, who described himself as a ``loyal Republican,'' said Bolton's conduct was one of the more memorable moments in his 30-year career in public service.
``Secretary Bolton chose to reach five or six levels below him in the bureaucracy, bring an analyst into his office and give him a tongue lashing,'' Ford said. ``He's a quintessential kiss up, kick down kind of guy'' whose conduct ``brings real question to my mind about his suitability for high office.''
... Ford said Bolton sought to have State Department analyst Christian Westermann and an unidentified CIA analyst fired after they refused to approve a Bolton speech in 2002 that they said contained unsupported intelligence about Cuba's biological weapons capability. Bolton was ordered to revise the speech.
... Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat, said the Westermann issue is important given intelligence failures surrounding the decision to war with Iraq in 2003.
The testimony suggests that Bolton ``is intimidating intelligence officers so that the facts will fit his positions, which is exactly what the debate was about with respect to the Iraqi war,'' Obama said. ``It is troubling in the extreme for us to brush that aside as something that is not significant.''
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