John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is one of two Americans who have been nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
Last year, Democrats and a few Republicans refused to confirm Bolton to the U.N. post, forcing President Bush to resort to a recess appointment.
Bolton and Kenneth R. Timmerman were formally nominated by Sweden’s former deputy prime minister Per Ahlmark, for playing a major role in exposing Iran’s secret plans to develop nuclear weapons.
And, of course, for a mustache that—in a fit of twitchy bravado and finger-strumming impatience—once sweated a Syrian diplomat into literally crapping his Italian silk pants.
John—and especially Regis, his straight-talking mustache—deserves the honor, if for nothing more than bringing some decidedly manly, agressive attributes back to the peace process. Because let’s face it: you can’t sip aperitifs and talk your way out of every crisis, no matter how much the left insists that the pen is mightier than the sword (even while they try to jam it into your spine the moment you shake hands and turn your back).
The point being that sometimes you just have cry freedom and let slip the bristling lip marmot of war, and let the guy on the other side of the table know that—should push come to shove—you’re willing to set that thing loose on him like Pinky the cat on the exposed jewels of a disingenuous animal control huckster trying to pass off feral for cuddly.
And here’s more, from the WSJ (subscription only):
Kenneth Timmerman has for 20 years exposed Iran’s nuclear intentions. In books, reports, speeches, articles and private meetings he has told us of specific detail as well as the big picture  a full-fledged, official plan to game the system of international safeguards. His latest book, “Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran,†lays this out in chilling detail; and it was his report for the Wiesenthal Center in 1992 that first detailed Iran’s ties to Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan.
John Bolton, former undersecretary of state, has with unusual energy tried to find ways to counter this threat. Friends and foes agree  he never gives up. He has repeatedly underlined the threat of Iran pursuing two paths to nuclear weapons: One is the use of highly enriched uranium, achieved by thousands of centrifuges, which Iran has developed and tested. A large buried facility at Natanz is intended to house up to 50,000 centrifuges. Iran resumed activities there just four weeks ago (in direct defiance of the IAEA). The second is through plutonium. Mr. Bolton knows that a heavy-water production plant and the Bushehr light-water reactor can be exploited as cover for sensitive nuclear fuel cycle activities. He says another “unmistakable indicator†of nuclear intentions is Iran’s habit of “repeatedly lying to and providing false reports to the IAEA.â€Â
The danger is even more serious as Iran is a leading sponsor of terrorism. Mr. Bolton, now U.S. ambassador to the U.N., is also a father of the Proliferation Security Initiative, an international effort to interdict shipments of WMD components, materials and the ballistic missiles needed to deliver them. Thanks to this PSI, the U.S. and others managed to seize centrifuge components en route to Libya in 2003. This led to the breakup of the network of A.Q. Khan, mastermind of the proliferation business in recent years.
European leaders have become a bit more active than before when supporting united efforts to prevent Iran from going nuclear. But there is still a sense of wishful thinking around them. Don’t they understand that Iran’s messianic President Ahmadinejad is serious when he says “wipe Israel off the map� Appeasing fanatics does not work. We have learned that already in the last century. The work of John Bolton and Kenneth Timmerman provide stark reminders of that most important lesson of history.
—And exposes yet again the hyperpartisan nature of our own political left, who blocked Bolton’s appointment after insisting he would destroy the very fabric of diplomacy we as a civilization have spent years stitching together—largely as a way to drape over many of the world’s outrages in the happy and colorful patterns of a Benetton sarong…
(thanks to Dave Price; more from Bryan Preston)
update: Thanks also to Colossus, who points me to Reynolds’ quip: “Not bad for a guy who couldn’t get confirmed. . . .”
Of course, prepare yourself for the immediate reminder from some of the gotcha crowd on left about how “wingnuts” have expended enormous energy discrediting the Nobel Peace Prize by pointing to some recent recipients—from terror mastermind Yasser Arafat to terror apologist and would-be uber-nannystatist Jimmy Carter.
The response to such a predictable AHA! should be this: Nobody ever said the committee couldn’t reverse course and maybe begin rewarding deserving nominees again.
Who knows? Maybe all it took was 5 years of Bush’s insistence on the righteousness of the liberal democratic message to remind the world that being sweet-talked by oily despots and their enablers is not the same as bearing witness to the promotion of “peace.”
But, but, but, Chimpy McHaliburton picked him. They must be talking about some other John Bolton. Maybe Michael Bolton? Yeah, he’s a swell guy. They must be talking about him.
You mean these lefties?
-check the list out -not exactly a Code Pink roll call.
..nor a list of pissants on the Roger Simon teat either…
Bolton is a Nobel nominee; on February 17 we’ll find out from a tape what Saddam did with his WMD; the Pentagon is about to release documents that show Saddam trained at least 8000 Islamist terrorists beginning a year before Bush took office; and the world is uniting behind us to confront Iran…
Gosh, it’s almost as if the dumbest, lyingest president we’ve ever had were being vindicated on every front.
Dude, still using VGA? Get a flat-panel and discover the beauty of 800 x 600 resolution.
Umm…marmot. Lip marmot.
What’s more, Bolton was nominated without murdering four people in cold blood.
I wonder what Regis will be wearing to this grand event?
Tom W., I hadn’t thought about it like that, but I am reminded of November of 2004 when one of my professors said: “Bush wins re-election. Red Sox win the world series. Arafat’s dead. Fallujah is retaken. I should buy a lottery ticket!!!”
Wow, I read your headline, then the story, and realized that I don’t have a clue any more how the world works.
El Baradei gets a Nobel for protecting Islamists, now Bolton is nominated for….oh, I give up.
Almost.
Jeff,
Does it not strike you as rather interesting that these are the two US nominees in a time when Bolton and Regis are in the honcho seat at the UN and the Iranian thing is getting referred to the UN. It’s like the Nobel folk are telling Iran to go get stuffed.
Whee!
BRD
Marmet? Slartibartfast thinks it marmot. I was thinking marmoset.
I think we need clarification.
weSomewhere George Voinovich sits in a corner and gently weeps.
Lucky bastard. Where does one attend school to find such professors? The day after Bush was re-elected, my poor professor in the morning lecture looked like a man who’d just been given six weeks to live.
But, really, this Bolton nomination is fantastic–and to a progressive for whom the UN is the last relict of Western culture to stir the ghost of piety in his cynical old soul, I imagine it must be like having Satan take a piss in the baptismal font.
Nice link, Josh, lmfao.
I understand the lawyers feelings though, they realized they were dealing with kindred spirits:
I guess innocent men all look like lawyers?
B. Moe,
Watching Gonzalez, I can see how you’d get that impression.
Oh, Josh, knock it off. If you are still pretending the NSA “domestic spy” program lawbreakers are in the administration and the NSA, you’re a mere ideologue.
Partisanship aside, this is a separation of powers battle. What’s sad about it is that certain folks chose an issue of national security to stage this pissing contest.
Very choice. Wow!!
God bless Per Ahlmark. Who knew?
If you read B. Moe’s comment, it’s pretty clear I was disparaging Gonzales’ ability to be forthright on this matter, not expressing an opinion on the legality of the program. We’ll never know whether the program was legal or not because the administration won’t release the details necessary to determine whether the surveillance was covered by FISA (I know some think the AUMF and inherent Art. II authority trump FISA but I find those arguments rather flimsy). To say “this is just a separation of powers battle” misses the point, because the precise contours of the separation of powers doctrine is a Constitutional question and therefore a legal one.
Aw f*** man, natesnake beat me to it.
let slip the bristling lip marmot of war
Mmmmm…
Needs work.
For one thing, Marmots are fairly cowardly critters. Not a whole lotta bristling goin’ on.
Well, it seems to me that “forthrightness” bumps rather naturally against “highly classified” in a way that is perfectly forgivable.
Sorry you find the Constitution flimsy on the matter of CiC powers—or on the ability of Congress to pass legislation denying the President his CiC powers.
The rest of your response is silly. The Constitution final. And it gives the President his authority. That Congress wishes to say the President must ask them specifically to sign off on that authority is an encroachment on the Executive.
I doubt FISA would withstand Constitutional scrutiny, but SCOTUS doesn’t like to interfere with separation of powers questions. And the Executive generally likes to play nice with the Congress. So we may never know. Which in itself suggest that this fits precisely the contours of a separation of powers issue.
By continuing your line of argument, you just continue to play the part of ideologue.
mojo —
Go mark it down in your “lines Jeff wrote that I could have written better” journal.
Me, I’ll just say this: you don’t know Bolton’s lip marmot.
natesnake: Anna Nichole Smith.
alex: Not a piss, a dump.
What about Dick Cheney’s cock? Seems like I read somewhere on here that it and Regis were a team.
Since my comment was about your link regarding Gitmo, I would be careful about disparaging an ability to be forthright. But that is just me.
While I’m tickled that John bolton was nominated, and more tickled that he does seem to be doing a good job, I still hold to the view that the Nobel Peace Prize, and the process for nominated people to them, is bullshit.
LMAO That cat was fucking airborne!
That was insane. Hope he got adopted to a farm and is terrorizing the local mouse population; hate to see that kind of predatory skill going to waste. Thanks for the link.
Josh:
I never understood the concept that it was better for 100 guilty men to go free than for one innocent man be jailed or executed.
It’s clearly better for one innocent man to be jailed or executed than for 100 guilty men to go free because those guilty men will continue to wreak havoc on the rest of us. You have to weigh one man’s tragedy against the tragedy of thousands being victimized by the 100 free guilty men who will keep on committing crimes.
It’s a bummer for the innocent man, sure. I’d hate to be that innocent man. But I think that at this point we’re far beyond the ivory-tower, beard-stroking, theoretical aspects of our situation.
Lincoln suspended habeus corpus and put some of his critics under house arrest for the duration of the Civil War. We killed over 15,000 innocent French civilians on D-Day. This is a fight for our survival, and it’s time that people grow up and accept that harsh measures must be taken, and mistakes will be made.
Wow. Convenient, that. I’m sure our spooks are only spying on the guilty, though. I mean, look at the no-fly list: everyone on it is objectively a terrorist or Islamofascist sympathizer, right? So the domestic spying stuff probably works the same way. No need for any of that quaint “Fourth Amendment” stuff.
No, we didn’t. But even if we had, um, are you suggesting that the ends justify the means? Did we have to destroy the (French) village in order to save it? To safeguard our security, are you saying we have to give up essential liberty? ‘Cause that’s fine by me. I bet the Founding Fathers imagined a day when the tedious drudgery of the separation of powers would have to be set aside because of the awesome threat posed to this Republic by a few dozen Saudi nutcases. Who lured us into invading Iraq.
You know, I was about to launch into an explanation of how the fourth amendment wouldn’t apply under certain conditions yada yada yada…and then it hit me. Why bother? When you begin w/ the assertion that the foreign surveillance was illegal, sneaky, and inappropriate, you are NATURALLY going to reject as “convenient” what the govt says is highly classified.
Nevermind that this idea of governmment is closer to an X-Files fantasy than a vast bureaucracy under which many many many people are doing their individual jobs. They are guilty, and so their unwillingness to publicly—on a televised hearing—reveal military secrets is PROOF of their perfidy. QED.
And really, who has time for such nonsense. I’d rather watch TV Land or something.
To safeguard our security, are you saying we have to give up essential liberty?
Because talking to overseas terror suspects (enemy spies) during wartime is an essential liberty.
You know, this is beyond tiresome.
Regis has quite a history:
Ace has the details
Yes we did. But of course you–like so many leftists–can’t admit that. Why? Because that would put you in an untenable position.
You undoubtedly support the D-Day invasion because you know it was justified. However, if you admit that this justified invasion cost the lives of between 15,000 and 20,000 innocent civilians, it would undercut your argument that Operation Iraqi Freedom was unjustified because it cost the lives of so many innocent civilians. In the real world, hard choices must be made.
No, I’m, um, saying that, um, mistakes are sometimes made, um, in the process of carrying out, um, justified missions. In the process of liberating millions, thousands were unavoidably killed.
See, I’m not a silly, irrelevant, knee-jerk critic who doesn’t even know his history but makes snide and brainless comments anyway because he thinks it’ll make him look all cool and world-weary, when in reality he just comes off looking like a jackass.
i love this line, jeff. i’ve been carping about how the dems seems to be trying to play “gotcha!” with something along the lines of “why didn’t you leak this earlier?” there’s a reason some things are classified. would they share their campaign strategies in public? i think not. and national security is less serious?
rto made the cryptic comment that he’s surprised about the info he gets even with his low level of clearance and what could be done with it “in the wrong hands.”
The next time Voiney gives us advice about the worldwide ramifications of something or other, it’s best to just ignore him.
Meanwhile, John Bolton’s ‘tache – often cited as the reason for his “brusque dealings with co-workers and underlings” – could not be reached for comment.
Regards,
St Wendeler
Another Rovian Conspiracy
I wonder what Regis will be wearing to this grand event?
Selma Hayek?
No, too foreign.
Maybe Jenifer Aniston, she needs some cheering up.
mojo —
Go mark it down in your “lines Jeff wrote that I could have written better†journal.
Hey! Was that a shot?
Ok, ok, so it’s not Shakespeare. I don’t think I could improve on it, though.
Yes, yes, I understand that’s your position. It’s just not well-supported, despite your “comprehensive sourcing” of links that don’t support the propositions for which they are cited. Your repeated insistence on its self-evident truth indicates who the ideologue is on this.