Dear Right Web Readers:
It's not been a good week. Michael Chertoff was confirmed
as Homeland Secretary, John Negroponte named to be the first Director of
National Intelligence, and most recently John Bolton was nominated as the new
UN Ambassador.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This Week on
the Right
Rabid
Anti-Multilateralist Nominated as UN Ambassador
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the
president’s nomination of John Bolton to be the next U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations. As George W. Bush's undersecretary of State for arms control
and international security, Bolton served as the administration's designated
treaty killer.
Since his State Department appointment
(which was opposed by Secretary of State Colin Powell), Bolton's reputation as
a rabid opponent of international agreements and loose-lipped critic of foreign
regimes has become the stuff of legend, at times hampering the State
Department's ability to undertake negotiations.
In July 2003, during the run up to the
six-nation talks with North Korea, Bolton described Korean head of state Kim
Jong Il as a "tyrannical dictator" of a country where "life is a
hellish nightmare." North Korea responded in kind, saying that "such
human scum and bloodsucker is not entitled to take part in the talks. ... We
have decided not to consider him as an official of the U.S. administration any
longer, nor to deal with him." The State Department sent a replacement for
Bolton to the talks.
Bolton's penchant for going off
half-cocked extends well beyond North Korean issues. Some notable examples:
- At a 1994 panel discussion sponsored
by the World Federalist Association, Bolton claimed, "There's no such thing as
the United Nations," saying that ''if the U.N. secretary building in New York
lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.''
- During the July 2001 global U.N.
conference on small arms and light weapons, Bolton told delegates that the
United States was not only opposed to any agreement restricting civilian
possession of small arms, it also didn't appreciate "the promotion of
international advocacy activity by international or non-governmental
organizations." Bolton's delegation was accompanied by that distinguished
American NGO the National Rifle Association.
- In 1998, when he was senior vice
president of the American Enterprise Institute, Bolton described the
International Criminal Court (ICC) as "a product of fuzzy-minded romanticism
[that] is not just naïve, but dangerous."
- Bolton told the Wall Street Journal that signing the letter informing
the U.N. that Washington was renouncing the Rome Treaty to create the ICC "was
the happiest moment of my government service."
- Regarding efforts to add a verification proposal to the
bioweapons convention, Bolton told colleagues in 2001, "It's dead,
dead, dead, and I don't want it coming back from the dead."
See Right Web Profile:
John Bolton online at: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/bolton/bolton.php
John Negroponte:
Policy Hack or Intelligence Reformer
By Tom Barry
(The article below is excerpted from a Right Web
Analysis, whose complete version can be found at: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2005/0503negroponte.php
)
The CIA has long been caught in the crossfire from the left and the right.
Human rights critics and left-center internationalists have charged that the
CIA has engineered coups and trained paramilitary units. On its right flank,
the agency has been accused by militarists, old guard conservatives, and
neoconservatives of dangerously underestimating threats to U.S. national
security and of being permeated with liberals, Arabists, and socialists.
The CIA has also faced fire from forces inside government that have been
critical of the CIA’s “threat assessments” and “national intelligence
estimates”—including militarists in Congress and the Pentagon, other
intelligence agencies such as the National Reconnaissance Office, and even the
President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). Hawks inside and
outside the administration have, since the late 1940s, teamed up in campaigns
to emasculate, sideline, and control the CIA.
At the start of the second Bush administration, hawks—in Congress, the
neocon think tanks, and the Pentagon—can point to two major achievements in
their campaign to seize command of the government’s intelligence apparatus.
First was the appointment of Porter Goss (R-FL), the former chairman of the
House Intelligence Committee and a longtime ally of Vice President Cheney, to
head the CIA and direct its reform. Second was the nomination of John
Negroponte to be the first Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
Negroponte comes to the new position with many assets, including his wide
experience and his many accomplishments in implementing diverse U.S. foreign
and military policy strategies. There is, however, a major difference between
being an effective instrument of bad U.S. policy and providing good
intelligence for good policymaking.
Critics charge that Negroponte has—both as a member of the National Security
Council and during his various ambassadorships—covered up damaging information
so as to further bad policies. Melvin Goodman, a former CIA official, warned:
“Negroponte is tough enough. The question is: Is he independent enough?”
Referring to his history of covering up human rights abuses in Honduras,
Goodman said: “I think of the role of intelligence in telling truth to power”
and then Negroponte’s appointment “doesn’t fit.”
The potential power of the new intelligence czar will likely be determined
by how well he works with the inner circle of the foreign policy team. This
team—led by Vice President Cheney, DOD Secretary Rumsfeld, and Deputy DOD
Secretary Wolfowitz—dominated the national security, foreign policy, and
intelligence policies of the first Bush administration.
One sign of the power of the new DNI office will be Negroponte’s ability to
assert control over the budgets and directors of the various intelligence
agencies, particularly those that reside within the Pentagon and the rump
intelligence operations created by Rumsfeld and associates.
But it will be his independence as an arbiter of good intelligence, not his
ability to assert power over the policy process, that will determine if
Negroponte is really a director of national intelligence—or instead just
another policy hack turning out daily intelligence briefings and national
intelligence estimates that serve predetermined policy agendas.
See Right Web Profile: John Negroponte: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/negroponte/negroponte.php
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Profiles
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Bradley Foundation grantees benefit from the principle of trickle-down
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Republican Institute, Heritage Foundation, Freedom House, Ethics and Public
Policy Center, among most other leading right-wing policy institute and
think tanks.
Right Web Profile Bradley
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right-wing USA Next, founded by mass-mail guru Richard Viguerie, aims to
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Right Web Profile USA
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Together Working closely with leading neoconservatives, the U.S.
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Right Web Profile U.S.
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- Washington’s Man in Latin
America Roger Noriega’s steady climb through the ranks of U.S.
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rather on a willingness to do what’s necessary to defend U.S. elite
interests abroad. In many instances, those actions have included shady
dealings of questionable legality and morality.
Right Web Profile Roger Noriega
Featured
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- Anti-Islamist Crusader: Daniel
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Right Web Analysis Anti-Islamic Crusade Gets Organized
- Civil Liberties Be Damned In
keeping with the pattern of other Bush appointments, Chertoff has proved
his loyalty to Bush—and to the Republican Party—as a storm trooper in the
failed war on terrorism at home and abroad.
Right Web Analysis New Homeland Security Czar’s Legal Dragnet
Letters From
Our Readers
(Editors Note: We encourage feedback and comments, which can be sent for
publication through our feedback page, at: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/form_feedback.html.
Thank you.)
Re: Neocons and Liberals Together Again
My comment is on your reply to Michael de Socio, with whom I am not
acquainted, regarding the alleged Trotskyite (why not "Trotskyist,"
the term Trotskyists themselves use?) origins of the neo-cons. Your
"evidence" consists of references to Irving Kristol and James
Burnham. I am familiar with the fact of Burnham's membership in the Trotskyist
movement during the late 1930's (less so with Irving Kristol, but I'll assume
for the sake of discussion that he belonged to the same groups as Burnham
during these years).
What you do not say is that this group broke with Trotskyism ca. 1939 and began
a gradual rightward drift to the point where people like Burnham were already
associated with the political right by the early 1960's. 1939 is a very long
time ago, and this handful of former Trotskyists have had plenty of time to
jettison any ideas that they may have had when, in their youth, they were
Trotskyists. So what if Irving Kristol was a Trotskyist in his youth? What
would be more interesting would be proof that WILLIAM Kristol, far more active
in neocon circles than Irving, had ever been a Trotskyist. And that I very much
doubt.
Rarely do these references to the alleged Trotskyist origins of the neocons try
to show that there are intellectual connections with Trotskyism in their
current ideas. It would be quite a leap to get from Trotsky's support of a
global bottom-up workers and peasants movement, supporting the
self-determination of peoples, against international capitalism, to what the
neocons represent today, operating at the very command center of American
imperialism. And how do you square the respect that today's neocons themselves
claim for conservative political theorist Leo Strauss with the alleged Trotsky
connection? I can't fathom what points of agreement there would have been
between Strauss and Trotsky.
If the connection between the neocons and Trotskyism is supposed to be the
ability to hew to a vision and organize over the long haul to bring it
about--something the neocons have succeeded in doing by joining with Reagan
Republicans, making unprincipled blocs with the religious right, and exploiting
the fearful reaction to September 11, this is rather different from the record
of Trotskyism. In some of its variants it has occasionally been successful in
fostering the united front approach of protest movements, say, in organizing
several of the massive antiwar demonstrations of the Vietnam war era. But
the very Trotskyist organizations that were so successful then lost vitality
and split into smaller grouplets when the '60's-early '70's radicalization
waned.
- Jan Garrett
Re: Is Iran Next?
Unfortunately, I believe Iran is the real prize for this
Zionist neocon agenda. Iran is the only country Israel fears in that region
and with a sovereign militarily capable Iran you will never have a secure Israel.
Iraq was just a stepping stone. However, it turned out to be a little
more of a headache than was expected. I always thought they were going to
try and hit Syria next. However, we can't be bogged down in Iraq and Syria.
Therefore, they will try and go after the real prize, Iran and skip Syria.
Expect a tremendous PR campaign and whole a lot of lies and
misrepresentation if they do try and go down this route.
- Irfan A. Khan <
