[NYTr] Serial Liar and Warhawk Bolton Snipes at Rice over Annapolis Mtg

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Israel doesn't have to express its own unreasonable and irrational
positions as long as they have proxies to do it for them, like the
unemployable John Bolton.  He opposes the conference completely, and
uses this to take some swipes at Rice -- who despite her miserable
record of failure was at least able to obtain Senate confirmation,
something Bolton never managed. But he's so much better at telling
whoppers than she is. Clifford May calls him an ex-diplomat who "pulls
no punches." True, he's a bully and a street-thug brawler who just
throws punches. But he's certainly no diplomat and never has been. He's
damn good at getting lots of press, however. Maybe it's that ridiculous
mustache. -NYTr]


McClatchy - Nov 26, 2007
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1126Rice1126.html

Summit key to Rice's legacy

Success at talks may overshadow earlier missteps

by Warren P. Strobel
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Condoleezza Rice became secretary of state almost three
years ago with strong support from President Bush, glamorous reviews in
the news media and high hopes from America's diplomats.

Since then, Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf has ignored her pleas
and imposed emergency rule, throwing a key counterterrorism ally into
turmoil.

In Russia, the country Rice prides herself on knowing best, she and
Bush appear to have misread President Vladimir Putin, who has restored
autocratic rule and his country's rivalry with America.

Her drive for Middle East democracy has stalled in Lebanon and
elsewhere, and other big issues, including the environment and
relations with East Asia, have been relegated to the back burner.

In her own State Department, Rice's concept of "transformational
diplomacy" is largely forgotten, a fanfare about better public
diplomacy has faded and morale is sinking. Rice is under fire for her
handling of staffing in Iraq, and the $740 million U.S. Embassy in
Baghdad is riddled with problems and has yet to open.

Rice, usually loath to admit error, did so last month, telling Congress
that her department should have provided better oversight of security
contractor Blackwater Worldwide.

An ardent football fan, Rice is hoping to rewrite her legacy in the
next 14 months, beginning with what amounts to a Hail Mary pass this
week in a Mideast peace conference she's organized for Annapolis, Md.

More than any other Bush administration initiative, the conference to
advance Israeli-Palestinian peace is Rice's, with Bush mostly
supporting from the sidelines. Rice has traveled to the Middle East
eight times this year to assemble the conference and has staked her
reputation on its outcome.

"This is basically her baby," said William Quandt, a University of
Virginia scholar who worked on the first Camp David peace talks under
President Jimmy Carter.

The Annapolis meeting, Rice said last week, will launch negotiations
between Israel and the Palestinians on an eventual Palestinian state,
rather than conclude any agreements.

With little more than a year before she leaves office, it seems
unlikely that a historic agreement can be reached under Rice's tutelage
and unclear that Bush will invest the personal capital that history
suggests is necessary to achieve a breakthrough.

It remains to be seen whether Annapolis is "going to be much more than
a photo opportunity, with reaffirmation of a two-state solution,"
Quandt said. "And then they will go home."

Rice's friends and advocates argue that her record at State is stronger
than her critics acknowledge.

"I actually think they're doing somewhat better than they're getting
credit for," said longtime friend and aide Philip Zelikow, who served
as Rice's counselor from 2005 to 2006. "They're playing a bad hand
reasonably well."

Rice, he said, has overseen a marked improvement in relations with
Europe in Bush's second term; held together a fragile international
consensus against Iran's enrichment of uranium, which could be used for
nuclear weapons; and is brokering a potentially historic disarmament
deal with North Korea, which could lead to improved relations between
China and Japan.

On the Middle East conflict, Zelikow, who advocated a more energetic
U.S. approach when he was in government, said Rice easily could have
made the "canny political play" and avoided the issue at a time when
pessimism ran high. "That's not the play she chose to make. Good for
her," he said.

Other former aides are less charitable.

"We've let Putin and Russia elude our grasp," said former
Undersecretary of State John Bolton, a prominent neo-conservative. "I
rate that as one of the biggest disappointments, not because it has an
immediate impact in the here and now," but because of Russia's
anti-Western drift in the years to come.

Even as she finds herself a target for Democratic opponents of the Iraq
war, Rice also is increasingly under fire from hawks such as Bolton,
who argue that she's abandoned Bush's purist principles to negotiate
with North Korea and pursue diplomacy for diplomacy's sake in Iran.

"Everybody's in the legacy mode now," Bolton said. 

                      ***

The Baltimore Sun - Nov 25, 2007
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.rice25nov25,0,6060365.story

Rice's legacy on the line at Annapolis conference

Experts say Middle East talks a chance to boost 
credibility after Iraq setbacks

By Robert Little

While the Bush administration has worked to suppress expectations for
the Middle East peace conference Tuesday in Annapolis, observers say
the professional and political stakes for Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice are much harder to minimize.

An outcome resembling success could restore some of the former Stanford
professor's diplomatic credibility, they say, and perhaps add a line to
her career's postscript that doesn't contain the word "Iraq."

Something less than success could extinguish whatever progress she has
fostered as the president's top diplomat in the past three years, and
perhaps worsen relations with a part of the world considered vital to
American security and foreign policy.

"She's about a year or so away from being judged as a kind of
inconsequential secretary of state," said Aaron David Miller, a Middle
East expert and adviser to six secretaries of state, and a public
policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

"The way you become consequential in this business is by taking a tough
issue, owning it and making it better," Miller said, naming Henry A.
Kissinger and James A. Baker III among the model secretaries of state.
"Annapolis alone isn't enough, but if they and we are prepared to do
the heavy lifting over the next year, it could be an opportunity."

With 14 months to go before a new president takes office, Rice has
chosen to wade into a diplomatic arena that has bested many of her
predecessors. She will serve as the official host for the Annapolis
conference, facilitating meetings among delegates and presiding over a
dinner for them. Bush will also take part, but Rice has taken the lead
role.

Though cautioning against considering the meetings "peace talks," she
presented the gathering as "a very big step forward" in Middle East
politics, and the first round of "continuous, ongoing and very
intensive" talks that could lead to a Palestinian state.

And yet many foreign policy specialists already expect much less.
Phyllis Bennis, a fellow of the liberal Institute for Policy Studies,
released a paper suggesting that the Annapolis conference has two
goals: buying Arab support for American military threats in the region,
and offering "a photo op to restore Rice's tarnished legacy."

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the left-leaning political journal The
Nation, wrote that the conference has "more to do with providing [Rice]
a much-needed photo op ... than creating the groundwork for a just and
comprehensive settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis."

The skepticism has not been strictly ideological. Rice's former Bush
administration colleague, John R. Bolton, called the conference a
"legacy project" for Rice during a recent interview with bloggers, and
added: "Every indication is it's going to be a failure by whatever
standard you choose to measure."

Miller said he thinks many critics are too quick to dismiss the
meetings as a stunt. While Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas are not as politically strong as one
would like in such negotiations, he said, at least they are willing to
talk with each other. And while achieving a peace agreement by the end
of Bush's term is probably unrealistic, he said, if Israelis and
Palestinians are engaged in serious discussions about peace next year
because of Annapolis, then Rice will have left the situation in far
better shape than when she took office in early 2005.

Still, others think the costs of failure could be high - and might even
include bloodshed.

"To the extent that her actions are raising unwarranted expectations on
the part of Palestinians and their Arab friends, past practice suggests
it will translate into a pretext for new violence against Israel,"
wrote Frank Gaffney Jr., founder and president of the conservative
Center for Security Policy, in an essay on the center's Web site.

Bolton, a Republican appointed United Nations ambassador by Bush in
2005 but never confirmed by the U.S. Senate, said that he "can't
imagine a worse time to hold this kind of conference."

"If there is a conference and it fails, we are not simply in the status
quo that we had before," Bolton said during a Web-based
question-and-answer session. "We are in a worse position, because it
will show a decline in American influence, a failure in a very visible
way. I wish we weren't doing this at all."

Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun

                         ***

Scripps Howard via Ocala.com (FLA) - Nov 26,2007
http://www.ocala.com/article/20071126/OPINION/211260322/1368

OPINION

Bolton pulls no punches

BY CLIFFORD MAY

As America's ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton was the
White House's most effective defender. Now, as an ex-diplomat, he has
become among the administration's toughest critics. But he critiques
from the right, not the left, which probably explains why the elite
media are not eager to focus on what he has to say.

The son of a Baltimore firefighter who attended Yale Law School on
scholarship, Bolton combines a combative nature with a keen intellect.
He is a conservative without the prefix - neither neo-con (he's
skeptical about nation-building and democracy promotion) nor paleo-con
(he's no isolationist). He is most zealous about protecting America's
sovereignty and national interests. All of this comes through clearly
in his new book, "Surrender Is Not an Option." His perspectives were
persuasively articulated, too, at a recent discussion hosted by
American Spectator magazine.

The administration, he believes, is failing to achieve its most
important goals. For example, President Bush pledged that the world's
most dangerous weapons would not be allowed to fall into the hands of
the world's worst dictators and terrorists. But for almost five years
the United States has let the Europeans take the lead in a diplomatic
dance to convince Iran to stop its nuclear-weapons development. That
effort has been so heavy on incentives and so light on threats that
Bolton calls it "speaking softly and carrying a big carrot."

"Engaging in diplomacy is not cost-free," Bolton notes. The drawn-out
talks have given Tehran time to master the intricacies of nuclear
technology. Now, he believes, the only options left to prevent
America-hating mullahs from acquiring nukes are encouraging a
revolution - "it is a fragile regime" - or "targeted military force, a
last resort."

Bolton also doubts that genuine progress is being made in negotiations
with North Korea. He sees "remarkable similarities" between where the
Bush administration is heading and the "agreed framework" President
Bill Clinton negotiated with Pyongyang in 1994. That deal trusted but
did not verify that North Korea, in return for generous rewards, would
end its nuclear-weapons programs. North Korea is now promising to
disable - but not dismantle - nuclear reactors. Bolton says that's
"like taking the keys out of your car and putting them on the night
stand."

Meanwhile, Pakistan, already a nuclear power, could come under worse
management in the months ahead. Among other things, proliferation in an
age of global terrorism leads to this nightmare scenario: The "no-name"
nuke that destroys an American, European or Middle Eastern city - with
no way to know for certain who is responsible. (I can recall just after
9/11 being asked by an indignant BBC interviewer to substantiate my
charge that al-Qaida was behind the atrocity. And we've never
established who was responsible for the anthrax attacks that took place
not long after.)

Bolton worries, too, about the Israeli-Palestinian talks to be convened
by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Annapolis, Md. Israel's
current government "can't do much. It's weak. It doesn't have much
public support." As for the Palestinian side, Bolton asks: "What
Palestinian side? The Palestinian Authority is broken." Hamas, a
terrorist organization backed by Iran, rules Gaza and appears to be
contemplating civil war in the West Bank, which is only loosely
controlled by Fatah, a "former terrorist organization."

"The secretary has only 24 hours in her day," Bolton observes. A better
use of her time would be to "support democracy in Lebanon which is
under direct threat" from Hezbollah, a terrorist group and proxy of
Syria and Iran.

The United Nations will be helpful in regard to none of these
situations. On the contrary, even though Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
is an improvement over Kofi Annan - who called himself a "secular pope"
- the organization is now structurally hostile to the United States and
bent on becoming a world government with the power to impose laws and
taxes on Americans. In response, Bolton says, we should stop letting
the United Nations "assess" us for contributions and fund only those
projects we regard as useful.

He supports also the suggestion of former Spanish Prime Minister Jose
Maria Aznar to transform NATO into a "league of democratic nations" and
a competitor to the United Nations. He is disappointed that Bush has
done no more to advance such ideas than did Clinton.

One reason may be opposition from the State Department, which, Bolton
laments, has become a "self-perpetuating bureaucracy" that undercuts
the president it is meant to serve, and shortchanges America's
interests to curry favor with the so-called international community.

[Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of
Democracies, writes for Scripps Howard News Service.]

                             ***

UPI - Nov 25, 2007
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/11/25/report_annapolis_key_to_rice_legacy/6347/

Report: Annapolis key to Rice legacy

ANNAPOLIS, Md., 25 (UPI) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
needs a good outcome at this week's Mideast talks to bolster her
diplomatic credibility, foreign policy analysts say.

"She's about a year or so away from being judged as a kind of
inconsequential secretary of state," said Aaron David Miller, an
adviser to six secretaries of state and a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson
Center in Washington.

Rice has called Tuesday's conference in Annapolis, Md., between Israeli
and Palestinian leaders a "very big step forward" in Middle East
politics, though she has cautioned against calling the meetings "peace
talks," The Baltimore Sun reported Sunday.

Something less than a successful outcome in Annapolis could erase
progress Rice has fostered during her three years as the president's
top diplomat, Miller told the Sun.

John R. Bolton, Rice's former Bush administration colleague, calls the
conference a "legacy project" for Rice. "Every indication is it's going
to be a failure by whatever standard you choose to measure," Bolton
wrote in an Internet posting with bloggers, the Sun reported.

© United Press International. All Rights Reserved.


                             ***

Jerusalem Post - Nov 19, 2007
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195127544328&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

View from America: Is 'surrender' not an option?

by Jonathan Tobin

Late in 2006, as the pro-Israel community in Washington was still
making its last-ditch efforts to secure John Bolton's confirmation to
the post of ambassador to the United Nations, the object of their
affection was beginning to change his mind about the post.

The initial attempt to give the job to Bolton had been blocked by
hostile members of the Senate, who saw the veteran Washington lawyer
and diplomat as too critical of the world body to represent the United
States there.

But after a "recess" appointment in August 2005 that allowed him to
stay in office until the end of the current congressional session in
December 2006, Bolton earned bipartisan applause for his forthright
advocacy of America's positions on human rights, Darfur and his ardent
support of the US-Israel alliance.

That won him new allies among Democrats when the administration
attempted again to have the Senate ratify his appointment. But in the
fall of 2006, with the Democrats retaking control of Congress, and with
renegade liberal Republicans such as Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode
Island opposing him specifically because of his pro-Israel stands,
Bolton was again turned away.

At that point, he writes in his new memoir, Surrender Is Not An Option:
Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad, the administration
considered keeping him in place via another temporary appointment. But
Bolton had had enough and left quietly.

Was it because he was tired of the task of trying to affect change at a
place that is a miasma of cynicism, corruption and anti-Semitism?

Not really. A tough-minded man who led the successful fight during the
administration of the first president Bush to repeal the "Zionism is
Racism" resolution, Bolton doesn't appear to have lost his stomach for
rhetorical combat But, he writes, the most important reason for getting
out was his growing disillusionment with the administration.

"I didn't like the direction of our policy on too many issues,
particularly Iran, North Korea and Arab-Israeli issues," he says. Under
the ascendancy of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, things would,
in his opinion, "only get worse."

That's a sobering reflection from one of George W. Bush's strongest
supporters.

THIS autobiography is not the easiest read. Though the majority of the
book's 456 pages are devoted to the United Nations, the author asks us
to wade through the details of his early life, as well as his
considerable legal, political and diplomatic résumé, before we finally
get to the office that put him in the spotlight.

Once there, he does illuminate the problems of a deeply flawed
institution. But insightful as it is, his prose does not compare to the
wit that characterized two other classic memoirs of life at the United
Nations that share Bolton's jaundiced view of the place: William F.
Buckley's 1974 United Nations Journal: A Delegates Odyssey and Daniel
Patrick Moynihan's 1978 A Dangerous Place.

But to fall short of such a high standard is no disgrace. The
comparison is also a reminder that Bolton's brash though effective
style in office was nothing less than a direct throwback to Moynihan,
who, while serving as America's UN ambassador, denounced the passage of
"Zionism is Racism," in 1975 by declaring "The United States … does not
acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this
infamous act."

Like Moynihan and a later UN ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Bolton
didn't seek to blend into the culture of the UN. He was there to
challenge it and to try by diplomacy, if possible, but by blunt talk,
if necessary, to effect change.

Yet the real value of this book is not so much his contribution to the
lengthy body of literature documenting the UN's shameful record, but
his unraveling of how the Bush administration has gone wrong on issues
such as coping with the threats from Iran and North Korea.

The chief villains in his account are secretaries of state Rice and
Colin Powell. During Bush's first term, when Powell was in charge, the
drive to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions lost critical ground. Rather
than seek to lead our European allies into a coalition that would
impose serious sanctions on that Islamic republic, Powell left "the
driving to the European Union." That meant years - when Teheran's
program was still far from success - were wasted. This convinced the
Iranians that nothing would or could stop them.

Even though the threat of an Iran with the nuclear wherewithal to make
good on its call for Israel's eradication became even more clear during
the watch of Powell's successor, Rice continued on his feckless path.
Again, the Euros were allowed to take the lead, which led to delays and
more ineffective measures, the implications of which left Bolton "sick."

Similar foolishness also let the North Koreans off the nuclear hook, a
debacle that was made plain by the discovery of their involvement in a
Syrian nuclear venture that was quashed by an Israeli raid.

BOLTON points out what is by now obvious: "The fact is that Iran will
never voluntarily give up its nuclear program, and a policy based on
the contrary assumption is not just delusional but dangerous. This is
the road to nuclear holocaust."

Another point on which Bolton makes it clear that Rice is failing is
the Arab-Israeli conflict. Rice's decision to push recklessly ahead
with a summit at Annapolis in the vain hope of advancing America's
interests elsewhere in the region is exactly what he feared when he
left office a year ago. The fact that the Palestinians are still in the
grip of terror movements in the form of Hamas and Fatah, renders
discussions with them pointless.

"Given this reality, there is no rationale for the United States to
pressure Israel into 'peace agreements' … or to believe that 'dialogue'
on such issues will have any material effect on the Middle East's
numerous other conflicts," writes Bolton.

The former ambassador dismisses the myth that sacrificing Israel would
solve America's problems. "Even if [Iranian President Mahmoud]
Ahmadinejad got his fondest wish, and Israel disappeared, these
conflicts would continue abated," he concludes.

The author's prescription is to reform the State Department by changing
its bureaucratic culture and rejecting its embrace of the "disease" of
"moral equivalency" that equates Palestinian terror with Israeli
defensive responses. The alternative is a "surrender" to forces that we
must vanquish if we are to preserve our civilization.

Rather than change it, Rice has been absorbed by the State Department
and the administration's critics. The result is a an America left with
a grim choice that as Bolton says "is not between the world as it is
today and the use of force. The choice is between the use of force and
Iran with nuclear weapons."

That is the grimmest possible verdict on the failure of our diplomacy.

It is one that the negotiators at Annapolis later this month - and our
representatives at the United Nations and elsewhere - ignore at our
peril.

[The writer is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.]