Bolton confirmation

Senator Barbara Boxer dealt neatly with Bolton's lament that he was being misquoted by playing a videotape of a 1994 speech in which he said: "There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world - that's the United States - when it suits our interests and when we can get others to go along."

Bolton tried to convince the senators that he was just being provocative with those remarks and that as UN ambassador, he would confine his utterances to official policy vetted by appropriate agencies, like the State Department. But much of the hearing focused on Bolton's contempt for that process, especially on his attempts to have a State Department intelligence analyst punished for stopping him from misrepresenting intelligence on Cuba.

Bolton wanted to give a speech saying that "the United States believes that Cuba has a developmental offensive biological warfare program and is providing assistance to other rogue state programs." That sounds scary, but it was not true, and U.S. intelligence agencies did not think it was. But according to numerous accounts, Bolton became enraged when an analyst from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research pointed out the error and tried to have the analyst removed from his post.

Bolton's attempts to dodge accountability were almost comical. At one point, explaining a trip to the CIA in which he tried to have an analyst for Latin America on the National Intelligence Council removed for a similar act, Bolton said he had gone there only to learn what the council does.

[...]

Some of Bolton's Republican allies tried the "no harm, no foul" ploy, saying his misbehavior shouldn't count because he had ended up giving an accurate speech. Others said Bolton's behavior was just a question of his management style. But they are wrong. With the credibility of the United States as low as it is, the last thing it needs is a UN envoy who tries to force intelligence into an ideological construct.

  International Herald Tribune article

He'll still get the job. In fact, that makes him all the more attractive to the Bush Administration, doesn't it?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.