John Bolton, Wimp

[kentuck]

www.slate.com --- from the chatterbox

<snip

Scratch a saber-rattler, find a war wimp. You can just about set your watch by it, can't you? So it's entirely unsurprising to read the following about John Bolton, Yale '70, in the Yale Daily News:

Though Bolton supported the Vietnam War, he declined to enter combat duty, instead enlisting in the National Guard and attending law school after his 1970 graduation. "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy," Bolton wrote of his decision in the 25th reunion book. "I considered the war in Vietnam already lost."

President Bush's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations obviously never got the memo explaining that service in the National Guard during the Vietnam war requires no justification or apology—that's sooo Dan Quayle!—and that to suggest the National Guard was anything other than a major contributor to the fighting forces in Vietnam is a grievous insult to the National Guardsmen who really are a major contributor to the fighting forces in Iraq. Never mind that the overall mortality rate for National Guardsmen during the Vietnam War was lower than the mortality rate for rock-throwing antiwar protesters and bystanders in the Prentice Hall parking lot at Kent State on May 4, 1970. It's a little bit rude to put it that way, but I'm told the future U.N. ambassador admires bluntness.

Timothy Noah writes "Chatterbox" for Slate.

[NMDemDist2]

1. I shocked! SHOCKED I tell you!

:sarcasm:

these neocons never put their lives on the line for their ideology do they? not once that I can recall anyway....

[Straight Shooter]

2. "I confess I had no desire to die ..."

It's okay, Bolton, there are plenty out there who desire it for you.

[President Jesus]

3. slippery slope

There are a shitload of officials on our side that didn't go to Nam either. We start to look like real hypocrites if we attack Bolton for this, yet give our own a pass.

Besides, I totally agree with Bolton's words about Vietnam. Don't you?

[kentuck]

5. With one slight difference....

Our side doesn't go around screaming for war and acting like we are going kick the world's ass...

[Warpy]

4. Considering that man's screaming tantrums at WOMEN

I'd expect nothing less than chicken hawk behavior from him. You really can tell a lot about these guys from the way they treat women.

[libodem]

6. John Bolton, ass,

big mouth, blow-hard, antagonistic, creep, nut-job, pompous, filth-spewing, hate-monger, ditto-head, jerk-wad, scum-sucking-dog-pile of feces. That John Bolton? Racist, sexist, Pig... did you mean that one? uhh who were you talking about?

[90-percent]

7. Bolton

Where's the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth About John Bolton when you really need them?

-85%

[immoderate]

8. Bolton is the right guy.

He is in step with the Bush administration. What would be the purpose of sending a regular human being? The people at the UN should know what we have to put up with.

We should concentrate on blocking judges. That's lifetime appointments.

--IMM