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Original Article (Spanish)

By Rosa Miriam Elizalde

August 2, 2005

A journalist with the [German] news agency DPA said that yesterday’s White House ceremony was less like an appointment as it was a funeral. George Bush, Condoleezza Rice and John Bolton were so tense, that their habitual stone faces showed a few stress lines. Even so, since President Bush does so whenever he can, he limited himself to issuing an order: "Bolton will provide clear American leadership. I will insist upon results."

The opposition in the U.S. Senate and almost the entire rest of the world denounced the nomination of the ex-undersecretary of State as new United States ambassador to the United Nations. What concerns them is Bolton’s stubborn defense, in every forum, of extreme ultraconservative ideas about some kind of approaching ultimate destiny. It’s hard to imagine an individual with a history as undesirable as that of Bolton - a man of the type that is quite rightly called a hard-conservative, who feels that his beliefs are better than anyone else’s. Except for one: the belief in the salvation of the world (its world: the one that they impose on all others) which is the particular responsibility of the clan that governs from the White House.

Bolton Presents His Credentials to U.N. Chief Kofi Annan

The best credentials that Bolton has are the very criticisms that have been raised over his nomination. Namely, his dreadful opposition to multilateralism and his hatred toward Cuba, about which he has blatantly lied more than once, accusing the island of producing biological weapons.

If his lies had led to a military intervention in this country [Cuba], we would probably be witnessing his nomination for something like the vice presidency of the empire, instead of his designation to a diplomatic post.

Apparently, the only thing in America that seems to trigger greater intolerance [than Cuba] is the slightest hint of liberalism or progressivism, even the type practiced in the United States.

Take the case of Karl Rove. He has proven that anything goes, as long as it favors the man in charge. When he denounced the CIA agent, he did it so the United States would have a good pretext to enter Iraq.

Rove and Bolton, and anyone else that wants to climb up next to the Bush babies, know that things go smoothly only as long as one offers the dynasty blind obedience. They and the National Rifle Association and the rest the extreme-religious and extreme-reactionary committees - have concluded that it is preferable to install a presidential nursery at the Bush ranch than to perform a traditional coup d'etat or risk another Clinton disaster.

What seems to me even more fascinating than the astounding appointment of the new ambassador to the U.N. is that they managed to assemble in the same space, people with such physical electricity, so irritating and so amazingly alike, that the earth continued to rotate on its axis.

It was extraordinary to see standing together at the White House yesterday morning three notable survivors of such popular scorn and unique mediocrity that light bulbs didn’t burst or a thunderbolt strike the starched head of Condoleezza or that they weren't buried beneath an earthquake. If that is not a miracle, then God should come and see.