Bolton takes command

October 20, 2005
Boston Herald
http://news.bostonherald.com/opinion/view.bg?articleid=107848


United Nations Ambassador John Bolton didn't mince words during his trip to Capitol Hill. 
     ``We're not going to declare victory after a few cosmetic changes,'' he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday. ``Reform at the United Nations is not a one-night stand. Reform is forever.'' 
     The committee, of course, is the very same one the president was forced to bypass with a recess appointment of Bolton. But that was before the last report of the Volcker Commission investigating the U.N. oil-for-food scandal and before the most recent indictments in that scandal. And it is long past the time when even Senate Democrats can ignore the corruption that Bolton seems determined to help root out at that cesspool on the Hudson. 
     To do that Bolton has done what Senate Democrats believed him incapable of doing – he has attempted to engage other like-minded nations in a diplomatic assault on the institution many believe is still worth saving. Bolton said he has met with 70 of the U.N.'s 191 member states to press the case for change. 
     High on his list of changes needed is the so-called U.N. Commission on Human Rights – a body deemed unworthy of the name so long as its members include such notorious human rights abusers as Cuba and Zimbabwe. 
     It seems highly unlikely Secretary-General Kofi Annan, on whose watch so much corruption occurred, can actually lead the U.N. on the path of real reform. But Bolton has accepted it as a huge part of his mission to not give up that fight.