Let’s say we believe all the trash Carl Ford piled on John Bolton’s head yesterday. I don’t. For instance, it’s demonstrably false that Bolton is “kiss up, kick down” kind of guy. As Bill Kristol is pointing out, Bolton clashed routinely with his superiors at state, Colin Powell and Richard Armitage, making his own life miserable in the process. Anyway, let’s stipulate that it’s true. According to the New York Times, Democrats say it all has “grave and far-reaching implications for American credibility, especially telling in light of the failure to find illicit weapons in Iraq.” Come again? How? If Bolton was tough on one intelligent analyst on Cuba, it threw all of U.S. intelligence out of whack, including on Iraq? This is absurd. Even Ford admits as much, according to this quote I saw only in the New York Sun today:
Mr. Ford, however, said in the hearing, “I can’t lay on Secretary Bolton the intelligence community’s failure.” He added, “It had nothing to do with Bolton.”