The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has posted some of the transcripts of its interviews with witnesses pursuant to the Ford/Westerman controversy. Spend some time reading them and you soon realize what a tiny flap this is, blown totally out of proportion. Now, remember John Bolton is supposed to be a “screamer.” But here is Christian Westerman’s supervisor, Thomas Fingar, giving the shocking details of his encounter with an enraged John Bolton:

Q: Frank, could we go back? Could you characterize your meeting with Bolton? Was he calm?
MR. FINGAR: No, he was angry. He was standing up.
Q: Did he raise his voice to you? Did he point his finger in your face?
MR. FINGAR: I don’t remember if he pointed. John speaks in such a low voice normally. Was it louder than normal? Probably. I wouldn’t characterize it as screaming at me or anything like that. It was more, hands on hips, the body language as I recall it, I knew he was mad.

There it is. He didn’t scream, he put his hands on his hips! We can’t have this in the U.S. diplomatic corps! What if Bolton puts his hands on his hips when dealing with a French or North Korean diplomat at the UN? Can you imagine the international outrage? Would our standing in the world ever recover?