Kerry grows a pair

The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations - and, in particular, Senator Lincoln Chafee - have a big decision to make this week. I've made my decision. I will vigorously oppose the nomination of John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Have you ever noticed that in the Bush Administration, the only way to get a job promotion is to bungle our national security? As under secretary of state for arms control and international security for the past four years, Mr. Bolton has achieved little. In fact, we secured more nuclear materials in the two years before September 11th than in the two years after. North Korea and Iran are now burgeoning nuclear states. This record earned John Bolton a nomination to the UN?

How can we believe this nomination makes any sense at all?

We can't believe it.

But, unless Senator Lincoln Chafee puts principle over party, the inexplicable John Bolton nomination will squeak through the Foreign Relations Committee on a party line vote.
We have to do everything we can to make sure that doesn't happen.

That's why, in addition to being vocal about my own opposition to Senator Bolton, I am organizing johnkerry.com activists in Rhode Island to contact Senator Chafee, and I am running online ads in the Rhode Island media.

See the ad for yourself. http://www.johnkerry.com/action/chafee-ad.php

Why retain and promote those who have failed to make America more safe and secure? Donald Rumsfeld has been a disaster as Secretary of Defense. That's why over 800,000 people have signed our petition supporting my call for Rumsfeld's resignation. Yet the President stands stubbornly by him.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has made repeated and serious miscalculations about the costs and risks America would face in Iraq. Yet now the Bush Administration wants us to believe he is the right person to lead the World Bank.

And now, the Bush administration wants to add John Bolton to that astonishing list.

I will keep you posted on our efforts to stop this nomination from advancing.


Sincerely,
John Kerry


P.S. I'm sharing this with you because I want you to know how hard we're working on this critical vote. But, I also want you to be prepared. Should the Bolton nomination make it through committee, we may have to wage a nationwide effort to defeat it on the floor of the Senate.