John Bolton for the Nobel Peace Prize

Posted by BooMan | Feb 9, 2006 | 25 |

If anyone one is interested, you can make a list of the ~~ironies~~ assaults on our intelligence in the following US Newswire piece:

Two Americans who played a major role in exposing Iran’s secret nuclear weapons plans have been nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

United Nations Ambassador ~~the Mustache~~ John Bolton and longtime Iran investigator Kenneth R. Timmerman were nominated for their repeated warnings and documentation of Iran’s secret nuclear buildup and revealing Iran’s “repeated lying” and false reports to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Bolton was formerly U.S. Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security and was author of the Proliferation Security Initiative, an international effort to interdict shipments of weapons of mass destruction and related materials, which led to the eventual breakup of the secret nuclear network directed by Pakistan nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan. Bolton repeatedly warned of Iran’s nuclear plans.

Timmerman, an independent researcher, has written extensively on Iran’s nuclear activities for more than 20 years. His report for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in 1992 first detailed Iran’s ties to A.Q. Khan. His most recent book, “Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran,” was published last year.

Bolton and Timmerman were formally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Sweden’s former deputy prime minister and Liberal party leader Per Ahlmark.

Ahlmark is meeting with journalists, opinion leaders and policymakers in Washington this week at the invitation of the Jewish Institute for National Security Afffairs (JINSA).

Bolton has about as much chance of winning the Nobel Peace Prize as I have of winning the Olympic Gold Medal in gymnastics. But this is good for a laugh.

Also, Bolton had virtually nothing to do with developing the Proliferation Security Initiative.

About The Author

BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

25 Comments

BrendaStewart on February 9, 2006 at 12:34 am

Oh Good Heavens, give me a break!!! John Bolton!!! Of all ppl!!!! where was he in this Proliferation Security Initiative when he was up for nomination to the UN when all the other ppl testified against him…he was AWOL on it. He was tooo busy brownnosing int he WH and with the other groups trying to get this war in Iraq and outing Val. Plame. What a farse!!
Iowa Victory Gardener on February 9, 2006 at 12:52 am

Stunned. Disbelief. Kept asking myself, is this for real? Just when you think it can’t possibly get any weirder, it does.

For some odd reason that makes me think of an old Jello Biafra line from the DKs … Hey Rocky, watch me pull a massacre outta my pants!

Whatta world, whatta world…
- on February 9, 2006 at 12:56 am
  
  Ditto.
  
  Wondered, is this a hoax?
  
  Maybe they’re trying to relieve themselves for all the flak they got on Nobel Prize for Lit in 2004 and 2005?
  - maryb2004 on February 9, 2006 at 12:58 am
    
    There’s a huge number of people who can nominate for the peace price so there are always people who are nominated that have no chance of winning. That’s what probably happened here.
  - maryb2004 on February 9, 2006 at 1:01 am
    
    Here’s the process
    
    I got worked up about somebody being nominated a couple of years ago (I can’t even remember who now) so I looked it up.
    
    September – Nomination forms are sent out. The Nobel Committee sends out invitation letters containing confidential forms to persons who are qualified to nominate – members of national assemblies, governments, and international courts of law; university chancellors, professors of social science, history, philosophy, law and theology; leaders of peace research institutes and institutes of foreign affairs; previous years’ Peace Prize Winners, board members of organizations that have received the Nobel Peace Prize; present and past members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee and former advisers of the Norwegian Nobel Institute.
    
    February – Deadline for submission. The Committee bases its assessment on nominations that must be postmarked no later than 1 February each year. Later nominations are included in the following year’s discussions. In recent years, the Committee has received well over 140 different nominations for the Peace Prize. The numbers of nominating letters are much higher, since many are for the same candidates
    
    They come out with a short list by march.
- Real History Lisa on February 9, 2006 at 3:34 am
  
  Come on. He nominated himself.
sbj on February 9, 2006 at 1:05 am

Also, bolton has done more, singlehandedly, to undermine the nuclear non-proliferation efforts and treaty than anyone, and if JINSA is the host group for the former Swedish PM who nominated him, it’s fitting, since that group is about as pathologically rightwing crazy as they come.
- maryb2004 on February 9, 2006 at 1:09 am
  
  It was a Swede or Norwegian (I forget which) right winger who nominated Bush and Blair for the prize in 2004. I find it kind of surprising that these nominations come from Scandinavian countries since I tend to think of them as ultra liberal.
  - high5 on February 9, 2006 at 5:21 am
    
    Per Ahlmark is the biggest asshole you can find. He’s totally in the claws of the PNAC agenda. Of course, he’s a swede, but nowadays he doesn’t dare show himself in Sweden. I’ve seen him interviewed on Swedish TV once in the last 5 years. It was in conjunction with the American invasion of Iraq. He made a total ass of himself regurgitating PNAC propaganda and claimed WMD’s were already found.
    - Number 6 on February 10, 2006 at 8:24 am
      
      As a Swede, allow me to agree.
      Most people in Sweden would consider Ahlmark a joke at best.
KNUCKLEHEAD on February 9, 2006 at 1:31 am

No wonder my sig line is appropriate, after the brown-nosing mentioned
upthread.
Our Man in Redmond on February 9, 2006 at 2:55 am

I mean c’mon Booman, what other explanation can there be for you leaving out the citation that this came from The Onion?

This did come from the Onion, right?

Please tell me this is not for real . . .
- AlanDownunder on February 9, 2006 at 9:58 am
  
  Better believe it. Nothing new really. Kissinger got a Nobel and now he’s afraid to travel in case he gets arrested for war crimes. Even Hitchens wants him arrested.
soj on February 9, 2006 at 3:27 am

Well Henry Frog Voice Kissinger has actually WON one, and he’s a war criminal by anyone’s standards. His actions in greenlighting the genocide in East Timor alone deserve to have him tried and jailed.

John “316” Bolton is small fries in comparison, after all he just approved of death squads in Honduras.

Pax
- Oui on February 9, 2006 at 12:46 pm
  
  .
  Please don’t confuse BooMan’s bull behavior in the pond with the sound of Henry’s screech. His scratchy voice always reminds me of the sound, heard when Romania’s best known figure, steps out of his coffin.
  
  «« click to enlarge
  The Count
  
  “But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
  
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soj on February 9, 2006 at 3:32 am

I also note that Amnesty International has won a Nobel Peace Price specifically for their work to end TORTURE.

Of course that was 1976 and we’re beyond that now…

Pax
- James Benjamin on February 9, 2006 at 4:11 am
  
  Death squads and torture are the cornerstones of any peace-loving democracy. 😉
Gjermun E Jansen on February 9, 2006 at 4:54 am

LOL, the nerve and the ignorance of some people. What puzzles me though, is that it is a well known and presumed liberal Swedish politician that has done it. Maybe Per Ahlmark has got closer foreign policy connection to people in the US administration than is publicly known? Still it is an amusing piece of information.
- high5 on February 9, 2006 at 5:24 am
  
  See my comment above. Per Ahlmark is the nearest a Swedish neocon you can find.
  - Gjermun E Jansen on February 9, 2006 at 6:08 pm
    
    Ah thanks, for the valuable information.
  - Number 6 on February 10, 2006 at 8:33 am
    
    Also the word “liberal” in Swedish usage tends to mean right-of-centre, as in “not social democrat”.
Arcturus on February 9, 2006 at 5:17 am

Funny. Surely that article has a typo & should read “proliferation initiative,” for that is what their policies are doing.

These guys have long vengeful memories. Whoever nominated him knew whose ass to kiss:

State Department sees exodus of weapons experts

Among those who have left is the State Department’s top authority on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the cornerstone of the international regime to curb the spread of nuclear arms.

“We had a great group of people. They are highly knowledgeable experts,” said former Assistant Secretary of State John Wolf, who frequently clashed with Bolton. “To the extent they now are leaving State Department employ, or U.S. government employ, it’s a real loss to State Department. It’s a real loss to the government.” {snip}

Jonathan Granoff, the director of the Global Security Institute, an arms control advocacy group, said the loss of State Department arms-control expertise was especially worrisome because the only mechanism for verifying U.S. and Russian nuclear arms cuts – the 1991 START I treaty – is due to expire in less than three years.

That also will eliminate the most effective way of verifying that the former rivals are abiding by their Non-Proliferation Treaty commitments to eliminate their nuclear arsenals eventually, he said. “Rather than nurture our experts, the administration seems to have brought in neophytes without a passion for progress in this field and, worse, undermined the international institutions that are most effective in stopping proliferation,” he said. {snip}

-Specialists in the department’s old Nonproliferation Bureau, which frequently battled Bolton on policy toward Iraq, Iran and North Korea, largely were frozen out of important jobs when offices in that bureau merged with those in another.

“Bolton had blood in his eyes for the Nonproliferation Bureau,” said another official who’s still working at the State Department.

One of the government’s top experts on the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, which helps stem the spread of nuclear weapons but disputed the Bush administration’s claims about Iraq’s weapons programs, returned from two and a half years at IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, and was blocked from assuming an office directorship that had been offered to him, the officials and a complaint document said.

The post, which oversees U.S. diplomacy regarding international efforts to contain suspected nuclear-weapons programs such as those in Iran and North Korea, went to a more junior officer who numerous officials said shared Bolton’s views.

Five higher-ranking officers were passed over, the document says, adding that none had negative work histories “aside from intimations that they were not as `trusted’ politically by the political management level.”

In August 2005, the officer chosen for the job sent an e-mail sarcastically titled: “A Nobel for the IAEA? Please.” The agency and its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October.

-None of the most senior posts in the new organization was filled by a woman, although several highly qualified female candidates were available.
macdust on February 9, 2006 at 6:26 am

Nobel Prize 1973 for making illegal war and calling it peace.

Awarded jointly to Le Duc To, North Vietnamese revolutionary and diplomat, who declined on the grounds that he could not accept a prize for a peace that did not exist.
Jeff Huber on February 9, 2006 at 8:05 am

The guy who helped cook the intelligence on Iraq’s weapons program to justify an invasion is up for a peace prize?

Yes, Virginia, irony is still dead.
Oui on February 9, 2006 at 6:01 pm
.
See my diary for additional background information ::
Kenneth R. Timmerman The Iran Operation and Traitors

BooMan mentioned in his story, the nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize of John Bolton and Kenneth R. Timmerman. I thought, he must be as least as interesting as Boltin’ John: so here some links to information and his biography.

The book that will change the way Americans think about the Islamic Republic of Iran

Timmerman, an independent researcher, has written extensively on Iran’s nuclear activities for more than 20 years. His report for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in 1992 first detailed Iran’s ties to A.Q. Khan.

His most recent book, “Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran,” was published last year.

Journalist and writer, his timely publications —

2003 – Timmerman published Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War Against America criticising Islamic preachers for what he alleges is “hate” speech;

2004 – The French Betrayal of America was published;

2005 – Timmerman returned to his field of greatest expertise with the publication of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran;

2005 – Mullahs’ Best Friend.
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”

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John Bolton for the Nobel Peace Prize

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