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Rice backs ‘rough-edge’ Bolton

Police detain a protester who disrupted Rice's speech. At least two protesters stood wearing black robes and hoods, an apparent reference to U.S. abuse of detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. (The Spokesman-Review)
Associated Press
Police detain a protester who disrupted Rice's speech. At least two protesters stood wearing black robes and hoods, an apparent reference to U.S. abuse of detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. (The Spokesman-Review)

SAN FRANCISCO – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged Friday that John R. Bolton has “rough edges” but said it was time for the Senate to approve his nomination to be U.N. ambassador so he can promote needed reform.

A day after Democrats forced the Republican-run Senate to delay a vote on Bolton until at least next month, Rice called him a “pretty tough person” but added, “There are many people who work for him who would walk through a wall for him.”

Bolton has been accused of bullying intelligence officials whose analyses ran counter to his conservative views. His defenders have said he did not mistreat them and is entitled to disagree with intelligence estimates he receives.

While speaking at the Commonwealth Club here, Rice cited the U.N. Human Rights Commission as a key example of why the world body needs an overhaul:

“When you have a commission on human rights and Sudan is on it, nobody can take it seriously,” Rice said, referring to a country the Bush administration has accused of engaging in genocide. “We need to send a strong voice for reform of the United Nations to the United Nations,” Rice said.

Democrats have demanded that before the Senate votes on Bolton’s nomination, the administration show lawmakers documents on his use of government intelligence on Syria. They also want documents about instances in which he requested names of U.S. officials whose communications were secretly picked up by an American spy agency.

On Iraq, Rice said that country’s democracy “is not going to look like the United States of America, but it’s not going to look like Saddam’s Iraq. And thank God for that, because it was time to get that monster out of the center of Baghdad.”

She acknowledged that Iraq’s fledgling democratic government has had difficulties, and that it is not unusual for historical changes to result in violence.

But she said that, to date, the Baghdad leadership has not made a compromise “as bad as the one in 1789 that made my ancestors three-fifths of a man, so let’s be humble about what they’re going through.”