The issue here isn’t one of bad manners — it’s about bad management and bad judgment. Bolton isn’t just a tough guy; he’s a tough guy who apparently used his ire to bludgeon intelligence reports into the shape he sought. It’s one thing to push around your subordinates; it’s quite another to push around the information on which the lives of Americans and American troops depend. The reason Bolton’s nomination strikes so many observers, including me, as so profoundly wrong is that it’s precisely Bolton’s management style — one shared by, and endorsed by, the Vice President’s office — that led to the debacle of American intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion.

Scott Rosenberg on the fruitcake Dubya wants to appoint as the US Ambassador to the United Nations