Who's John Bolton?

El Presidente's pick to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, that's who. Ex-Senator Jesse Helms a few years ago called John Bolton "the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at the gates of Armageddon." You know Armageddon, right? That favorite vacation spot for conservatives with a certain frame of mind.

Think Progress has been putting together a few salient Bolton quotes (here & here):

"If I were doing the Security Council today, I'd have one permanent member because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world ... [and that member would be] the United States." [NPR, Talk of the Nation, 6/6/00]

When proponents of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty worried that its defeat was marking an isolationist turn for the U.S., Bolton said that "such fears are indications of a profoundly misguided and potentially dangerous philosophy in American foreign policy" and called them "timid and neo-pacifist." [Taipei Times, 11/20/99]

And when he was given permission to sign the letter to the U.N. that stated Washington was renouncing the Rome Treaty creating the International Criminal Court, Bolton described it as "the happiest moment of my government service." [USA Today, 1/18/00]

"I just wanted to say a quick word on behalf of America's corporate giants ... they have contributed enormously over the years to our defense and to the triumph over communism, and they made a buck off of it as well. I don't see anything wrong with that. I think it's another triumph of both the capitalists and democratic sides of our system." [NPR, 5/21/99] John Bolton ... Halliburton's greatest fan?