Nice to have Bolton as US Ambassador to the UN...

I think it is great news that John Bolton is now the US Ambassador to the UN. Here are a few paragraphs from the Opinion Journal.

With the circus behind him, Mr. Bolton has a lot to keep him occupied between now and January 2007, when his appointment expires. We like the bipartisan blueprint for U.N. reform put forward in June by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. They call for a permanent independent oversight board to prevent future corruption scandals like Oil for Food, the creation of a democracy caucus within the U.N., and more effective security mechanisms to deter future Rwanda-style genocides.

Meanwhile, legislation conditioning America's $500 million a year in dues on U.N. reform is barreling through Congress and could result in another U.S. withholding of funds along the lines of Jesse Helms's famous boycott. This is probably one reason Mark Malloch Brown, the U.N. Secretariat's chief of staff, told us earlier this year that he was enthusiastic about Mr. Bolton's pending ambassadorship. The Bush emissary, he said, would be an effective ambassador from the U.N. to Washington.

Also rapidly reaching a crisis state are the investigations into the Oil for Food program. More breakthroughs are expected soon, and it may not be long before the new U.S. Ambassador is called upon to negotiate a successor to Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Mr. Bolton's recent State Department experience in exposing the A.Q. Khan arms network in Pakistan and in persuading Libya to give up its arms program should prove especially helpful in shaping the U.N.'s role in battling the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The Proliferation Security Initiative he helped engineer and run has proved more effective than any other multilateral organization in stopping the flow of WMD.