"I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count."

Daily Kos Staff

Friday April 22, 2005 · 7:12 PM PDT

2005/04/22 · 19:12

Ah, memories. Via a random shot used by The Daily Oakland Press last October, we fondly remember the American public's first introduction to Scary Abusive Intelligence-Manipulating Mustache Guy, back in December, 2000:

This isn't meant to distract or detract from the dozen or so serious investigations into Bolton's manipulation of WMD intelligence or his truly beyond-the-pale retributions against intelligence officers and any others who dared disagree with his chosen pronouncements -- perhaps even to the point of running his own counterintelligence operations against government officials.

It's just a reminder, because a number of people have expressed incredulousness at the lengths the White House will go to arm-twist fellow Republicans into supporting this Benard-Kerik-style walking disaster:

Loyalty, young grasshoppers. Loyalty to The Movement over all else. They don't care what he's done. Or, more to the point, they like what he has done, and want him to continue doing it.

From The Nation's Online Beat:

John Bolton vs. Democracy

"I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count."

Those were the words John Bolton yelled as he burst into a Tallahassee library on Saturday, Dec. 9, 2000, where local election workers were recounting ballots cast in Florida's disputed presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore. [...]

Bolton was in South Korea when it became clear that the Nov. 7, 2000, election would be decided in Florida. At the behest of former Secretary of State James Baker, who fronted the Bush-Cheney team during the Florida fight, Bolton winged his way to Palm Beach, where he took the lead in challenging ballots during that county's recount. Then, when the ballots from around the state were transported to Tallahassee for the recount ordered by the state Supreme Court, Bolton followed them.

It was there that he personally shut down the review of ballots from Miami-Dade County, a populous and particularly contested county where independent reviews would later reveal that hundreds of ballots that could reasonably have been counted for Gore were instead discarded.

(Hat tip to DU and Kossack indybend)

Update [2005-4-22 22:41:48 by Hunter]: The best article out there on John Bolton. Thanks sbj.

"I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count."

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