And The "Not John Bolton" Award Goes To...

...Zalmay Khalilzad. His prize will be confimation as the next US ambassador to the UN - at least in theory the most prestigeous and important of all ambassadorial appointments.

On a day when the House was hearing the voice of the people and the Senate wasn't, confirmation hearings for Khalilzad were always going to get short shrift. But the UK's Reuters has at least some of it. Zalmay first has to distance himself from the Bolton Precept - that diplomacy comes from the barrel of a gun.

At a hearing on his nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Khalilzad said "a combination of pressure with regard to issues of concern with an openness to engage with the intent to change behavior ... is the right mix."

"Those two elements of pressure and engagement don't have to be equal in weight. They can vary depending on the circumstances," he added. "In the toolbox of diplomacy, we need to have as many tools as we can ... Engagement is one tool."

That last sentence alone will get him confirmed, in sheer relief that the Bolton Beast will stalk the UN no longer, sullying the US reputation and bursting in on meetings to demand war right now with anyone who doesn't knuckle under to obvious American military moral supremacy.

But you knew there had to be a catch - and there is. That good old neocon ability to deny the pragmatic facts and bludgeon on regardless is still there in spades:

Khalilzad said Syria had expressed an interest in bilateral talks with the United States but he declined comment on whether the Bush administration would follow up.

He described his talks with Iranian officials as "a good first" step but said he will be watching events on the ground, including whether Iran stops providing weapons known as "explosively formed penetrators" to Iraqi militants.

"Will they stop supplying EFPs to Iraqis, extremists who use those against our forces? Will they stop supporting militias, training them, providing them with resources? Will they encourage the groups that they have influence over toward reconciliation?" he said. "What we will be looking for is ... the impact on the ground.

Considering that the opinion of most independent analysts is that Iran probably isn't the manufacturer for most (maybe all) of the EFP's being found in Iraq (and that even those weapons it does make, it might not be directly supplying), that first might be a bit of a problem. They can't stop what they aren't doing.

But that won't matter to Zalmay. Even though the Baghdad Briefing spawned a farce where the US' top general said (twice) he doesn't believe the connection and where eventually some poor anonymous briefer was thrown under the face-saving bus as the administration said he had "over-stepped". Even so, the neocon view is that they can make their own reality - it's their narrative and they are going to stick to it no matter what. The effects on that "engagement tool" are all too depressingly familiar.

Update The AP has the account of Dem Senators falling over each other to praise Zalmay for not being John Bolton:

``In this time of crisis, I believe that you are the best and the brightest to be representing us in this world community of nations,'' Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., told Khalilzad.

Added Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent: ``I cannot think of anyone more qualified or more appropriate. He represents the best of America. He is a true American dream success story.

...``I think you're the nominee that we can be proud of,'' Nelson told Khalilzad.

Some senators took swipes at Bolton, but mostly they praised Khalilzad and all but assured him a swift confirmation. There were skeptical questions about the war in Iraq, but not one lawmaker seemed to blame Khalilzad for any of the administration's missteps.

``While we disagreed in many cases on policies that you have to implement, I think you did a very skilled and able job of carrying out those policies,'' Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., told Khalilzad. ``We look forward to working with you at the United Nations.''

Is it too much to ask that one of the august Senators could ask a researcher to do some background digging, since their memories seem to have failed them? Here are some of the lowlights from his career:

Khalilzad is one of the original neoconservatives, brought in by Paul Wolfowitz to serve on the Reagan administration's State Department policy planning staff along with Libby, Fukayama and James Roche...He was a signator to the original PNAC letter...He was friends with Ahmed Chalibi in college...He was instrumental in the drafting of the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance document that first proposed a strategy of U.S. global supremacy based on overwhelming U.S. military power...In 1997, Khalilzad cowrote with Wolfowitz an article for the neoconservative Weekly Standard titled “Overthrow Him,” which called for using military force to overthrow Hussein...Khalilzad's ideology of U.S. supremacy has resulted in a long series of foreign policy disasters. Foreign policy analyst Anatol Lieven said, “If he was in private business rather than government, he would have been sacked long ago” (Independent, January 10, 2002).

But he isn't John Bolton. Is that really enough?