THE TIME JOHN BOLTON (ALLEGEDLY) THREATENED A DIPLOMAT’S CHILDREN

Would you like a thread about what a piece of shit John Bolton is? Of course you would.

José Maurício de Figueiredo Bustani is a Brazilian diplomat who served as the first director general of the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons). In 2002, Bustani fell afoul of Bolton’s choleric temperament and was fired for, basically, doing his job.

It was the run-up to the Iraq War, which Bolton still thinks is the best thing since chocolate ice cream, and Bustani had been negotiating with the Libyan and Iraqi governments to convince them to sign up for the OPCW.

This was all in an attempt to stop potential adversary nations from acquiring the means to weaponise and deliver painfully asphyxiating sarin, mustard and chlorine gases, as common sense would recommend, but these efforts also happened, in the eyes of Bolton and Dick...

...Cheney, to undermine their ornamental justification for a planned invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein had, apparently, shown serious interest in joining the Chemical Weapons Convention, which the OPCW oversees, and seemed willing to accommodate inspectors in 2002.

According to Bustani, this caused an ‘uproar’ in Washington, where Republican Party neocons were keen to launch the attack they’d more or less signaled in writing to Bill Clinton in a 1998 letter to the White House. By the end of 2001, Bustani claims, he was being warned that...

...people in the US government ‘wanted his head’. In February 2002 he received a visit in the Netherlands from one John R. Bolton, imperiously demanding he resign within 24 hours. As Bustani tells it, Bolton informed him that ‘You have 24 hours to quit, and this is the...

...instruction from Mr. Dick Cheney.’ When Bustani stood his ground and pointed out that he’d just been re-elected director general with support from the US, Bolton allegedly replied ‘You better think it over, because we know where your kids are’, something he has since denied...

...saying. A meeting was held in The Hague on Sunday, April 21st. After some heated and very secret negotiations, and pressure from the US, which even threatened to cut the OPCW’s budget by 22 percent, a vote was held and Bustani was removed from his post by...

...48 to 7 votes, with 43 abstentions. Bustani, who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for his work combating the spread of chemical weapons, contends that he was pushed out for presenting an obstacle to the Bush administration’s march to war.

Saddam Hussein’s supposed possession of chemical weapons was ultimately presented as a key justification for the invasion of Iraq, and inspection of the country by the OPCW may well have weakened the Bush administration’s case. Regarding Iraqi chemical weapons, Bustani...

...says ‘Everyone knew there weren’t any. An inspection would make it obvious there were no weapons to destroy. This would completely nullify the decision to invade.’ Whilst a few chemical warheads, shells and aviation bombs were ultimately found in dormant caches after...

...Hussein was ousted, they were old and many had been built in collaboration with the West, making them inadmissible as proof that Washington had done the right thing. It’s entirely believable that Bustani’s account of Bolton’s threatening conduct is accurate, given...

...the multitude of very similar stories from government officials and contractors who have worked with and under Bolton. Bustani’s description of events is also interesting because of the light it sheds on the level of determination of the Bush administration to go to...

...war, and because, like so many other occurrences, it’s consistent with the theory that the invasion was premeditated and pre-determined, going back to at least the end of 2001.

If you're interested, here is another thread I did about John Bolton. This one is about him trying to weaken regulations on the marketing of infant formula in developing countries. https://twitter.com/goodoldcatchy/status/1274537006899458049?s=20