John Bolton Says 'Best' Possible Outcome Of Obama Presidency Is 'More Bombings, More Attacks'

[UPDATED BELOW: With additional perspective.]

Via ThinkProgress, we learn that yesterday, Fox News' John Gibson got to talking with former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton about Senator Barack Obama's foreign policy platform on Gibson's radio show. And, like the shrillest of scoundrels, the two soon got down to some tried-and-true election year fear-mongerin'!

GIBSON: The Obama team is going back to some of the old complaints about the war and the war on terror...that the left has been articulating for a long time now, and not really coming up with anything new.

BOLTON: Yeah I think honestly that's an optimistic view of it, that it will simply be a replay of the Clinton administration. It will simply have more embassy bombings, more bombings of our warships like the Cole, more World Trade Center attacks. That would be the best outcome from that perspective.

[LISTEN.]

Now, before I get down to betting Bolton about eleventy billion dollars that the World Trade Center is not going to get attacked again - seeing as it was destroyed during the Bush administration, let's talk "perspective." When one's projected "outcomes" are based upon the gaseous discharge from a pair of bloviating Bush-balls, you end up stuck with the sort of "perspective" that Bolton's pimping. But once you actually start founding those projections in fact, an altogether different perspective emerges.

And the facts are these: when it comes to driving an increase in "bombings and attacks," there are few things more successful than President Bush's Iraq War policies. According to the Center for American Progress:

The number of terrorist attacks--defined as an act of violence, or the threat of violence, calculated to create an atmosphere of fear and alarm--has risen dramatically worldwide since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The National Intelligence Estimate from September 2006 cited the Iraq war as a major factor in this startling rise in global jihadist terrorist attacks.

According to the State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism, 2006, there was a 29 percent increase in terrorism worldwide in 2006 from 2005; terrorist attacks on nonmilitary targets rose globally to 14,338 in 2006 from 11,153 in 2005, with an increase in deaths to 20,498 from 14,618. This increase was due to a doubling (91 percent increase) of terrorist attacks against noncombatants in Iraq from 2005 to 2006, and a 53 percent increase in terrorist attacks in Afghanistan.

A study conducted by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, research fellows at the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law, found that there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) since the Iraq invasion. When Iraq and Afghanistan, which together account for 80 percent of attacks and 67 percent of fatalities, were excluded, there was still a 35 percent per year increase in the number of jihadist terrorist attacks.

Emphasis mine. For further edification, you might consider consulting their map (map here, detailed explanation here), which demonstrates that "the story it tells is one of a sharp increase in global terrorism in the years since 9/11 and especially since the Iraq invasion."

With these facts in hand, you are probably likely to reach the same conclusion that Atlantic blogger Matthew Yglesias did in September of 2007:

One of the worst-appreciated points in the debate over national security policy is that the Bush administration's post-9/11 policies shouldn't be understood as counterterrorism measures that have, in some sense or another, "gone too far." Rather, we need to grasp that they've been wholly ineffective and, as best one can tell, merely made things worse.

UPDATE: No rational-minded rebuttal of John Bolton would be complete without this timely reminder from 1115.org/The Carpetbagger Report: "In 2005, after a government report showed an increase in terrorism around the world, the administration announced it would stop publishing its annual report on international terrorism." So remember, these guiys aren't nearly as afraid of an Obama presidency as they are a catalogue of their own failings.

Comments

[booker52]

11:21 AM on 06/22/2008

This guy is an idiot.

[Phil123]

09:18 AM on 06/22/2008

Bolton is usually correct, and much of what he says here makes sense too. Sending him to the UN was one of Bush's best moves, although it is probably a waste of time anyway - the UN is too corrupt and too far gone.

[truthyguy]

10:51 AM on 06/22/2008

Yes - and the best things this country ever had are the Bush presidency, the Cheney vice presidency and the Iraq war.

Any now I have to leave my shelter (my home was foreclosed) and walk (can't afford gasoline) to my free clinic (no health care insurance) and then to the unemployment office (my job was outsourced). Fortunately I can float a lot of the way since many of the streets are underwater due to the myth of global warming.

[wedgie]

08:30 AM on 06/22/2008

Is he talking about the US attacking and bombing more people? To him, that's a good outcome.

(Sorry, but I can't be bothered to read about what that creep actually says.)

**

[Bluedog12]

07:29 AM on 06/22/2008

Please someone throw a net over this lunatic!

[kvass]

01:57 AM on 06/22/2008

One of the best things about 2009 to look forward to is not having to look at pictures of that grumpy looking old fart Bolton.

[Ethics101]

12:32 AM on 06/22/2008

This is the man I hate most. He is the epitome of evil.
Biggest fear monger in America. What the hell is in it for him???

[cruisepuppy7452a]

11:12 PM on 06/21/2008

He bases this on what exactly? Playing the fear card will come back to bite republicans. Obamma is not the war hawk Bush or McCain is. He doesn't instigate wars. Republicans instigate wars. If there are bombings ect. attacks, it would be due to Bush wanting to attack iran. But hey, if they want to keep badmouthing, have at it, it will comeback to bite Mccain.

[popecorvo]

09:16 PM on 06/21/2008

When this arm chair tough guy had his chance at blood & guts, he joined the Maryland National Guard to avoid combat in Vietnam.

Of course those were the days when National Guard units were safe havens. Now, with no draft, joing the Guard or Reserves is a quick ticket the Absurdistan.

[goldgoose]

10:57 PM on 06/21/2008

Republicans campaigning for President have been screaming at the top of their lungs since 2001, that if American voters want to be safe from terrorist attack, they should elect a Republican President; don’t they realize how utterly stupid that statement is! Now, in 2008, the Republicans are starting to scream again that America needs a Republican President to protect the democratic Republic from Terrorist attack.
Do the Republicans actually believe that Americans are not fully aware that a Republican, George W. Bush, was actually was in the White House when bin Laden and his terrorists attacked America on Nine-Eleven?
It was the preceding Democratic Administration’s Homeland Security Officer, Richard Clarke, who actually warned President Bush that, a bin Laden, attack on America was imminent! The warning was totally ignored and President Bush admittedly took NO ACTION, WHAT-SO-EVER! When President Bush was warned of the imminent bin Laden attack, he was cutting weeds on his ranch in Texas and after receiving the warning, he continued to cut weeds. It is all there to read in the Nine-Eleven Commission Report.
When the Republican Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was asked about the response to the warning, she replied that America was already doing all it could to prevent a terrorist attack and NO FURTHER ACTION WAS REQUIRED!
The greatest terrorist attack ever against the United States took place when a Republican President, George W. Bush, was in office! It is his legacy.
http://quixotictales.escapenet.ch/

[JustSaying]

07:53 PM on 06/21/2008

Best outcome? He means best for his party and they will do their part to make those things happen. I have no doubt.

[realpolitic]

04:20 PM on 06/21/2008

Thank you Mr. Linkens for countering the lunatic ravings of the far right with actual facts. Of course, Fox news is a fact free zone. Bolton is about as predictable as one could be without being a windup toy. It is hard to do, but he caricatures the Bush administration as being inflexible, impervious to evidence,unthinking warmongers. That anyone would even ask Bolton his opinion to me is like asking a child if he wants candy.

Bolton would welcome more attacks on America under an administration like Bush's because then they could impose their Draconian policies and rob our civil liberties reducing us to a Big Brother state with no regulation on business because it may help the terrorists. Under an Obama administration, he would worry because basically Bolton does not respect the constitution. The problem to him is not terrorism, rather it is our civil liberties and restraints. Remove any restraints on unilateral action and executive authority and all is well to Bolton.

[WhiteDelyte]

02:13 PM on 06/21/2008

Lets get real. Airliners making U-turns and crashing into buildings isnt some surprise attack.
What, it was gross negligence?? C'mon if they wanted to prevent this tragedy, somebody could have.
Why is America so afraid of knowing the truth about 9/11.
The government and the people in charge during the time need to be held accountable.
Or else we will end up in a war that is unjustifiable. Oh, wait! DAMNNN!!
And still everyone is OK with their head buried in the sands of Iraq.

[Shaddup]

01:18 PM on 06/21/2008

This guy is the most disrespectful, crass, unintelligible person to hold a diplomatic position EVER in the history of our country. And, he looks like the professor in the old Felix the Cat cartoons.

[FogBelter]

12:17 PM on 06/21/2008

Theoretically, if you had a core group of NeoCons, like Bolton, who signed onto a manifesto to change the direction of the United States ... more Imperialistic Expansion, less Constitutional Rights ... as was forwarded by Project for the New American Century ... and you had a member, Richard Perle, muse over how "a new Pearl Harbor" was what was needed to get the ball rolling prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks ... I'd say you were irreversibly forged into your hawkish position.

I think we will find that all of these PNACers (whose site has been disabled by the way) will be living by the immortal words of Benjamin Franklin until their dying day ...

"We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately."

[outnow]

11:31 AM on 06/21/2008

Bolton is the proverbial "tough guy." There he was in 2000 in Florida screaming that he was from the Bush Campaign to steal the election. At the UN he was the Ambassador of ill-will. He needs to STFU.

[triplbee]

11:17 AM on 06/21/2008

The Republicans are in denial about the fact that the country was much more peaceful and prosperous under Clinton than under Bush. Their greatest fear is that we'll return to peace and prosperity under Obama.