Atlas, Wikileaks, and John Bolton

From her latest at Big Government, Pamela Geller’s take on what’s behind the Wikileaks dump.

But first, Bolton and The Judge

Jennifer Rubin interviews Bolton:

John Bolton interview: Obama’s in over his head

It’s December 2010, so it must be 2012 campaign season. A number of possible Republican presidential candidates have suggested (perhaps to endear themselves to weary political reporters) that they won’t announce — at least formally — for several months. But that’s a dodge. The pre-announcement jockeying — which looks an awful lot like campaigning — is well underway. Rep. Mike Pence delivered a candidate-like speech in Detroit on Monday. And a day doesn’t pass without an e-mail missive from Team Pawlenty. Here at Right Turn, we’ll be looking at and talking to would-be contenders and assessing how they might stack up against the competition. Today: former United Nations ambassador John Bolton.

There’s been no harsher critic of the Obama administration’s foreign policy than Bolton. Whether on START, the Iranian threat or “Russian reset,” he makes no bones about his concern that President Obama is simply “in over his head” on national security, as he told me in a wide-ranging interview that touched on his own presidential aspirations and his criticisms of Obama.

Bolton has begun to talk openly to conservative gatherings and media about his interest in a 2012 presidential run. “I’m seriously considering it,” he told me in an interview, in large part because of the “lack of foreign policy debate.” Having gotten past the idle chatter stage, he says he’s going to make the decision “in a very deliberate way” and suggests that making up his mind by mid-2011 is “not unreasonable.” He contends that he stands as good a chance as anyone. “The race is wide open,” he says. Anticipating questions about his ability to fund-raise, he says that new media has introduced a whole different style of campaigning, and it’s not necessary to have millions in the bank, as did former Texas Gov. John Connally, who famously spent a fortune to get a single GOP delegate. Bolton jokes that when it comes to the largess of a Connally, “I don’t have that luxury. But there are lots of things to consider — like losing all of your personal income.”

Even admirers of Bolton acknowledge that his run would be a long shot. But in a field that includes many “serious” contenders with no foreign policy experience, Bolton would certainly have a rationale for his run — to elevate discussion of foreign policy at a time when elected Republicans have many criticisms of the administration, but little opportunity to divert attention from domestic policy concerns. One key Republican congressional staffer confessed to me this week that with some notable exceptions, including Rep. Eric Cantor, most House members don’t consider foreign policy “within their comfort zone.” But a candidate like Bolton can certainly tee up issues, and in fact, amidst the buzz around his potential candidacy, he is already doing just that.

As a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Bolton travels widely and speaks to foreign policy officials around the globe. He says he hears a lot about the “fundamental weakness” of Obama’s foreign policy approach. “Despite all the goodwill” when he took office, Bolton says, “the performance and the execution – beyond the substance – have a lot to be desired.” Bolton asserts that “unlike every president since FDR, this president doesn’t think foreign policy is a top priority.” Bolton says he is particularly concerned about the Iranian threat: “Arab states don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons any more than Israel does, and they fear that Obama is going to deliver them into the hands” of a nuclear-armed Iran. (This observation was confirmed by the WikiLeaks documents released this week.)

If, as Bolton describes, the perception of Obama is now one of weakness, how does the administration get back on track? “Once you are perceived as not being up to the job, and we’re at that point, only performance can get it back.” But Bolton cautions that no one should wish for a crisis for Obama to prove his mettle — and he adds that, given Obama’s past performance, he’s not optimistic about how the president would perform in such a crisis.

***

And now, Ms. Geller:

In Time, Assange said that Hillary should resign

“if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the U.S. has signed up. Yes, she should resign over that.”

And how convenient that is for Obama! His only competition in the Democrat party for 2012 is Hillary.

Holder will go after the fall guy Assange, but the real culprits are in the government.

There is no way that one guy leaked all this without the help of very senior people and the infiltration of our government. There is no way that Julian Assange got his hooves on hundreds of thousands of documents from the State Department and other sources without people at the senior levels of the White House and the Justice Department turning a blind eye and a deaf ear. Particularly when the documents were so unflattering to Clinton.

What a perfect way to bring down Hillary. I am no fan of Clinton, but that is hardly the point. Obama means to destroy Hillary. His man? Assange.

Will the seditionists be tracked down and prosecuted? Hardly. They will be lauded at White House dinners with $100 Kobe steaks.

This is Obama’s MO. And he has no compunction taking the Democrat party down with him. He appears ready to go down and to take the American people with him, in service of his revolution. This WikiLeak is no accident; it is, rather, a play by the revolutionary left that came in with Obama. For America’s reputation and hegemony are another casualty of Obama’s WikiLeaks disaster. The damage is incalculable. After this, no nation will work with us. No nation will trust us. People on the ground will not put their lives and their families’ lives on the line for so reckless and feckless an “ally.”

Who is paying for the WikiLeaks state-of-the-art servers, housed in nuclear bomb shelters? Has anyone checked to see if it was Obama’s puppetmaster, George Soros?

The Telegraph reported that Assange was “warned by ‘inside sources in the White House’ not to return to the US as he could be arrested….US government insiders had informed him about discussions to charge him as a co-conspirator to espionage.”

Read the rest here.