SHAKESPEARE'S SISTER has an important post about an AP article that links John Bolton's controversial firing of Jose Bustani, director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons; with the Bush administration's plans, revealed in the Downing Street memo, to choose the military option rather than diplomacy in Iraq.

References to the Downing Street Memo are starting to pop up in the strangest places. Most recently, it was noted in an AP report that was about Bush’s nominee to the UN, crazy-ass bastard, John Bolton. In delving into a situation that serves as yet another example of why the miscreant Bolton is unfit for the position for which he has been nominated, the article also further strengthens the case, as seemingly evidenced by the Downing Street Memo, that the Bush administration was hellbent on invading Iraq long before they had secured Congressional authority to do so.

The aforementioned situation is this: In 2002, Bolton was key in ousting Jose Bustani, the head of a global arms-control agency, because Bustani was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad, which, as pointed out by the report in Newsday, “might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war.”