IF BOLTON NOMINATION FALTERS, BUSH MAY HAVE THE PERFECT BACK-UP: MEET JERRY JENNINGS, ALMOST AS BAD AS BOLTON

Rove and Cheney have already explained to Bush that the Senate isn't going to confirm his bid to make John Bolton our U.N. Ambassador and that if he wants to use him to wreck the U.N., he has to do it with a temporary recess appointment, something that a normal Administration would find embarrassing and something a normal U.N. Ambassador would find humiliating and dysfunctional. But, obviously, this regime is as impervious to embarrassment as it is to reason or morality, and it looks like they will opt for the recess appointment. But there is another option. Inside the bowels of the Bush Regime lurks someone else just as egregiously, aggressively incompetent and ill-suited for the job as Bolton. You probably haven't heard of Jerry Jennings. Consider yourself lucky. Jennings is heading the Defense Department's search for missing American service members and he, like so many members of the rogue Bush Regime, is being investigated-- this time by the Pentagon-- for allegations of abusive management. He sounds remarkably like Bolton with a plethora of accusations including reprisals against subordinates and sexual harassment of a female employee, according to professional (non-political) Pentagon officials familiar with the investigation.

Meanwhile, folks actually concerned with the search for MIAs have accused this incompetent hack of undermining the mission. He has alienated families of the missing and demoralized his staff and, with a weak political Secretary of State unwilling or unable to stand up to bullies, he screwed around with the U.S. embassies in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Jennings, of course, refuses to comment; standard Bush Regime procedure and, in fact, he hasn't shown up at the Pentagon in several months, although continuing to draw a full salary.

Jennings, a 65 year old pervert, misanthrope and hack bureaucrat for every GOP administration since Nixon, has so upset family groups that the boards of directors of the 3 leading MIA organizations, including the oldest, the National League of POW/MIA Families, each recently took the unprecedented step of voting ''no confidence'' in Jennings and urging his removal from office. Typical of the kinds of hacks Bush appoints to these jobs, he is a vicious, dense xenophobe who alienates foreign governments instead of working with them in a cooperative spirit. Just like Bolton.

An assessment by another, more professionally-run Pentagon office, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command accuses Jennings of undercutting the role of U.S. ambassadors in some of the countries where we need cooperation from foreign governments to get the job done. ''The result has been very destructive to the POW/MIA accounting mission,'' the 2004 report said. "A lot of hard work and time will be required to mend the inter-agency fissures and to overcome foreign officials' perceptions.'' This is pretty much a hallmark for what the Bush Regime's partisan and ignorant hacks are doing throughout government. The effort to account for the thousands of MIA cases, which takes U.S. search teams to remote parts of China, Russia and elsewhere to excavate burial grounds, aircraft crash sites and long-forgotten battlefields is in a shambles because of Jennings. It is hard to envision someone less suited-- other than perhaps Bush or Bolton themselves-- for work that involves sensitive diplomatic efforts with countries like North Korea and Vietnam.

The criticism isn't coming from Howard Dean, moveOn.org or progressive Democrats. It's coming from mainstream, non-political organizations and individuals appalled by how destructive to the mission Jennings has been. Richard T. Childress, who was director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council under Reagan and now advises the National League of Families, is so shocked by Jennings' venal incompetence that he issued a statement that the current situation "is by far the worst I have seen since the Carter administration.''

The national chairwoman of Korea-Cold War Families of the Missing, Irene Mandra, says her organization has "lost faith in him," adding that he is an ineffective leader who faces ''a virtual mutiny'' by members of his staff. She and the other organization heads have pointed out that he is unresponsive to their concerns and seemingly incapable of working with other elements of the government.

Although fearing Rumsfeld/Cheney/Rove type reprisals, so commonplace under the oppressive Bush Regime, details of the inspector general's investigation were provided by half a dozen non-political Pentagon officials with firsthand knowledge, all of whom requested anonymity and admitting a fear of (illegal) Bush Regime reprisals and the Pentagon office's assessment said morale in Jennings' organization was ''at an all-time low.''