John Bolton spent four months and made approximately 70 journalist and editorialist calls setting low expectations for the embryonic UN Human Rights Council.

Had he spent nearly this amount of effort working to actually secure a Human Rights Council that met American expectations, we would probably have succeeded far beyond expectations.

John Bolton is now undermining the UN international force to be deployed in Lebanon.

Here is the latest:

U.S. involvement in a peacekeeping force is likely to be limited to just logistics support, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton suggested to reporters Tuesday that other nations are not eager to commit troops to the 15,000-man force.

"I think that obviously the decisions have to be made by individual countries and their taking into account the circumstances of the mission, the extent of the mandate, the operational difficulties. I did see a story from -- I suppose I should say one wire service from Rome today quoting an Italian military official as being rather skeptical of being involved in a U.N. force. But in any event, this really is a responsibility of the Secretariat. We're doing everything we can to help support the generation of new contributions, but that's what the Department of Peacekeeping Operations really is there to do," Bolton said.

John Bolton never misses a chance to set the UN up for failure. That's his job, as Dick Cheney sees it.

A successful operation in Lebanon -- before the November elections -- would be bad for the President, and John Bolton knows who butters his bread.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons is Senior Fellow and Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note.