text: On April 11, 2005, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee reviewed Bolton's qualifications. Bolton said he and his colleagues "view the U.N. as an important component of our diplomacy" and will work to solve its problems and enhance its strengths, echoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's words from a month earlier.
  On the first day of the hearings, Republican committee chairman Richard Lugar criticized Bolton for ignoring the "policy consequences" of his statements, saying diplomatic speech "should never be undertaken simply to score international debating points to appeal to segments of the U.S. public opinion or to validate a personal point of view." The committee's top Democrat, Joe Biden, compared sending Bolton to the UN to sending a "bull into a china shop," and expressed "grave concern" about Bolton's "diplomatic temperament" and his record: "In my judgment, your judgment about how to deal with the emerging threats have not been particularly useful," Biden said. Republican Senator George Allen said Bolton had the "experience," "knowledge," "background," "and the right principles to come into the United Nations at this time," calling him "the absolute perfect person for the job." Democratic Senator Russ Feingold asked Bolton about what he would have done had the Rwandan genocide occurred while he was ambassador to the United Nations, and criticized his answer—which focused on logistics—as "amazingly passive."