Meteor Blades writes — in his must-read recommended diary, “A Nobel Bush Won’t Love” — “Whoever’s on the Nobel committee this year, let me give you a big kiss. Choosing Mohammed El Baradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency to receive the 2005 Peace Prize warms my heart for three reasons: 1) both have deserved it for years; 2) it’s recognition that the smirky American rightwing attitude toward international agencies is gravely misplaced; and 3) it pokes Washington in the eye, but that is redundant.”
Boy, is Dick Cheney pissed! “Jesus Christ, ElBaradei’s a pussy! I KNEW where the nuclear plants and WMDs are in Iraq! ElBaradei can’t even find the nuclear weapons programs in Iran!”
Then Mr. Cheney is heard muttering, “Damn my faulty ticker. Aneurysms in the knees? I think my body is falling apart faster than Karl Rove’s career. Otherwise I’d go over there myself and show them EXACTLY where they are! The ones in Iran too! Bolton blew it. Should’ve gotten AlBaradei fired when he had the chance.”
“The Old Gray Bitch [Ed. note: NYT] just said he has ‘championed the peaceful use of nuclear energy’?” Mr. Cheney asked incredulously. “Judy Miller’s tit’s in a wringer, and they write this tripe?”
“Peaceful, my ass,” the vice president continued testily. “Our soon-to-come nuclear bunker busters will blow those Nobel peace weinies from Norway clear to Siberia! Ha!”
“What’s next?! Is the Senate gonna get a fuckin’ peace prize for its girlie bill on ‘no mo’ torture’?” The Gray Bitch writes about a ‘kick in the legs’? We know ALL about kickin’ people in the legs [Ed. note: Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan].”
[Nobel committee chairman, Ole Danbolt Mjoes] said the award to Mr. ElBaradei was not meant as a veiled criticism of Washington or of Mr. Bush.
“This is not a kick in the legs to any country,” he told reporters gathered for the announcement.
A former committee chairman described the 2002 prize to former President Jimmy Carter as a “kick in the legs” to Mr. Bush. (NYT)
Mr. ElBaradei, 63, has championed the peaceful use of nuclear energy while emphasizing quiet diplomacy in trying to dissuade countries from using the technology to develop weapons. He has been at the center of nonproliferation crises involving all three states that President Bush once labeled the axis of evil, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Iran and North Korea.
He faced intense pressure from Washington in the days before the 2003 American.-led invasion of Iraq, demanding more time for weapons inspectors to search the country for weapons of mass destruction. Those weapons were never found.
More recently, Mr. ElBaradei has resisted American pressure to ask the United Nations Security Council to consider sanctions against Iran for its past breaches of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, preferring to coax Iran into compliance. The agency’s board finally voted to report the country to the Security Council in a watered-down resolution last month that set no timetable. (NYT)
