EL BARADEI….NO WATCH, NO BARK, NO BITE…BUT STILL A CUR
Atomic Watchdog: No Bark, No Bite
Posted 11/19/2009 07:27 PM ET
Nuclear Terror: After years of blindness, the International Atomic Energy Agency warns that Syria is concealing nuclear activity and Iran is hiding atomic facilities. Has the “watchdog” just been polishing its Nobel?
The diplomats just love Mohamed ElBaradei, who is about to step down as director general of the United Nations’ IAEA. He’s the recipient of Georgetown’s prestigious Raymond “Jit” Trainor Award for Distinction in the Conduct of Diplomacy.
Also on his crammed mantelpiece can be found the Delta Air Lines Prize for Global Understanding, the Golden Dove of Peace award from the president of Italy, the Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development, and of course the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.
When he accepted his Nobel, ElBaradei didn’t mention the Islamofascist mullahs in Iran who want to see Western cities with millions of infidels go up in smoke, and what he was doing to save us from them. Nor did he mention the thugs who run Syria and North Korea, who are also trying their best to build weapons of mass destruction, posing the gravest of threats to free people.
Instead, the chief of the international agency charged with sounding the alarm to prevent a nuclear 9/11 complained that “the nations of the world spent over $1 trillion on armaments. But we contributed less than 10% of that amount — a mere $80 billion — as official development assistance to the developing parts of the world, where 850 million people suffer from hunger.”
Channeling John Lennon, ElBaradei asked the Norwegian Nobel Committee to “imagine a world where we would settle our differences through diplomacy and dialogue and not through bombs or bullets.”
It’s hard to keep an eye on rogue regimes building nuclear weapons when you’re busy singing “Kumbaya.” It has long been believed that Iran was building covert nuclear facilities early on ElBaradei’s watch. His agency eventually discovered suspicious signs of illicit activities, such as traces of highly enriched uranium on machinery meant for “peaceful” purposes, plus Tehran’s experiments with polonium-210, usable for a nuclear trigger.
Yet ElBaradei has always reserved his ire for those who call for pre-emptive action against a would-be nuclear-armed jihadist regime. In a New York Times interview earlier this year, he repeatedly called former Vice President Dick Cheney “Darth Vader.”
He also fumed that “Israel would be utterly crazy to attack Iran,” because it would “turn the region into a ball of fire and put Iran on a crash course for nuclear weapons with the support of the whole Muslim world.”
As for whoever is on a crash course for A-bombs, the IAEA cannot be depended on to provide dependable information.
In Syria, IAEA inspectors went looking around the Israeli-bombed al-Kibar nuclear facility in search of graphite, in spite of the likelihood that the Syrians had spent months washing away and burying every trace of the substance.
Now the IAEA is reporting traces of uranium at the site, as well as at a reactor near Damascus. The new report says there’s been “essentially no progress made” regarding Syria since the last report earlier this year. Yet the agency won’t call Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “Darth Vader” for scheming to build a bomb. Name-calling is “diplomatic” only when used against peacekeepers leading free, prosperous countries.
Now, after years of making excuses for Iran, the IAEA is using “unusually tough language” to warn that Tehran may have numerous secret nuclear facilities. In late October, the agency visited a deep underground nuclear site at a military base near the holy city of Qum, and it’s convinced other facilities exist.
If allowed to be completed by 2011, the site could make enough fuel for one or two nuclear weapons every year, and it’s too small for nonmilitary nuclear power use.
Construction of the Qum facility began seven years ago, but its existence was revealed to the world only in September.
Where was ElBaradei, who has run the IAEA since 1997? What was he doing as the Syrians were building the al-Kibar plant, with North Korea’s help?
Presumably he was imagining that wonderful world where we could settle our differences through diplomacy and dialogue — and making space for all those trophies.
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