IAEA head El Baradei to be re-appointed, and John Bolton's role

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The Bush administration, having found no alternate candidate or support from any allies, has given up on its attempt to force out Mohamed ElBaradei as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

After all, that is an encouraging sign, as the Bush administration hawks, namely their attack dog John Bolton, were hell bent to kill his re-nomination.

Amusingly, Bolton let his then boss, Condi Rice, go on her first European trip without knowing about the growing opposition there to Bolton's campaign to oust the head of the U.N. nuclear agency. Unsurprising, she ran against the proverbial wall adressing that issue.

Bolton has been trying to replace Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who is perceived by some within the Bush administration as too soft on Iran. Ironically, Pakistan, South Korea and Brazil – and Iran, find him to tough..

Publicly, Rice has staunchly defended Bolton's credentials and urged the Senate to quickly confirm him. But privately, officials said, she has kept him out of key discussions on Iran since taking over in January, probably being sick of him making his private foreign policy and him reporting to Cheney, rather than to her, or her predessessor. Bolton is not really a team player, it seems.

I think Bolton is best described as the proverbial hammer for whom every problem looks like a nail.

Bolton had called upon the CIA to investigate Blix, trawling for something to discredit him. Doubtless, like the CIA's later messages about the lack of evidence for Iraqi weaponry, its clean bill of health for Blix was unpalatable to—and dismissed by—the ideologues.
That’s remarkable, as Bolton tried the same trick on ElBaradei. Bolton called for an investigation of ElBaradei, it is known that Bolton got NSA intercepts from his phone calls, for the same reasons.

Bolton orchestrated the unlawful firing of Jose Bustani, founding director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, whose inspectors oversee destruction of U.S., Russian and other chemical weapons under a 168-nation treaty banning such arms. The agency, based in The Hague, Netherlands, also inspects chemical plants worldwide to ensure they're not put to military use.
Jose Bustani had to go, particularly because he was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad, and complete the job the UN had almost finished. That, however, might have undermined a U.S. argument for war with Iraq. It is IMO a rather be a fair bet that Bolton required intel on Bustani as well.

So there is method to Bolton’s monomaniac madness: ’You cross me and I kill’ya!’ is the boltonesque standard procedure.

Bolton's single-minded effort to get ElBaradei expelled actually worked against U.S. interests. It might even make some sense to replace someone in a position after he had already had two terms -- but to do it in the form of punishment for skepticism of U.S. claims seems vindictive, and only succeeded in uniting both friends and enemies against America's position. Brilliant.

In Bolton's arms control record, there is a clear pattern of deliberate policy paralysis. Accusations and blame were waged, justifying subsequent inaction and sabotage of standing US obligations. The United States' recent failure at the NPT conference is just one more thread in this pattern.

There was once a time, during the Cuba Missile Crisis, when JFK told de Gaulle about the russian missiles, that de Gaulle refused because the word of the president of the U.S. was good enough for him. That's history.

The world is confident ElBaradei did his job diligently, and this time no U.S. armtwisting could do a thing about it. He now is re-appointed. And that's a good sign: After all the spin and balooney from the U.S. on alleged WMD programs all over the place, the world evidently sees the urgent need for an independent and neutral view.

[ June 08, 2005, 11:46: Message edited by: Ragusa ]