The Nobel Prize Slaps Dubya In The Face
www.waynemadsenreport.com
By Wayne Madsen
October 7, 2005 -- The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its Egyptian director Mohammed ElBaradei in what is yet another international slap at the Bush administration. ElBaradei incurred the wrath of the neo-cons in the Bush administration after he pointed out the Niger documents used by the Bush administration to suggest Saddam Hussein was shopping for yellowcake uranium in Niger were crude forgeries. The Bush administration, particularly the State Department's then-point man for nuclear proliferation issues John Bolton, attempted to have ElBaradei removed from his job.
The awarding of the Nobel Prize to ElBaradei and the IAEA comes at an interesting time. The ongoing criminal investigation of the leak of a covert CIA non-official cover (NOC) network by senior White House officials directly impacted the ability of the CIA to discretely gather intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation, including interfacing with nuclear specialists at IAEA meetings in Vienna and elsewhere. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the IAEA and ElBaradei bolsters the image of the agency as a key player in curtailing nuclear proliferation. The award also demonstrates that the CIA's loss of intelligence gathering capabilities via the IAEA has had a damaging effect on the ability of U.S. intelligence to monitor global proliferation of WMDs.
Over 200 Peace Prize nominations were presented to the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Some neo-con politicians in the United States and Europe have actually put forward the names of George W. Bush and Tony Blair for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2002, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to former President Jimmy Carter in yet another display of international nose thumbing of the Bush administration and its war policies.