Oh, But He Really, Really Tried...

According to the BBC regarding the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize:

"Mr ElBaradei, who shares the award with the IAEA, described it as a recognition of the agency's efforts to make the world a safer place." (emp. mine)

Hmmmmm, efforts. Efforts? Did he say efforts? Yep, he said efforts. Now, it seems to me that results would be a little bit better as qualifications for a "peace" prize, but what do I know? But since we are going with "efforts," let's take a quick little look at how effective the IAEA's "efforts" have been.

*Before the 1991 Gulf War (before Dr ElBaradei’s appointment), the IAEA failed to detect Saddam’s nuclear programme. After the war, it was startled by the scale of his work to make fissile material.

* India announced it officially possessed nuclear weapons.

* Pakistan announced it had nuclear weapons.

* Under Dr ElBaradei, the IAEA missed the Libyan nuclear programme, which Libya chose to reveal after the 2003 Iraq war. Libya announced that it had a highly-developed nuclear weapons program, and turned it over -- lock, stock, and barrel -- to the United States.

* It was slow to sound the alarm about North Korea’s conversion of its civil nuclear power into a weapons programme. The US accused North Korea of weapons ambitions in 2002. North Korea has continued violations of the treaty and is unabashedly seeking nuclear weapons.

* Iran has repeatedly violated the treaty and is unabashedly seeking nuclear weapons. It failed to detect the “nuclear supermarket” run by A. Q. Khan, the Pakistani scientist who sold plans and components to Libya, North Korea and Iran.

* It failed to detect the “nuclear supermarket” run by A. Q. Khan, the Pakistani scientist who sold plans and components to Libya, North Korea and Iran. Pakistan has helped spread what it has learned about nuclear weapons throughout the Muslim world.

Info courtesy of the The Times and Wizbang


It's a good thing that the qualifications for winning the Nobel Peace Prize are "efforts" and not results because otherwise, Mr. ElBaradei would now be stuck in his boring old IAEA office instead of partying down with the "we-are-the-world" crowd in Oslo.


...And to give credit where credit is due, I give you Greenpeace. (I wonder if they got their costumes from these guys?)

















I realize that Greenpeaces's motives for protesting this event are completely different from my reasons for being glad to see them protesting this event. This is just one of those infrequent occurrences when through some bizarre discombobulation of time, space and matter, a radical leftist organization actually gets something right!