Nobel Committee to President Bush: Suck On This Squarehead!

If you haven't heard:

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, were named the winners of the 2005 Nobel peace prize today. The award was made in recognition of their efforts "to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes" and to ensure the safety of nuclear energy, judges said.

Which is, essentially, a bit of a diplomatic "fuck you" to BushCo. Think Progress reminds us to what extent the administration has tried to smear ElBaradei:

Last year, the administration was less generous with their praise. In fact, it launched a smear campaign to prevent ElBaradei from returning for a third-term as head of the nuclear watchdog agency. In its efforts to bring him down, the administration leaked false intelligence about Egypt: Diplomats in Vienna suspect the story circulating in the press about a clandestine nuclear program in Egypt is part of an American-led campaign to oust the head of the international agency charged with preventing the proliferation of atomic weapons. [New York Sun, 1/5/05] And tapped his phone: The Bush administration has dozens of intercepts of Mohamed ElBaradei’s phone calls with Iranian diplomats and is scrutinizing them in search of ammunition to oust him as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to three U.S. government officials. [Washington Post, 12/12/04] John Bolton, recess-appointed-ambassador to the UN, led the charge against ElBaradei and went “out of his way to bad-mouth” him during those months. Why did the administration want him out so badly? It disagreed with ElBaradei about Iraq’s nonexistent WMD program. ElBaradei, if you’ll recall, turned out to be right.