No Edward R. Murrow, Cronkite, or even Russert, Wolf Blitzer nevertheless deserves some credit. On Sunday's (11/11/07) edition of CNN's Late Edition, Blitzer interviewed John Bolton, former Ambassador to the United Nations in this Administration.




BLITZER: Because a lot of experts, including the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, say there's no military solution to this, there's only a diplomatic solution. He was here on "Late Edition" two weeks ago and he told me this. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MOHAMED ELBARADEI, IAEA DIRECTOR GENERAL: I'm very much concerned about confrontation -- building confrontation, Wolf, because that would lead absolutely to a disaster. I see no military solution. The only durable solution is through negotiation and an inspection.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: Now, he says there can be a solution through negotiation and inspection. But what you're saying is the Iranians, under this current regime, have no intention of giving up their nuclear program under any circumstances.

BOLTON: Mohamed ElBaradei is an apologist for Iran. He has taken positions in flat violation of three Security Council resolutions, and he needs to learn that he works for the member governments of his agency, not the other way around.
BLITZER: But he got a second term. They voted. Despite the Bush administration's opposition, he was reelected to a second term.

BOLTON: He got a third term, actually, which is even worse.

BLITZER: Third, and so there -- he does have the confidence of some people.

BOLTON: I don't think we were effective in our campaign to oppose him. I don't think that he did nearly what we should have done, and I think we are paying the price now and will pay it into the future.

BLITZER: But, you know, in fairness to Mohamed ElBaradei, before the war in Iraq, when Condoleezza Rice and the president were speaking about mushroom clouds of Saddam Hussein and a revived nuclear weapons program that he may be undertaking, he was saying there was absolutely no such evidence. He was poo-pooing it, saying the Bush administration was overly alarming and there was no nuclear weapons program that Hussein had revived. He was right on that one.

BOLTON: Even a stopclock is right twice a day. Look, Saddam Hussein kept together over 1,000 nuclear scientists and technicians that he called his nuclear mujahadeen. There may not have been centrifuge cascades spinning, but Saddam had the intellectual capability to put that program right back together.

BLITZER: But that was an important issue, trying to justify the war, the mushroom clouds, the fear, the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud, and that's not just a little issue that he was right on. He was right on a major, major justification for going to war.

BOLTON: I'm not aware there was any disagreement with the Bush administration that Saddam did not have the physical capacity in his nuclear program, but he did have the intention and he had the record of having pursued them in the past.

BLITZER: He also said this about the early September Israeli airstrike on some sort of suspicious facility in Syria that reports have suggested was some sort of North Korean nuclear reactor facility that they were building to develop centrifuges in Syria. Listen to what ElBaradei said to me on this program two weeks ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELBARADEI: To bomb first and then ask questions later, I think undermines the system it and doesn't lead to any solution to any suspicion, because we are the eyes and ears of the international community. It's only the agencies and the inspectors who can go and verify the information.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: He said if the Israelis were concerned, they should have gone to the IAEA and made their case and then the inspectors, presumably, could have gone in since Syria is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

BOLTON: In you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. The notion that Israel or the United States would put their national security in the IAEA's hands is just delusional. And let me make one important point.

Eyes and ears of the international community? Look, the IAEA functionally gets most of its sensitive information from foreign intelligence services including our own, and that's why it's more properly called the U.N.'s nuclear watchpuppy.

BLITZER: So you don't believe, obviously, this guy, anything he's basically saying?

BOLTON: I think he's actually undermining the credibility of the IAEA by his overly politicized role in the Iran crisis.


In response to Bolton, who referred to Nobel Peace Prize winner ElBaradei as an "apologist for Iran," Blitzer noted that while Condoleeza Rice and George W. Bush were painting a picture of a "mushroom cloud," ElBaradei was saying that the International Atomic Energy Agency, of which he was, and is, Director General, had found no evidence of an ongoing nuclear program. That's right, folks- no weapons of mass destruction. (To refer to chemical and biological weapons as "weapons of mass destruction" is to trivialize the awesome destructive capabilities of nuclear weapons.) Here is the relevant part of the IAEA report of March 7, 2003:


There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites.
There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.
There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminium tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuges out of the aluminium tubes in question.
Although we are still reviewing issues related to magnets and magnet production, there is no indication to date that Iraq imported magnets for use in a centrifuge enrichment programme.

And the conclusion: "After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq."


So when yet another apologist for the Persian Gulf policy of George W. Bush (Nobel Peace Prizes won: 0) assures us, blithely, that "no one" before the war questioned the assumption that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, remember that he, or she, is lying. (And that is without reference to UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter, who asserted there was no hard evidence of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.) And another thing, Mr. Bolton: There is no need to compare President Bush unfavorably with a stopped clock.