Megan McArdle does not highlight what to me is the most interesting part of Eli Lake’s report on the missing explosives controversy in this morning’s New York Sun:
On Monday, a spokesman for the American mission at the United Nations questioned the timing of the release of the material on the part of Mr. ElBaradei. Rick Grenell told the Sun’s Benny Avni the “timing seems puzzling.”
After a behind-the-scenes battle inside the State Department this summer, the Bush administration opted to reject Mr. ElBaradei’s bid for a third term as director general of the atomic energy agency.
At the time, Washington was collecting intelligence – disputed by some agencies – that Mr. ElBaradei was providing advice to Iran on how to avoid sanction from his organization for its previously undisclosed uranium enrichment programs.
Isn’t it interesting how all things connect? Something close to an open war has been going on for some time between the UN and the Bush Administration. Not long ago, an internationalist, I would have been reflexively on the side of the UN, but since the revelations of the Oil-for-Food scandal, my respect for the kleptocracy enablers on Turtle Bay has sunk to near zero.
This latest revelation is nothing more than a salvo in that war, timed to remove Bush from office. As we all know, at this very moment, the Oil-for-Food hearings are continuing in the House. In the event of Bush II, the conclusions of Henry Hyde’s committee will undoubtedly get serious attention, at least we can hope so. Big changes could ensue between the United Nations and its greatest financier. Under a Kerry Administration, who knows? Most likely for the International Enron on 44th Street it will be business as usual. No wonder they are meddling in an American election. To me the most interesting investigation would be the provenance of the leak, not the almost stupefyingly banal “fact” that some explosives out of many may or may not have gone missing during a war.
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