I'm sure I wasn't much different from others who took the view that the world can wait over Christmas. I only half paid attention to the news, and everything seemed insignificant compared with the Iranian earthquake.
However, quickly scanning headlines left me with the impression that what the IAEA found when they got to Libya was that Libya didn't really pose much of a threat and that there was little cause for alarm. But, as I said, I wasn't paying much attention or even thinking critically about what I was reading.
Then yesterday the Washington Post reported that a seizure of components of nuclear weapons in September helped put the squeeze on Libya. But, it was this editorial from the Boston Globe that really opened my eyes. If the Globe is calling Mohammed El Baradei naive, even disingenuous, then I know I missed something.
The Globe states that the IAEA looks "incompetent if not simply irrelevant". They should have just gone with the "simply irrelevant". The UN's inability to distinguish between open, democratic societies and dictatorships is the primary reason that it should be ignored. The UN is a wonderful little talk shop, but nothing serious should be left up to it - particularly American and western security.
