Tomorrow morning's Washington Post will report, on Page 1A, that the Bush administration has been secretly wiretapping the telephone of International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei and is poring over the transcripts to seek ammunition to oust him as IAEA head.
story here
Although eavesdropping, even on allies, is considered a well-worn tool of national security and diplomacy, the efforts against ElBaradei demonstrate the lengths some within the administration are willing to go to replace a top international diplomat who questioned U.S. intelligence on Iraq and is now taking a cautious approach on Iran.
Of course, tapping the phones of international diplomats is nothing new for BushCo. If you'll remember, back before they lost the Security Council vote on the Iraq resolution, they were eavesdropping to try to figure out if Colin Powell's lies had had an effect, and if they could lure any more support for the war, as the WaPo article notes:
this is not the first time that ElBaradei or other U.N. officials have been the targets of a spy campaign. Three weeks before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the Observer newspaper in Britain published a secret directive from the National Security Agency ordering increased eavesdropping on U.N. diplomats.
ElBaradei and the IAEA in Iran are, just like Blix and the weapons inspectors in Iraq were, the voice of sanity and of the international community in trying to resolve the problems of potential aggression in the Middle East peacefully. Hmm. D'ya think that maybe the reason Bush doesn't seem so afraid of a Shi'ite victory in the January elections in Iraq, leading to closer relations between Iraq and Iran, is because he plans to "take care" of that situation by invading Iran next, after he drafts enough of our young people to make it possible?