"Diplomacy" in Pursuit of War

As Bush tools around India with Prime Minister Singh, they took a few moments to come to an agreement on sharing nuclear technology, or rather, for the US to give India more nuclear technology:

the United States would share its nuclear know-how and fuel with India.

Despite concerns that India developed nuclear arms in secret, Congressional critics of the deal are to be assauged because, if India develops more nuclear capability, this is really just plain good for the "American consumer":

But the other thing that our Congress has got to understand is that it's in our economic interests that India have a civilian nuclear power industry to help take the pressure off the global demand for energy. To the extent that we can reduce demand for fossil fuels, it will help the American consumer.

Bush clearly has our best interests at heart.

Just in case the world might still be wary of this situation, John Bolton was called on to make a statement that the way India and Pakistan developed their nuclear weapons was completely legitmate, that they didn't try to pretend they wouldn't develop such weapons by signing some silly non-proliferation treaty. We have known of Bolton's contempt for treaties and international agreements for sometime: they're for pussies. In fact, Bolton heaps praise upon India and Pakistan for their open disdain of nuclear non-proliferation:

I give them (India and Pakistan) credit at least that what they did was consistent with the obligations they undertook. They never pretended that they had given up the pursuit of nuclear weapons. They never tried to tie what they were doing under a cloak of international legitimacy. They did it openly and they did it legitimately.

Despite the fact that the US imposed sanctions on Pakistan for their nuclear weapons development and despite the fact that the UN Security Council condemned both countries for their pursuit of nukes, Bolton now wishes us all to believe that there really is no issue about this. I'm guessing that, in diplomatic circles, Bolton's reasoning would be viewed as "thinking outside the box."

It will no doubt be pointed out elsewhere how utterly bizarre Bolton's post hoc legitimacy claim really is, especially when legitimacy was certainly not what popped into anyone's head when India's and Pakistan's nuclear weapons tests surprised and worried the world. And almost within the same breath, Bolton manages to work in a zinger aimed right at Iran by claiming that, because Iran has signed the NPT, they can't be trusted, even though they have never been in violation of the treaty. Ever:

John Bolton said on Wednesday the way India and Pakistan had obtained nuclear arms was legitimate, in contrast to Iran, which he accused of pursuing atomic weapons in violation of its international undertakings.

Apparently, Bolton is unaware of the latest report from the IAEA:

the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has revealed that it has not found any evidence that Teheran had diverted material towards making atomic weapons.

In its report which has been circulated to its 35 board members, the IAEA said that its three years of investigations had not shown "any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

This was the same determination that was made back in August, with an interesting tidbit to chew on. Remember this little nugget:

Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined."The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions."

Scientists from the United States, France, Japan, Britain and Russia met in secret during the past nine months to pore over data collected by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to U.S. and foreign officials. Recently, the group, whose existence had not been previously reported, definitively matched samples of the highly enriched uranium -- a key ingredient for a nuclear weapon -- with centrifuge equipment turned over by the government of Pakistan.

Iran has long contended that the uranium traces were the result of contaminated equipment bought years ago from Pakistan. But the Bush administration had pointed to the material as evidence that Iran was making bomb-grade ingredients.

My, my. The irony oozes off the page.

These two stories now make me wonder what the hell Newsmax can possibly be talking about:

Iran's nuclear program was "a reason for immediate concern," the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna circulated an internal report that referred to evidence that Iran was pursuing a "nuclear weapons" program.

Oh, that's right, they're channeling John Negroponte, the other diplomatic genius of the Bush administration.

But the irony heaps up even more. News of this latest IAEA report that declares Iran is nuclear weapons free and has never pursued such a program can found at the Indian paper The Hindu and, so far, nowhere else. Will the rest of the world take notice or will it choose to be led down this long-expected war path by the Bush administration?

[Bolton's idiocy via Newshog]