Excerpt from Mohamed ElBaradei memoir referencing Iraq inspections and criticism of US officials

14 his third term and announced his interest in running against President Hosni Mubarak in the election scheduled for this year. In 2005, he and the agency were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their nonproliferation endeavors. Doubtless the Norwegian selectors, always ready to needle American hawks, also sought to reward his bold critique of the American-led war against Iraq, especially since they drew ill-tempered ripostes from top officials in the Bush administration, particularly “Dick Cheney and his faction.” In many ways, this David-Goliath confrontation over Iraq both drove E|Baradei in his years atop the I.A.E.A. and also inspired this memoir. The Iraq story is well known. The Bush team insisted that Saddam Hussein — who had cheated on nukes and chemical weapons once before and been caught — had or was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, and they demanded I.A.E.A. inspections of Iraq to confirm it. The agency conducted 247 inspections at 147 sites in Iraq from November 2002 until March 2003 and found no violations and no nuclear weapons. Nonetheless, the United States insisted on its own “evidence” and went to war. There can be no exaggerating the negative effects of this experience on world opinion toward the United States and upon ElBaradei himself as I.A.E.A. chief. E|Baradei’s self-proclaimed mission became preventing another Iraq- type war. To this end, he significantly upgraded the agency’s inspection capabilities, building on the work of his predecessor, Hans Blix. At the same time, ElBaradei decried American counterproliferation efforts as warmongering. These campaigns provided the three themes of his memoir: the need to strengthen the mandate and standing of the I.A.E.A., to restrain sword-waving by the great powers (read the United States), and to emphasize diplomacy and collective security instead. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_024971