Mr. Potato Head: Obama Offers Hope of 'Saner' World

A 'saner' world of course, where we willingly disarm while our enemies go nuclear, thanks in no small part to the IAEA nuclear watchdog, of course.

UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Thursday that the election of US President Barack Obama had given him hope for a "saner" world for the first time.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) praised Obama's offer of talks with Iran and, in an implicit criticism of former president George W. Bush, said isolating states was always doomed to failure.

ElBaradei told the Davos forum: "For the first time I have started to have some hope that we will start to have a world that is safer, that is saner, that is more humane."

"President Obama has said he is ready to speak to Iran without preconditions," he said during a debate that was broadcast live on US satellite channel CNN. "This is the way to go. It is long overdue."

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said that his country was prepared to cooperate with the US but was also waiting for Obama to demonstrate the differences in his policies compared to those of Bush.

A change in policy would result in "a cooperative approach and reaction" in the Middle East "and Iran is not excluded from this general understanding," he said here.

"Obama has courage and should continue his courage and should say in what areas he is against the policies of president Bush," he said.

"Americans talk to the world more than enough already. Now Americans should listen. They should try to listen to the others."

Obama hasn't exactly demonstrated any ability to dispel our new subservience. He might want to start answering this smacktalk from our enemies before his finds his honeymoon over by this weekend.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner also said the Obama administration could work rapidly towards creating a world without nuclear weapons and a number of treaties could be advanced in the next six months, including a ban on nuclear weapons tests.

You can almost envision it. Obama sings a treaty banning nuclear weapons, then the next day Iran tests their nuke.

It would probably guarantee ElBaradei another Nobel Prize.