Nelson Mandela puts in a strong early bid for Idiotarian of 2003.

“Why is the United States behaving so arrogantly?” he asked. “All that (Bush) wants is Iraqi oil,” he said.

He accused Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of undermining the United Nations and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who is from Ghana.

“Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations is now a black man? They never did that when secretary-generals were white,” he said.

Mandela said the United Nations was the main reason there has been no World War III and it should make the decisions on how to deal with Iraq.

The United States, which callously dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had no moral authority to unilaterally police the world, he said.

“If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don’t care for human beings,” he said.

UPDATE: I just took a run around the usual US news sources, and not one of them is reporting Mandela’s anti-Israel comment—why? I found it at the BBC, who don’t seem constrained by whatever PC impulse is motivating AP, Reuters, CNN, Fox, ABC, CBS, and NBC: Mandela condemns US stance on Iraq.

“Why does the United States behave so arrogantly?” Mr Mandela asked.

“Their friend Israel has got weapons of mass destruction but because it’s their ally they won’t ask the United Nations to get rid of them.