A giant “YES, WE CAN!” was carved in the snow outside the IAEA building on Tuesday.   Norbert Aschenbrenner came into work early for the job, and was probably not the only IAEA employee who expects more respect from the new White House than the trashing it got from the last one.  Picture  and AP story below

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VIENNA, Austria (AP) — It was just a scribble in the snow.

But the giant “YES, WE CAN!” that Norbert Aschenbrenner carved in huge block letters at the U.N. complex in Vienna on Tuesday was a poignant expression of how many people in the international community are embracing Barack Obama.

Aschenbrenner works for the International Atomic Energy Agency, which went up against President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration said Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction; the IAEA insisted its inspectors had found no evidence of any.

Aschenbrenner said he felt compelled to do something to express his pleasure with the change of leadership in Washington. “So I came in early today, at 7 a.m., and felt a bit like a graffiti sprayer,” he said.

U.N. workers peered down at the giant slogan from their office windows and snapped photos with their cell phones.

By midafternoon, it had mostly melted away.

“We trust this is not a metaphor for how quickly the vision of Obama will be dissipated!” said Neil Jarvis, an IAEA official from South Africa. “May it rather last for a long, long time.”

_By William J. Kole.

Tags: "yes we can", IAEA