Rod writes about Israel’s recent airstrikes in Syria. which have been virtually unreported and unremarked upon, except in the blogosphere, as far as I can tell.
An ex-Army friend writes this morning with deep unease about the recent event in which Israeli jets attacked a purported Syrian nuke site. He wonders if it’s connected to this week’s assassination of a Christian parliamentarian in Lebanon. We’re trying to figure out what just happened in Syria. It doesn’t make sense to me that Syria is trying to start its own nuke program. Surely they can’t be under any illusions that Israel would allow that. Maybe they were doing precisely that … or maybe, as my friend suggests, the Syrians were planning to get nuclear material to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
What really happened here? Any guesses?
I think it’s quite clear what got attacked: The places that Syria was storing Saddam’s WMD. Other reports I’ve seen said quite a number of Iranian engineers were also killed in the attacks.
http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?id=785
good writer,,
Check out this video on the attack, it’s quite informing . . .
http://www.infolive.tv/en/infolive.tv-12385-israelnews-israel-thwarted-syrias-plan-attack
I forgot to mention that David Warren is an excellent int’l affairs writer. Spent some time growing up in Pakistan.
He is a recent convert to Catholicism and writes for Crisis magazine
http://crisismagazine.com/idler.htm
Lives in Toronto..
Interesting articles by David Warren. I might mention (hopefully without hijacking this thread) that Saint Francis de Sales considered anxiety to be second only to sin in causing spiritual trouble. His remedy was to share the trouble with a trusted friend. (See the Intro to Dev Life).
“I think it’s quite clear what got attacked: The places that Syria was storing Saddam’s WMD.”
If Saddam’s alleged WMD indeed were shipped to Syria, the Bush Administration sure won’t admit it. It wouldn’t reflect well on them.
If I were a tinpot government, I’d try to fake a WMD program as much as possible. It’d be cheaper than a real program and provide lots of disinformation to one’s enemies’ spies.
All right, then maybe you can explain the following:
<ul>
<li>How is it that the WMDs got to Syria without the NSA noticing and even tracking? Or, alternatively, how is it, given that the intelligence community knew about the transfer, that the Bush Administration decided they were important enough to invade Iraq, but not important enough to invade Syria?</li>
<li>Why would the Israelis wait 6 years to go after something the U.S. didn’t think worth going after? Aren’t they a tad more vulnerable than we are to the use of WMDs? Aren’t they a tad more vulnerable than we are to retaliation?</li>
<li>Isn’t it, in fact, pretty foolish to spin these hypotheses without hard information?</li>
</ul>
It might be foolish if I were somebody important and not just a nobody musing out loud. Sheesh, what’s with the hostility, Father? (This is why I don’t get into debates over the war on my blog. People lose all sense of proportion and simple manners.)
And contrary to popular mythology, the NSA is not all knowing and all seeing. Even so there were reports in 2003, before the war, of Saddam moving stuff over the border.
And I can imagine that it might take 4 years (not 6, since the invasion was in 2003, not 2001) for Israel to locate the cache, since they are not omniscient either.
In any case, the latest reports I’ve read indicate that it was more likely a shipment of North Korean nuclear-related materials being transshipped to Iran.
Thanks for the clarification. That makes much more sense, if it’s authentic.
I apologize if I came off sounding hostile, rather than simply exasperated.
A few months ago, I spotted an essay on the Internet wherein the author wrote of his efforts to find where the WMDs had been stored before the US/Coalition invasion of Iraq. He concentrated his search in southern Iraq, then moved to the north. His conclusion claimed that Saddam had stored those weapons in (four) large concrete bunkers UNDER THE EUPHRATES RIVER ! They were moved to Syria in anticipation of the invasion,he stated. Does anyone know of that essay and how to retrieve it ?
This might be a little out of line but:
Syria—carved out of the Ottomon Empire by britain and France at the end of WWI.
Isreal—carved out of Palastine by the UN (under pressure from US)
Lebanon—Former province of Syria.
None of these countries is a “natural” country, but were brought into being by outside powers for their own ends.
Perhaps what they’re doing is simply acting out of a sence of insecurity stemming from their origins, and an innate need to prove themselves too themselves?