The Times:
Israelis ‘blew apart Syrian nuclear cache’
Secret raid on Korean shipment
Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv, Sarah Baxter in Washington and Michael SheridanIT was just after midnight when the 69th Squadron of Israeli F15Is crossed the Syrian coast-line. On the ground, Syria’s formidable air defences went dead. An audacious raid on a Syrian target 50 miles from the Iraqi border was under way.
At a rendezvous point on the ground, a Shaldag air force commando team was waiting to direct their laser beams at the target for the approaching jets. The team had arrived a day earlier, taking up position near a large underground depot. Soon the bunkers were in flames.
Ten days after the jets reached home, their mission was the focus of intense speculation this weekend amid claims that Israel believed it had destroyed a cache of nuclear materials from North Korea.
As everyone else is saying; assuming this is true, it’s pretty damned amazing. The thing that gets me is Israel’s seeming ability to shut down the Syrian air defenses.
The other thing that gets me is that even Ehud Olmert gets it. Chinless ophthalmologists and short, apocalyptic Islamist religious fanatics should not be allowed to play with nukes.
Again, assuming this is true, it’s real nice to see that Israel still has the biggest balls on the block.
UPDATE [Ed.]: TigerHawk
Finally — and this is the really loud message — the Arab world, taken as a whole, has responded with… silence. No other Arab government complained about the raid, forcing Syria to take its protest to the United Nations alone. No mobs poured into the famous “Arab street,” no flags were burned, no cars torched, and no “rage boys” screamed into television cameras. The message to Syria and Iran could not have been more clear: The Arabs are far more worried about Iran and its satellites than they are about Israel.
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Who made the computer running it? Who programmed it? Could they have given or sold Israel a backdoor(or two)?
Any “intelligence service” that is seriously “perplexed” should be renamed a “dumbass service.”
North Korea has a history of nothing but treachery, lies, and broken agreements and promises when it comes to the United States. Only a George W. Bush - or a UN weapons inspector - could seriously believe this particular skunk has suddenly changed its stripes.
Further, any rational understanding of the North Korean regime must include the knowledge that, if Red China wished that regime to fall tomorrow, it would do so. The fact that it has not is a red line indicator of China’s hand in this endless kabuki that so fascinates gullible US diplomats.
What I wonder about - if Iran is planting or attempting to plant nuclear silos in its satellite, doesn’t that imply that they already have nuclear attack capabilities themselves? Would they really pass off nukes from NoKo or Pakistan to Syria without either having already developed or purchased their own?
Deon, one version has this being nuclear materials being funneled from NoKo to Iran via Syria. Another has this being a nuclear weapon shipped from NoKo to Syria, ultimate destination undertermined: Syria? Iran? Who knows?
And these are only a couple of the possibilities mentioned.
As someone else would say: “heh”
It’d be a lot nicer to see if the US didn’t look so pussified by comparison.