Long Live The Syrian Nuke Meme!

By Cernig That Syrian nuke misinformation is dying a death, but too late - the meme is well established. Thus proving the old adage that a lie will run around the world before the truth has finished puting on its boots. From Larissa at Raw Story comes an unsurprising exclusive. Israel did not strike a nuclear weapons facility in Syria on Sept. 6, instead striking a cache of North Korean missiles, current and former intelligence officials say. American intelligence sources familiar with key events leading up to the Israeli air raid tell RAW STORY that what the Syrians actually had were North Korean No-Dong missiles, possibly located at a site in either the city of Musalmiya in the northern part of Syria or further south around the city of Hama. While reports have alleged the US provided intelligence to Israel or that Israel shared their intelligence with the US, sources interviewed for this article believe that neither is accurate. By most accounts of intelligence officials, both former and current, Israel and the US both were well aware of the activities of North Korea and Syria and their attempts to chemically weaponize the No-Dong missile (above right). It therefore remains unclear why an intricate story involving evidence of a Syrian nuclear weapons program and/or enriched uranium was put out to press organizations. Steven D at Booman gets half the reason why the story has been farmed so intensively to the mainstream, particularly by the Murdoch outkets: a good way to rachet up the fear necessary to convince Americans that Iran and/or Syria need to be dealt with militarily is to make wild allegations that Syria, an ally of Iran is attempting to obtain nuclear material to put atop its missiles. After all, there is no evidence that Iran is capable of producing bomb grade nuclear material for weapons, but if North Korea is suddenly invoked as providing the necessary nuclear material and helping Syria and/or Iran fit nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles, well, that moves the threat from one that might potentially arise in 5 to 10 years time, to one which is a far more imminent threat of a nuclear apocalypse in the Middle East. I'm with Steven when he says that he's very glad the Isrealis took out a bunch of chem weapons, if that's what they did. You won't see any condemnation of the act itself from me. But what I will condemn is the nuke spin cycle that's been added. In creating a meme that will never die over on the War party's benches it has already served one purpose. It's been useful too for another purpose - distraction from a raft of IAEA committee moves designed to make the only nuclear power in the region - Israel - toe the same NPT line it demands of all its neighbours.