What Was Bombed In Syria Matters Less Than Why

By Cernig

It being Super-Tuesday, Sy Hersh's latest article on what exactly the Israelis bombed in the Syrian desert last September is likely to be mostly overlooked. Which is a great pity because it's the most in-depth investigation I've seen of what went on and why. It even has - gasp - named sources. Both Smintheus at DKos and Ken at Bonehead Compendium wrote to flag this one up for me and I heartily recommend giving it a full read.

The short version - reports that the site was a nuclear reactor are almost certainly israeli or neocon spin. It was far more likely to be either a missile factory, a chemical weapons factory or a combination of both. (This was the conclusion I came to some months ago after reading as much as I could grab on the subject, so I'm predisposed to a favorable reading of Hersh on this). But what it actually was no longer matters. Two messages have come out loud and clear from the large amount of speculation surrounding the raid.

The first is that Israel, following its questionable success against Hezboullah, needed to restore a perception of its military competence.

“I hesitate to answer any journalist’s questions about it,” Faruq al-Shara, the Syrian Vice-President, told me. “Israel bombed to restore its credibility, and their objective is for us to keep talking about it. And by answering your questions I serve their objective. Why should I volunteer to do that?” Shara denied that his nation has a nuclear-weapons program. “The volume of articles about the bombing is incredible, and it’s not important that it’s a lie,” he said.

...That notion was echoed by the ambassador of an Israeli ally who is posted in Tel Aviv. “The truth is not important,” the ambassador told me. “Israel was able to restore its credibility as a deterrent. That is the whole thing. No one will know what the real story is.”

The second is that America may be wagging the Israeli tail but it doesn't have complete control over Israel's actions.

Shortly after the bombing, a Chinese envoy and one of the Bush Administration’s senior national-security officials met in Washington. The Chinese envoy had just returned from a visit to Tehran, a person familiar with the discussion told me, and he wanted the White House to know that there were moderates there who were interested in talks. The national-security official rejected that possibility and told the envoy, as the person familiar with the discussion recalled, “‘You are aware of the recent Israeli statements about Syria. The Israelis are extremely serious about Iran and its nuclear program, and I believe that, if the United States government is unsuccessful in its diplomatic dealings with Iran, the Israelis will take it out militarily.’ He then told the envoy that he wanted him to convey this to his government—that the Israelis were serious.

“He was telling the Chinese leadership that they’d better warn Iran that we can’t hold back Israel, and that the Iranians should look at Syria and see what’s coming next if diplomacy fails,” the person familiar with the discussion said. “His message was that the Syrian attack was in part aimed at Iran.”

Which puts Bush's recent pronouncements that America must not be seen as a "paper tiger" in the region into a whole new perspective, especially when his own ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad is freely admitting that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have strengthened Iran's hand in the Middle East. Is Bush more worried about Iran's perception of America's toothlessness, or of Israel's perception of America's value in the region?

What about Khalilzhad? It seems to me that he might finally have parted company with the pro-Israel lobby within the neocon circles he has always been a part of. But from Cheney on down they must be aware that he knows where all the bodies are buried - he was integral, for instance, in the Taliban's original lionising as heroes against Russia (even inviting Taliban leaders to dinner in Texas) and was intimate of the process whereby they and Al Qaeda became enemy number one after getting US aid for so long. They'll be wary of alienating him to the point where his resignation is followed by a tell-all memoir.

Syria Rebuilds Attacked Site

By Cernig

According to the NY Times, which has satellite pics, the Syrian government has begun rebuilding on the site which has been tentatively identified as that bombed by the Israelis back in September. Of course, since neither Syria nor Israel have ever confirmed what was attacked, that this is the correct site is conjecture, although reasonable conjecture.

air attack was directed against what Israeli and American intelligence analysts had judged to be a partly constructed nuclear reactor. The Syrians vigorously denied the atomic claim.

Before the attack, satellite imagery showed a tall, square building there measuring about 150 feet long per side.

After the attack, the Syrians wiped the area clean, with some analysis calling the speed of the cleanup a tacit admission of guilt. The barren site is on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, 90 miles north of the Iraqi border.

The image released Friday came from a private company, DigitalGlobe, in Longmont, Colo. It shows a tall, square building under construction that appears to closely resemble the original structure, with the exception that the roof is vaulted instead of flat. The photo was taken from space on Wednesday.

Given the international uproar that unfolded after the bombing, “we can assume it’s not a reactor,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that has analyzed the Syrian site.

And if this one isn't a reactor, it seems more likely now than ever that the last building wasn't either.

Still, the way the site was cleared would make telling what the original plant was almost impossible, with one exception: we can be utterly sure that the last plant wasn't a working reactor unless Syria is OK with it's top nuclear scientists glowing in the dark. If the plant had had sizeable amounts of nuclear material on site, as some of the most lurid and Cheney-ised reports at the time had suggested, then no amount of bulldozing would make it safe to build on now.

The Syrians, however, refused the IAEA permission to inspect the site, which is highly indicative of something they really don't want the international community looking at.

I'm back to my original suspicion - a missile fabrication plant designed to mate North Korean designed improved Scuds to chemical warheads.

Update Dr Jeffrey Lewis dubs the new building the Monopoly House on the Euphrates (MHE) and writes:

I think Andy — aka the Nonpartisan Pundit — hit the nail on the head in the comment section when he cautioned those concluding the bulldozing of the site was suspicious about jumping to conclusions:

To be fair, let’s consider the possibility that Syria intended to rebuild this building, whatever it was. Would they not “scrape” and flatten the area to place a new foundation on?

Additionally, the two other structures in the facility, including the alleged pump-house, remain. It seems to me if Syria wanted to hide all evidence of a reactor, it would dismantle these as well. Of course that may be the intent, but something the Syrians have not yet accomplished.

Hopefully ISIS will buy future imagery of this site to monitor progress to see what happens.

There has been a certain tendency on the part of the “nuclear reactor” crowd to interpret all actions in light of that assumption (Syria must be destroying the evidence!) rather than consider alternative possibilities of the sort that Andy raised.

I still prefer the hypothesis that it is Bashar al-Assad’s naked swimming pool.

Heh.

Yet More Syria Nonsense

By Cernig

Yet more crapola from the London Times' Uzi Mahnaimi about the Israli attack on a big box in the Syrian desert back in September. It wasn't a reactor after all, he says, it was a bomb factory:

ISRAEL’S top-secret air raid on Syria in September destroyed a bomb factory assembling warheads fuelled by North Korean plutonium, a leading Israeli nuclear expert has told The Sunday Times.

Professor Uzi Even of Tel Aviv University was one of the founders of the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona, the source of the Jewish state’s undeclared nuclear arsenal.

“I suspect that it was a plant for processing plutonium, namely, a factory for assembling the bomb,” he said. “I think the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] transferred to Syria weapons-grade plutonium in raw form, that is nuggets of easily transported metal in protective cans. I think the shaping and casting of the plutonium was supposed to be in Syria.”

Blowing up such a facility would scatter uniquely identifiable radioactive debris into the atmosphere, something Mahnaimi's expert concedes - yet at the time US officials confirmed that no such debris had been detected.

And what happened to Mahnaimi's last story about the Big Box? The one where he said Israeli commandos had even been inside and seized materials. Surely that would make the current story irrelevant. Could it be that Mahnaimi is just a serial liar?

Dave Schuler writes:

The facts as we know them (and as ably summarized at GlobalSecurity) are that on September 6, 2007 Israeli warplanes attacked a site in Syria and that some time subsequent to that the Syrians completely levelled the site. That’s about it. Everything else we’ve heard are statements about the facts.

We need more facts. Short of that it’s just keeping the ball in the air. To what purpose?

Well, Dave, no rightwing pundit or politician ever lost money or votes from hyping fear of war with the neighbours. And I continue to believe there's a very useful element of "look, over there!" involved for Irsael, which is the subject of a push by Egypt and Syrian at the IAEA to allow inspections of its own nuclear facilities by the nuke watchdogs.

Whatever Happened To The Syrian Nuke Meme?

By Cernig

The Syrian Nukes story plunged to the depths of absurdity recently when Al Jazeera claimed, the US, not Israel, had struck the mysterious facility - and with nukes at that. The entire story was based on the say-so of one anonymous Israeli businessman with no clear reason to know diddly-squat, however - something Murdoch's Jerusalem Post conveniently forgot to mention when it picked up the story for non-Arabic readers.

But if you want sublimely stupid agitprop for the gullible, then try the latest story doing the rounds of the Israeli newspapers - the Syrian nuclear facility was so secret even the Syrian military didn't know about it!

Meanwhile, utterly un-noticed, South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun "said he has never seen evidence of nuclear cooperation between North Korea and Syria, denying U.S. media reports alleging that the communist North has helped Syria build nuclear facilities."

Try this one - the Syrian nuclear plant was so secret it didn't even exist.

Utterly Barking

By Cernig

Dr. Sanity thinks it would be a "pleasant surprise" to discover Bush nuked Syria.

I assume she'll be unpleasantly surprised to discover that the entire story (translate it here) rests on the word of an anonymous Israeli businessman. Something Murdoch's Jerusalem Post forgot to mention when it repeated the story to the wingnut world.

Israel Bombed Assad's Secret Harem

By Cernig

Back in September, Israel bombed President Assad of Syria's secret harem complex - and he's too embarassed to say anything about it...

That's just as definite and believable an assertion as any other we've seen about whatever it was Israeli planes targeted in the Syrian desert on Sept. 6th. Take for example the recent claims from David Albright and ISIS, now getting big coverage from Judy Miller's old friends in the NY Times. While superficially more plausibe, because talk of nukes is more "serious" than talks of harems or olympic swimming pool complexes, they don't have a shred more actual evidence going for them.

The latest pics of the site identified by Albright, after he and his colleagues poured over satellite photos of Syria looking for something that could be a nuclear site, are actually the oldest. Pics from 2003 show said site already built. William Broad and Mark Mazetti take that as evidence that Syria's secret nuke program was - gasp, shock, horror - more advanced than anyone thought!

It isn't until the bottom of the article that they actually ask a real expert, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, what he thinks. Lewis observes that "it was surprising from the photos how little progress had been made at the site between 2003 and 2007."

As Emptywheel at the Next Hurrah observes, the Miller-Lites (Sanger, Broad, Mazetti) couldn't possibly conceive that "the inactivity at the site reveals ... inactivity."

On his own Arms Control Wonk blog, Dr. Lewis tramples all over the "nuke-plant" narrative, pushed by the Fourth Branch and channeled by the Miller-Lites, in great big hobnailed boots.

If you look five clicks east of the site, there is a secure facility with a large building that is about the same dimensions — 47 m x 45 m. No one, however, is suggesting that is a reactor. “Imagery intelligence,” the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction wrote, is “only one piece of the collection effort against WMD, and will have to be used in conjunction with information from other sources.”

This doesn’t mean that the Syrian facility wasn’t a reactor. It means, based on the public evidence, we don’t know what whether it was a copy of Yongbyon or Bashar al-Assad’s naked swimming pool. The only way to know is to get inside.

So, the real key is this supposed HUMINT obtained by Israel. As far as I can tell, the only indication of this is from Martha Raddatz at ABC who claimed Israel “managed to either co-opt one of the facility’s workers or to insert a spy posing as an employee. As a result, the Israelis obtained many detailed pictures of the facility from the ground.”

Frankly, I would have preferred IAEA inspectors to some disgruntled construction worker with a drinking problem.

Of course, Raddatz’s source also claimed it was a concrete cylinder, not a big box. So, I get the sense (s)he was passing along a little RUMINT.

***

For analytic completeness, we need images of the site between the strike and the clean-up operation.

Israel, for example, might have missed (at the very least, Syria would want to complicate any post-strike assessment) or Syria, I suppose, may even have dismantled the facility before the strike. I doubt both, very much, but I’d like the pictures, thank you.

To recap:

We don't know if Albright's site is the site the Israeli's bombed.

We don't know if the strike actually hit anything.

We don't know what the Israelis really thought their target was, purpose or location.

We don't know if the target was really what the Israelis thought it was.

And at every stage we have shreds of circumstantial evidence suggesting that the accepted narrative is untrue.

In other words, the accepted narrative is as empty of actual evidence as any WMD snark hunt in the Middle East, conceived by warmongers and driven by tame media pets, ever was.

Syria Calls In The Cleaners

By Cernig

Following up on yesterday's post about the ISIS report which said their experts had identified what they thought might be that Syrian site the Israelis bombed in September - the NY Times has some interesting satellite photos today that shows a massive clean-up operation has been done at said site.

There was obviously something happening there the Syrians didn't want anyone having a good look at.

But, logically, that doesn't prove it must have been a nuclear something. The arguments for saying the "nuke" stuff is just value-added agitprop are still just as valid as they were before. I'm still of a mind that this facility was a less-sexy but perhaps even more dangerous chemical weapons/missile fabrication plant. If so, the Israelis actually had more reason for an attack than if it was a nuke plant which was years from completion. But they still should have involved the international community and left out the nukey-scarey BS - because one loose-cannon state isn't counterbalanced by being yet another loose-cannon state.

"Being Judith Miller'd" (Updated)

By Cernig

Updated below and bumped

The question of exactly what Israeli warplanes bombed in Syria back in September is still not clear. However, Steve Clemons throws some interesting information into the mix today. He reports that several journalist friends have said they were being pressured by Cheneyites in the administration to push the nuke story - some described the pressure as "being Judith Miller'd".

Clemons, though, has a different theory based on conversations with intel types he knows.

Jane's Defense apparently had a leak that the Syrians were experimenting with chemical warheads for the scud missiles -- and that these warheads had airburst capacity. Some folks I spoke to in the Pentagon -- who were not in the deep core of knowledge -- but close enough that they helped indicate the right and wrong direction of inquiry led me to believe that the Syrians had worked with North Koreans to assemble some kind of new machine tooling operation that would transform the thousands upon thousands of rockets that Syria was producing to aim at Israel -- and also to supply Hezbollah with -- into more sophisticated "air burst" warhead compatible scuds.

Then someone I can't mention but very close to the action on the Arab side of the equation essentially confirmed the story above.

I'm inclined to believe this - not least because it's pretty much what I had come to believe after reading all the reporting on the attack. The Syrians can't admit to CW and so the OVP and Israel can milk it with impunity.

Why not just say CW then? Three reasons spring to mind -
1) Nukes are "sexier" - they're just more newsworthy and that helps push along the demonization narrative just a little further than chemical weapons on missiles does.
2) Connecting Iran to the narrative as well as North Korea. N-Pod, Bolton, Wurmser and others (probably including Cheney) believe the route to Iran regime change lies through toppling Damascus; that by thus showing that Teheran can't protect its allies the people of Iran will finally lose their patience with the Mullahs.
3) Defusing the Arab push to have Israel either permit IAEA inspections or face Iran-standard sanctions by adding an element of Syrian nuke "gotcha" at a crucial time.

Update Today the WaPo has a report that say independent experts might have found the bombed site. Emphasis on the might because no-one official is confirming anything as yet.

Photographs of the site taken before the secret Sept. 6 airstrike depict an isolated compound that includes a tall, boxy structure similar to the type of building used to house a gas-graphite reactor. They also show what could have been a pumping station used to supply cooling water for a reactor, say experts David Albright and Paul Brannan of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS).

..."I'm pretty convinced that Syria was trying to build a nuclear reactor," Albright said in an interview. He said the project would represent a significant departure from past policies. ISIS, a nonprofit research group, tracks nuclear weapons and stockpiles around the world.

Albright is a serious expert, and has to be taken seriously. If he's right, it's a serious contravention of the NPT by Syria and will raise further questions about North Korea's honesty. But then again, Albright's been pretty hawkish of late, making pronouncements about Iran's program, for instance, that have been later falsified by IAEA inspections.

Albright and other interviewed experts also cite a couple of reasons why it might not be a nuclear plant.

Albright acknowledged the difficulties of proving what the site is, in part because the roof was put on at an early stage, blocking views of the foundation and obscuring any potential reactor components. In construction of other types of nuclear reactors, the roof is left off until the end so cranes can move heavy equipment inside.

Some nuclear experts urged caution in interpreting the photos, noting that the type of reactor favored by North Korea has few distinguishing characteristics visible from the air. Unlike commercial nuclear power reactors, for example, a North Korea-style reactor lacks the distinctive, dome-shaped containment vessel that prevents the release of radiation in the event of a nuclear accident.

"You can look at North Korea's [reactor] buildings, and they look like nothing," said John E. Pike, a nuclear expert and director of GlobalSecurity.org. "They're just metal-skinned industrial buildings." The proximity of the building to a water source also is not significant by itself, Pike said.

That's because North Korean reactors aren't water cooled - they use a gas cooling system.

Kevin notes: "We also don't have imagery of this site from September, which would tell us if this is really the location that was bombed by the Israelis."

The rightwingers are going nutzo over a pic someone got from GoogleEarth that doesn't show a thing and might not be of the same place in any case.

Larisa points out the key paragraph - the one that says no-one knows anything more than they did before.

The new report leaves many questions unanswered, such as what Syria intended to use the unfinished structures for and the exact role, if any, of North Korea in their construction. Also unclear is why Israel chose to use military force rather than diplomatic pressure against a facility that could not have produced significant nuclear material for years. The new details could fuel debate over whether Israel's attack was warranted.

I'd also like to point out that, even experts can usually convince themselves that they've found what they set out to find.

Brannan, of ISIS, combed through a huge amount of satellite imagery to find a site along the Euphrates that matches a reactor's specifications as well as descriptions of the attack site.

It only sort-off matches a reactors specifications, though - it isn't a mirror image of any NK reactor at the same stage of construction - not even in dimensions. The building could just as easily be, for instance, a rocket and missile fabrication site. Unfortunately, Abright and Co. were focussed entirely on their nuke-hunt and give no insight into other possibilities.

But it's worth remembering that the original agitprop about photos of the alleged site clearly mentioned "a big cylindrical structure, with very thick walls all well-reinforced." Albright's structure is a single-story square affair.

I'm still with Steve Clemon's sources on this one.

Walrus-Face Bolton - Still Koo-Koo-Ka-Choo

By Cernig

Whenever John Bolton opens his hirsute mouth to advocate attacking Iran or Syria or North Korea or [insert latest enemy de jour here], it's worth reminding ourselves that he really is out there on the far fringe of the insane wing of the Republican Party

The man who once wrote that he bodyswerved Vietnam because he had "no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy" and "considered the war in Vietnam already lost" (not knowing that one day his fellow-travellers would say it was a win after all), really does want war forever to assuage his endless paranoia. To get it, he's willing to call his old boss's only real diplomatic success as a snow-job.

The Hill reports:

Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton is urging GOP lawmakers to oppose the Bush administration’s recent agreement with North Korea to end its nuclear programs, according to House Republican sources.

While Bolton’s skepticism of North Korea is well-known, this is believed to be the first time a former top adviser to the president has taken the unusual step of lobbying against a pillar of the administration’s current foreign policy. It is particularly surprising given the value the administration has placed on loyalty.

...in an address last week to a joint meeting of Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans and Republican Policy Committee members, as well as in a separate session with the Conservative Opportunity Society, a group of right-leaning Republicans founded by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). In both meetings, Bolton expressed his concerns about the nuclear agreement reached by the U.S., North Korea and four other countries earlier this month.

Forty-two members attended the joint meeting where Bolton reiterated his longstanding position that trusting North Korea to abide by its promises is the wrong approach, according to a GOP aide who attended. He also spoke about North Korea's role in Syria's nuclear ambitions and encouraged members to review controversial testimony he gave to the Foreign Affairs Committee in September 2003 that figured into his contentious Senate confirmation battle.

Some House Republican lawmakers share Bolton’s view, but members and staff who attended the meetings with Bolton were wary about opposing the Bush administration publicly, and most contacted for this article declined to comment about the meeting’s contents.

Those too feardy-cat to confirm even knowing what Bolton was ranting about include Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), the guy who organised the joint meeting as well as Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

It's a soapbox Walrus-face has been pounding for a long time, and Bush comes in for more of the same in his book Sanity Surrender Is Not An Option in which he writes that:

the loss of “hardliners” like himself made the administration vulnerable to a “bureaucratic offense.”

“Our historical experience tells us that North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons voluntarily, and that it is only a matter of time before their cheating is exposed, at which point one hopes that Bush will repudiate this charade that the Risen Bureaucracy has perpetuated,” he wrote.

And Iraq's WMD's were smuggled out to Syria by the Russians, and that's what Israel bombed last month and the Syrians are now bulldozing - which is why Iraq had WMD's and we know it but now can never prove it! But not being able to prove it proves it's true!

Yeah, John - have you tried anti-psychotics?

More Syrian "Nuke" BS From The Fourth Branch

By Cernig

This is really starting to get silly.

This morning, a report in the WaPo said the information leading to the bombing of a Syrian facility in September came from satellite photos. By this evening, the story has changed.

A senior U.S. official told ABC News the Israelis first discovered a suspected Syrian nuclear facility early in the summer, and the Mossad — Israel's intelligence agency — managed to either co-opt one of the facility's workers or to insert a spy posing as an employee.

As a result, the Israelis obtained many detailed pictures of the facility from the ground.

...The official described the pictures as showing a big cylindrical structure, with very thick walls all well-reinforced. The photos show rebar hanging out of the cement used to reinforce the structure, which was still under construction.

There was also a secondary structure and a pump station, with trucks around it. "It was unmistakable what it was going to be. No doubt in my mind," the official told ABC News. But there was no fissionable material found because the facility was not yet operating.

The official said there was a larger structure just north of a small pump station; a nuclear reactor would need a constant source of water to keep it cool.

The official said the facility was a North Korean design in its construction, the technology present and the ability to put it all together.

It was North Korean "expertise," said the official, meaning the Syrians must have had "human" help from North Korea.

As actual expert Dr. Jeffrey Lewis has pointed out, the "North Korean" design is actually a British one, is probably the design most easily copied from open-source details available in books and on the internet, and is still very difficult to assess exactly from photographs when in an advanced stage of contruction.

So basically these anonymous officials - called David Addington, Steven Hadley and Elliot Abrams - couldn't "assess" jack-sh*t about the building's origins even if it was a fully-functional reactor. But it wasn't - it was a building site that maybe someone should have mentioned their worries about to the IAEA. Nothing more and impossible to assess as anything more. And the Israelis bombed it while the Cheneyites held their glands for them.

Then some folk wonder why America can't get international co-operation they way it used to...

Update If you're following this story closely enough to cut through the BS, you'll want to read posts by Charles at Mercury Rising and by The Spook In The Machine. Both very thought provoking.

Syrian Nuke Misinformation From Cheney's Office - Report

By Cernig

The meme that Israel recently struck a clandestine Syrian nuclear site is looking more and more like a pure creation of Israel and extremists within the White House. There's been absolutely no evidence presented for such a claim - just rumormongering from anonymous officials in both the US and Israel - and now those same WormTongues are saying, again without presented evidence, that the reason there's no evidence forthcoming is because the Syrians are covering it up with bulldozers.

Robin Wright, frequent channeler, in the WaPo:

Syria has begun dismantling the remains of a site Israel bombed Sept. 6 in what may be an attempt to prevent the location from coming under international scrutiny, said U.S. and foreign officials [this is the accepted code for "Israeli officials" nowadays - C] familiar with the aftermath of the attack.

Based on overhead photography, the officials say the site in Syria's eastern desert near the Euphrates River had a "signature" or characteristics of a small but substantial nuclear reactor, one similar in structure to North Korea's facilities.

The dismantling of the damaged site, which appears to be still underway, could make it difficult for weapons inspectors to determine the precise nature of the facility and how Syria planned to use it. Syria, which possesses a small reactor used for scientific research, has denied seeking to expand its nuclear program. But U.S. officials knowledgeable about the Israeli raid have described the target as a nuclear facility being constructed with North Korean assistance.

The bombed facility is different from the one Syria displayed to journalists last week to back its allegations that Israel had bombed an essentially an empty building, said the officials, who insisted on anonymity because details of the Israeli attack are classified.

Yeah, and I know my elephant-repellent wind-chimes work because there are no elephants in my neighbourhood.

The only person willing to put their actual name to this nonsense for the WaPo is old Walrus Bolton, still sputtering his conspiracy theories. Other people with actual names mentioned in this bit of ouja-board Cheneyism were highly sceptical:

"This isn't like a Road Runner cartoon where you call up Acme Reactors and they deliver a functioning reactor to your back yard. It takes years to build," said Joseph Cirincione, director for nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress. "This is an extremely demanding technology, and I don't think Syria has the technical, engineering or financial base to really support such a reactor."

..."The reason we have an IAEA and a safeguard system is that, if there is evidence of wrongdoing, it can be presented by a neutral body to the international community so that a collective response can be pursued," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. "It seems to me highly risky and premature for another country to bomb such a facility."

It would appear they may have good reason for that scepticism. Also on the WaPo's website today, you can find this AP wire report:

U.N. experts have received satellite imagery of the site struck last month by Israeli warplanes and are analyzing it for signs that it might have been a secret nuclear facility, diplomats said Friday.

One of the diplomats indicated that the photos came from U.S intelligence. Two others said the images, which have been studied by experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency since being received on Thursday, do not at first examination appear to substantiate reports that the target was a nuclear installation, but emphasized that the images were still under examination.

The diplomats, who were briefed on the agency's receipt of the images, spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because their information was confidential. Officials of the Vienna-based nuclear watchdog had no comment.

More anonymous leakers, and no official statements here either, but this is exactly in contradiction to Robin Wright's piece.

What's going on? Well, Larisa Alexandrovna at Raw Story has been speaking to unhappy - but still anonymous - members of the U.S. intelligence community, who say it's all coming from Fourth Branch's offices.

Allegations that a Syrian envoy admitted during a United Nations meeting Oct. 17 that an Israeli air strike hit a nuclear facility in September are inaccurate and have raised the ire of some in the US intelligence community, who see the Vice President’s hand as allegedly being behind the disinformation.

...According to current and former intelligence sources, the US intelligence community has seen no evidence of a nuclear facility being hit.

US intelligence “found no radiation signatures after the bombing, so there was no uranium or plutonium present,” said one official, wishing to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the subject.

“We don't have any independent intelligence that it was a nuclear facility -- only the assertions by the Israelis and some ambiguous satellite photography from them that shows a building, which the Syrians admitted was a military facility.”

Raw Story has also spoken to other experts, like Dr. Ivan Oelrich, a nuclear weapons expert at the Strategic Security Project at the Federation of American Scientists - who said that any actual nuclear activity would give off a radiation signature and that signature could be used to tell exactly what kind of activity was going on - and to Vincent Cannistraro, Director of Intelligence Programs for the National Security Council under President Ronald Reagan and Chief of Operations at the Central Intelligence Agency's Counterterrorism Center under President George H. W. Bush, who told Raw Story that what the Israelis hit was "absolutely not a nuclear weapons facility."

Those unhappy intelligence sources were, at least, happy to name names:

“The allegations that North Korea was helping to build a nuclear reactor have not been substantiated by US intelligence,” said this intelligence official, adding, “ but that hasn't stopped Dick Cheney and his minions at the NSC, Elliot Abrams and Steve Hadley, from leaking the information [to the press], which appears to be misleading in the extreme.”

Abrams was convicted of lying to Congress over Iran/Contra but pardoned by Bush Snr. Hadley was intrumental in fixing the intelligence around the policy prior to the invasion of Iraq.

Larisa writes:

What concerns intelligence officials is what appears to be manipulation of the press and strategic leaks to the public of false information, undercutting professional intelligence analysis, similar to what occurred before the Iraq war in an apparent effort to bolster support for engaging Iran.

Given that several prominent neocons, including Norman Podhoretz, have said time and again that they believe the route to Iranian regime change begins with toppling the Damascus regime, I think it should "concern" the hell out of everyone.

Update And the details of the anonymous Cheneyites' story change again.

US And Israel Are Uniting The Middle East

By Cernig

Between America's and Israel's leaders, they might just manage the impossible - uniting all the regions Muslim neighbours by giving them common cause to take remedial steps in preventing an explosion of unrest in the region. The problem is, much of the blame for such unrest will be laid at the doors of the U.S. and Israel.

New Zaman reports that Syrian President Assad is about to visit Turkey at their express invite, to discuss events fuelled by the U.S. and Israel.

Assad's visit comes at a time when Ankara has been dealing with a looming crisis with its NATO ally, the United States, due to Turkey's intention to launch a military incursion into northern Iraq to tackle the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) based there, as well as Turkey's anger over a resolution approved by a US congressional committee branding the 1915 killings of Anatolian Armenians as genocide.

...Last week, [Turkish Foreign Minister] Babacan paid an official visit to Damascus as part of a regional tour of Syria, Jordan, the Palestinian territories and Israel, and voiced Ankara's desire to see its neighbor Syria in the coming period as part of regional resolutions, not as part of regional problems. Ahead of his visit to Damascus he had visited Israel, where he raised eyebrows when he said he wanted details of an Israeli air raid last month on a Syrian target near the border with Turkey.

Also last week, Assad was quoted in a Tunisian daily as saying that Turkey is mediating between Damascus and Jerusalem in preparation for negotiations. During the past six months, Turkey had renewed its mediation efforts through frequent visits by officials from Ankara to Damascus, he said, noting that Turkish officials are playing a role in preparing the groundwork for negotiations with Syria.

A decade ago, Syria and Turkey were almost at war - now the Turks are acting as Syria's intermediaries. Well done, Israel and the U.S.

America's invasion of Iraq and subsequent hypocrisy over fighting Kurdish seperatist terrorists who mount attacks in both Turkey and Iran may yet manage to usher in an unprecedented co-operation between Teheran and Ankara too, while Israel's loose-cannon actions will cause other Arab states to unite to defend their plans for nuclear power. After all, if Israel will bomb a Syrian building and blame it on a mythical nuclear fingerprint while the U.S. insists it will keep its options open about an Iranian nuclear weapon program for which evidence of any such program is likewise bereft, then nations like Egypt, the UAE and Jordan who have announced they will pursue nuclear power programs must be more than just a little nervous about protecting such multi-billion dollar investments.

And by the way, the Turks aren't the only ones that want answers about Israel's recent bombing run. The IAEA is definitely peeved that no-one in Israel or America thought to make use of the international nuke watchdog - another manifestation of their contempt for international consensus and the rule of law.

"The International Atomic Energy Agency has no information about any undeclared nuclear facility in Syria and no information about recent reports," spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in a statement issued from the IAEA's Vienna headquarters.

"The IAEA is in contact with the Syrian authorities to verify the authenticity of these reports," she said.

"We would obviously investigate any relevant information coming our way. The IAEA Secretariat expects any country having information about nuclear-related activities in another country to provide that information to the IAEA."

A Vienna diplomat close to the IAEA said it had initiated contacts with Damascus shortly after the air raid but the Syrians had provided no clarification yet.

U.S. officials have linked the raid to apparent Israeli suspicions of covert nuclear cooperation between North Korea and Syria. They said the site in question was identified earlier this year in satellite photographs.

Syria has denied hiding any nuclear activity from the IAEA or having anything other than energy goals with nuclear work.

The Vienna diplomat said that if Syria was indeed building a new reactor, it would have been required to inform the agency, and provide design data, as soon as it decided to construct one.

No country had provided satellite or other intelligence about the alleged plant to the IAEA although such help would be crucial to detecting such a site, added the diplomat, who asked not to be named due to the topic's political sensitivity.

"With the (low) level of IAEA funding, inspectors can't go around a country checking every building. The IAEA is not a go-it-alone investigative agency," said the diplomat.

Kudos go to Reuters for bothering to talk to the man at the top of any list of interviewees for a report on nuclear matters - someone Sanger and Mazzetti at the NYT obviously overlooked in their rush to get David Addington's copy to print:

The New York Times said the targeted Syrian facility appeared to have been much further from completion than an Iraqi reactor the Israeli air force flattened in 1981.

"A very real question is whether Syria is technically and financially able to build such a reactor. It would be hard to justify an air strike on a facility so early on in construction and, if supplied by North Korea, unlikely ever to be finished," U.S. analyst David Albright, alluding to North Korea's nuclear disarmament agreement earlier this year, told Reuters.

"Israel may have wanted to send a signal to Iran. The U.S. wants to scare Iran (off nuclear work) and this air strike might have been a way to do it, and explain some of Israel's secrecy."

Albright's point is a valid one - and Israel's other neighbours will be reaching the conclusion that if Israel, with US hawk complicity, can decide on such an outrageous act of unwarranted aggression against Syria then they could just as easily decide to do it again with Jordan or Egypt or any other neighbour.

Update One of our regular commenters, Charles, has a post of his own which compellingly argues the "Syrian nukes" story is prime BS.

He also points to a Juan Cole interview with Retired CIA analyst of Arab affairs Ray Close:

"Personally, I believe that the most persuasive reason for studied silence on this subject, on the part of both Republicans and Democrats, is the reluctance (call it fear) of individual politicians that they might be put in a position of appearing to criticize Israel for poor judgment (or even deliberate deception), and thereby appearing to oppose intimate collaboration with Israel (yes, even in acts of illegitimate preemptive military action) against "supporters of terrorism."

And to an interview with Philip Giraldi, former DIA and CIA officer, partner at Cannistraro Associates, Francis Walsingham Fellow for the American Conservative Defense Alliance and Antiwar.com columnist, who says both DIA and CIA have discounted the nuke story and that his information that the target was an air defense system.

The Times, They Aren’t-a-Changing Much

On Sunday October the 14th the NY Times posted an article Analysts Find Israel Struck a Nuclear Target Inside Syria.

Google recorded the headline but clicking on the delivered link returns a new headline—Israel Struck Syrian Nuclear Project, Analysts Say.

This is something of an improvement, being less declarative than the original though there is absolutely no acknowledgement of the change. The article itself remains as it was.

Amusingly a FreeRepublic commenter takes the liberal NY Times at its word (sorry, no link): “That’s twice the Israelis have knocked out nuclear capability in the middle east. We should be incredibly grateful to them. Otherwise we would have been facing a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein” (Kevmo) despite (or because, in Kevmo's case) the fact that absolutely no evidence for the nuclear claim is provided.

Now the original lead author has followed-up with an “analysis” which without any further information regurgitates a good deal of conventional Beltway wisdom coupled with vague skepticism and wishful thinking:

With the American military stretched in Iraq, the credibility of any American threat to take pre-emptive action elsewhere in the Middle East — and to deal with the consequences — is questionable. Moreover, Mr. Bush has made no secret of his desire to leave office with some diplomatic victories.

Really? Since when?

Already, that has muted the talk about pre-emptive strikes; the president who five years ago talked constantly about the dangers of “the world’s worst weapons” in Saddam Hussein’s hands has been far more measured about Iran and Syria.

Really? Care to cite an example, Mr. Sanger? And what have Kagan, Kristol, Podhoretz. Ledeen, and the rest of the usual suspects who have the president's ear been pontificating about lately (and lo these many months)?

Getting a deal with North Korea to disgorge its own nuclear fuel and weapons may require looking past whatever North Korea might have sold to another country. And it may mean engaging the Syrians, even before they answer the question of what, exactly, they were building in the desert

When you can’t report what you don’t know, report what you think you do know and then just add some equally uniformed filler and voila’, you’ve got yourself an “analysis”!

The mystery around the Israeli attack into Syria is the deafening silence surrounding it all. If Israel had a case at all they should be able to publicize it. If Syria had a case for being egregiously wronged the Syrians should be able to publicize it too. Instead the complete silence surrounding this event suggests to me massive embarassment on all sides for a multitude of reasons.

There's a real effort here to find some dramatic meaning in this incident but all I can find at the moment is a farce--in the incident itself and in the reporting of it.

"Good Americans" Condone Aggression

By Cernig

Yesterday, the New York Times published an article by David "Judy In Drag" Sanger and his usual suspect Mark Mazzetti which was entirely bereft of content yet was presented as news. The article quoted unameable officials both in the Bush administration and in Israel as saying a recent Israeli attack on Syria was indeed an attack on a nascent nuclear facility.

Of evidence for this assertion, there was none. Nor is there any mention of the opinions of experts who feel it wasn't a strike on a nuclear facility at all and any claims of such coming from Jerusalem or an Undisclosed Location are just so much agitprop. We are, it seems, expected to take the word of anonymous officials who, by previous performance, are most likely named David Addington. Certainly, the meat of the article is all about Cheney's office using these allegations as ammunition for yet another attempt at assassinating diplomacy and increasing the White House's belligerence in foreign policy.

Despite this, folks like Jules Cretinhead are happy to take their "news" as gospel. Jules has been a reporter and editor, and knows how the game is played - so he's indulging in what can only be described as willing gullibility, a suspension of disbelief on a par with clapping for fairies. Why? Well, Jules has some pithy quotes that point the way to the Cheneyite motives:

You know, if they tied a note to the bomb that said, “Next one takes out Damascus,” they might not have to come back.

...purely as an academic matter, it would be interesting to see what effect a couple of missiles up the reactor would have on Kim. Kim has not learned the bitter lesson that Syria, Jordan and Egypt learned so well. I wonder how quickly the South Koreans and the USA could shut down all that North Korea artillery and armor if they did decide to fire it up.

Much of the reaction from what used to be the extreme Right - but is now the mainstream of what remains of the GOP - is similiar in sociopathic tone.

I don't believe a word of Sanger and Mazzetti's sockpuppet claims on behalf of the Fourth Branch - but let's just suppose for a second that the story about Israel assessing its target as being a NorK-provided nuclear plant is true. The only named expert in Sanger and Mazzetti's whole fable - Dr. Siegfried S. Hecker of Stanford University - says that "building a reactor based on North Korea’s design might take from three to six years" and, in a hat-tip to the notion of fairness and accuracy in reporting, the article notes:

The officials did not say that the administration had ultimately opposed the Israeli strike, but that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates were particularly concerned about the ramifications of a pre-emptive strike in the absence of an urgent threat.

“There wasn’t a lot of debate about the evidence,” said one American official familiar with the intense discussions over the summer between Washington and the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. “There was a lot of debate about how to respond to it.”

Even though it has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Syria would not have been obligated to declare the existence of a reactor during the early phases of construction. It would have also had the legal right to complete construction of the reactor, as long as its purpose was to generate electricity.

So even if you accept the unprovenanced utterings of anonymous officials with an axe to grind your faced with a very unpleasant story - Israel struck a plant that was possibly legal, way before it could be told whether it was legal or not, in an act of undeclared aggression which by any normal account of international law is a war crime on a par with the invasion of Poland. The folks in the Bush administration, meanwhile, are either looking the other way or trying to spin this nakedly illegal act as somehow justified. And not even left-leaning sorta-hawks like Kevin Drum seem willing to say they see anything seriously amiss with this picture.

Either the Sanger & Mazzetti channelling of Cheney staffer's agitprop is so much bullsh*t or it's true and therefore an admission of the US condoning a major war crime. Take your pick. But if the latter, then a failure to condemn it makes you just another "Good German".

Update Michael Roston at HuffPo apparently is thinking along the same lines as I am - and has a go at Clinton's voiced support for attacking mythical Syrian nukes.

Senator Clinton supports a military strike based on "what we think we know," and information that hasn't been shared with her to date. Is that the best leadership and decision-making we can expect beyond '08? Will senior Democratic politicians be expressing their regrets for any more votes five more years down the line?

There are people out there with messages to deliver for frightful agendas they hope to advance. That's why we hear with such haughty certitude that Syria has a nuclear program. And if our media and our leaders can't get their heads above all that noise, get ready for a long generation of sorrow.

So listen up, and start paying attention. When you talk about rumors of nuclear threats, from Iran, Syria, or anyone else, you'd better not be playing around. You're either with the facts, or you're against them.

Iran Sleuth Drum Circle

I know the title doesn’t make sense—yet! It’s a CLUE!

Taking my cue from Cernig’s post and Libby’s comment therein about sleuthing I have to take Kevin Drum (normally of sound mind) to task for not using his own brain but someone else's in considering The Mystery Of The Israeli Attack On The Syrian Nuclear Facility That Never Happened--Or DID It?!!! …

Kevin Drum leads his analysis with a select quote from an ABCNews story that through no fault of the reporter Martha Raddatz makes no sense at all (She just writes what she's given):

“....Initially, administration officials convinced the Israelis to call off the July strike. But in September the Israelis feared that news of the site was about to leak and went ahead with the strike despite U.S. concerns.”

Umm…why would the Israeli’s “[fear] that news of the "site" was about to leak”? Who would do the “leaking” and about what, exactly?

In the current ‘dialog’ being played out in the US media, driven by the White House, “nuclear facility” = nuclear weapons.
Entirely ignored is the fact that the world is facing a looming energy crunch and everyone is going to have to diversify their energy sources. Nuclear energy is an obvious choice seeing as the technology is proven and relatively accessible. Because of the time required for construction and implementation a nuclear energy plant needs to be begun in anticipation of its needed use.

If the subject of the strike WERE a “nuclear facility” that MIGHT be used to process weapons grade material, wouldn’t its existence and subsequent destruction be great and justifying publicity for the US and Israeli hawks?
“Look! The threat is real, but we can defeat it and this is the only way!” What better leverage to stop the Iranian nuclear program than the demonstration of force on Syria's "nuclear facility”?
Instead all we’re getting is innuendo and obfuscation; so what does being coy serve?

Drum asks “but was it really a nuclear site?” and then quotes another article that doesn’t address that question at all! Duh!

Instead his excerpt talks about an apparent failure of the Syrian Air Defense system, after which Kevin muses:

“…but it doesn't seem like you'd tip your hand about the capabilities of
technology like this in order to destroy a bunch of rocket launchers and North Korean Scuds.”

I’d agree, especially as the big threat is supposed to be Iran, not Syria.

But it is entirely possible that Syria wasn’t engaged in anything it thought might be provocative (I’m sure the Syrians have their idiots too but being a tiny weak nation that has lost to the Israelis every time since the year dot, I’d imagine they simply can’t afford to be as stupid and provocative as say, the US or Israel).
It’s possible that Syria had no clue that anything it might have been doing would seem in any way provocative to trigger-happy Israel. It’s possible that the Syrian air defense system was simply “napping”—that it hadn’t been “defeated” by some kick-ass technology at all.

If the Syrians Air Defense System failed because they simply weren’t ready I imagine the Syrians would want to engage in some kind of “damage control” and downplay the whole thing—hence their dismissal of the results of the raid and their mundane complaint that their airspace was violated.

Drum continues:

“The mission had to be important enough to make it worth letting the Syrians (and the Iranians and the Russians) know that their air defenses had been compromised. They might figure out how to fix it next time, after all. So maybe there was some North Korean nuclear technology there after all.”

WHAT? Then why all the secrecy? If the “cover" was blown, where’s the pay off—the destroyed nuclear reactor and missile silos etc that would justify the strike and justify the exposure of their awesome stealth technology?

I think the Israelis operated on lousy intelligence (perhaps “stove-piped”), launched a risky but supposedly “justified” strike and hit nothing of “value” at all—certainly not anything nuclear. The Syrians were caught off-guard because they didn’t think they were doing anything provocative and if anything of any importance got hit, they don’t want to admit it—ergo, huge embarrassment all around, so no one wants to discuss it.

Finally:

“And is it a coincidence that within weeks North Korea suddenly decided to cut a deal with the U.S. to abandon its nuclear program? It might well be. But it is something of a coincidence, isn't it?”

Right, Kevin. Because that’s how these things get sorted—in a couple of weeks. As soon as Kim Jong Il suddenly realized that the Israelis were prepared to fly all the way to North Korea to destroy his super scary nuclear arsenal on behalf of the US because what matters to Israel is what matters to the US, he completely folded.

So to conclude: Kevin Drum, in the Blogosphere, slapped into insensibility with the Tarpon (its like a Tuna but not as big) of media mediocrity and the admininstration's message machine. He's buying what he's hearing, not questioning what he's not hearing--and he's concluding that the Red Herring did it!
(Sorry, but that tortured analogy is just an "enhanced technique"--okay?)