Posted on 09/22/2007 7:30:07 PM PDT by Libloather
Israelis seized nuclear material in Syrian raid
Uzi Mahnaimi and Sarah Baxter
September 23, 2007
Israeli commandos seized nuclear material of North Korean origin during a daring raid on a secret military site in Syria before Israel bombed it this month, according to informed sources in Washington and Jerusalem.
The attack was launched with American approval on September 6 after Washington was shown evidence the material was nuclear related, the well-placed sources say.
They confirmed that samples taken from Syria for testing had been identified as North Korean. This raised fears that Syria might have joined North Korea and Iran in seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.
Israeli special forces had been gathering intelligence for several months in Syria, according to Israeli sources. They located the nuclear material at a compound near Dayr az-Zwar in the north.
Evidence that North Korean personnel were at the site is said to have been shared with President George W Bush over the summer. A senior American source said the administration sought proof of nuclear-related activities before giving the attack its blessing.
Diplomats in North Korea and China believe a number of North Koreans were killed in the strike, based on reports reaching Asian governments about conversations between Chinese and North Korean officials.
Syrian officials flew to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, last week, reinforcing the view that the two nations were coordinating their response.
“In fact Congress passed a law earlier this year authorizing the President to strike Iran militarily for 60 days before coming back to them.”
Can you get a link for that? I’ve got some libs I want to smack down when it happens.
I too, really reallly would like to see this one.
Nobody is going to gain anything else from the deed.
One can only hope!
Wow! That’s going to make one hell of an action movie someday! Way to go, IDF!
“More than likely the nuclear material was destined for Iran with Syria just being the transit point. There is plenty of air traffic between Iran and Syria.”
Actually this is more likely part of the diversified plan Iran is employing with their nuclear program. By having this segment in Syria it protects them from detection and accusation of exceeding international requirements on the IAEA.
Since Syria is not a signatory, they can share the benefits without the risk.
Or so they thought.
Meanwhile, Newsweek quoted Binyamin Netanyahu adviser Uzi Arad as saying, "I do know what happened, and when it comes out it will stun everyone."
Exactly! As long as the transaction never makes it into the world press, there's no real down side. WE might be a bit vexed with them, but we'll also be so grateful they did as we asked (sorta) in shutting down their nuke program we'll be falling all over ourselves to offer them all kinds of aid...which they desperately need.
Other punch line: "There's gotta be a Chabad House on this island."
A good nukie can, by an analysis of the impurities, tell which reactor it came from and sometimes, even when and/or where in the reactor it was positioned.
“What a joke of a President.”
That’s just not fair.
I will try to find it.
Perhaps he's focusing everyone's attention on Iran only for the ultimate purpose of taking out Syria and Iran together. Imagine what it looks like for Dems who went to Syria to suck up to Assad if Bush invades and takes out Syria and discovers Saddam's WMDs?
Maybe the Israelis just took out the obstacle ahead of US invasion.
What sort of a political coup do you think that would be? Exposing the Iran-Syria-North Korea axis, destroying it, and with it a main military armament cash-paying customer for North Korea? Outcome: a Middle East under US and allied influence stretching from Lebanon through Sryia, Iraq, Iran, all the way to Afghanistan.
Is the successful invasion of Syria what it will take for the largely pro-Western Iranians to rise up against the mullahs, and take them down themselves perhaps?
I suspect that the bombimg of Syria by the Israelis on September 6 is probably more significant for what the press doesn't know about than what it thinks it does.
A lot of Bush's detractors might be eating some humble pie before this is all over. As a foreign policy victory it would rank up there with Reagan's castration of the Soviet Union, and would reverse foreign policy blunders of Democrats stretching back more than 50 years.
“The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or nonstate entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences of such action,” he said.
From The Nuclear Weapon Archive: A Guide to Nuclear Weapons:
On the morning of 9 October 2006 North Korea informed the Chinese government that they should expect a four kiloton nuclear test. Twenty minutes later, at 01:35:28 UTC, a seismic event occurred at 41.294 degrees N latitude, 129.094 degrees E longitude, with a magnitude of 4.2, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The test was followed by a public declaration of success by the North Korean government.Although the initial USGS data provided a position uncertainty of 7 kilometers, it placed the site approximately 42 kilometers northwest of Kilchu, in Hwaseong-gun, North Hamgyeong Province. This coincides with a site of suspicious tunneling and construction activities that were first reported in 2005, on the east slope of remote 7231 feet high Mant'ap-san Mountain. Subsequent reports during the past month indicate that the North Koreans had excavated a 700 m-long horizontal tunnel under Mant'ap-san. An unpaved road extends 19 km from the test site to the nearest town of Punggye-ri along the Namdae River.
The Korea Institute of Geoscience & Mineral Resources (KIGAM), South Korea's state-run geoscience institute, adjusted its estimate of the epicenter on 13 October to 41.26 degrees N latitude and 129.17 degrees E longitude.
Two measurements of the seismic magnitude of the test have been published: magnitude 4.2 by the USGS, and between 3.58 and 3.7 by the KIGAM. An uncertainty in seismic magnitude of 0.5 translates into an uncertainty in yield of about a factor of three. Compounding this uncertainty is that relationship between seismic magnitude and yield which depends upon the hardness of the rock in which the explosive is buried.
The explosive yield has been estimated by Terry Wallace, a seismologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, to be between 0.5 and 2 kilotons, with 90 percent confidence that the yield is less than 1 kiloton. Lynn R. Sykes of Columbia University estimates a yield of 0.4 kilotons, with 68 percent confidence that the yield is between 0.2 and 0.7 kilotons and a 95 percent probability that the yield is less than 1 kiloton. Other published median yield estimates have been 500 and 550 tons ([Garwin and von Hippel 2006]).
The test was conducted deep underground in a horizontal tunnel which prevented the immediate or large scale release of radioactivity. Nonetheless a high percentage of underground nuclear tests leak detectable levels of radioactivity, most reliably radioactive isotopes of the inert gases krypton and xenon, which can leak through natural or blast induced fissures in the surrounding rock driven by the high pressures resulting from the explosion. Leaks can be become detectable at the surface on a time scale ranging from tens of minutes to days ([Adushkin and Leith 2001]).
Atmospheric sampling missions flown by the Air Force's specialized WC-135 Constant Phoenix, the last Cold War era "sniffer" plane still in service, were begun by the United States shortly after the test. On 13 October it was reported that traces of radioactivity had been detected and on 16 October National Intelligence Director John Negroponte's office released a statement confirming that samples collected on 11 October showed that the test was indeed a nuclear blast, laying to rest some initial speculation that the low yield explosion might in fact be simply a very large conventional explosive blast.
Subsequent analysis of samples has shown that the fissile material used in the test was plutonium. Since different fissile materials produce different proportions of various radionuclides, measuring these ratios (such as the ratios of Xe-133, Xe-133m and Xe-135) can unambiguously determine the fissile material used. Leaks of additional isotopes which can occur would make the determination even easier.
[...]
Garwin and von Hippel report that if radioxenon leaked into the atmosphere at a rate of only 0.1 percent a day, a concentration of 10,000 atoms per cubic meter of air would be detectable downwind three days after the test, one hundred times the detectability threshold. If the isotope ratio of about 8000 radioxenon atoms could be measured, then the identity of the fissile parent could be established as being plutonium with 95 percent certaintly ([Garwin and von Hippel 2006]).
The North Koreans have high grade plutonium (content of neutron emitting Pu-240 measured at 2.44% by the IAEA in the July 1992, compared to 6% for U.S. weapons plutonium), so problems with predetonation are almost certainly not the cause.([May 2001])
The low yield, almost certainly less than a quarter of its reported planned yield, indicates a partial failure of the device. The most likely cause is poor implosion performance (that is, poor compression), though late initiation is also a possibility.
Regarding the possibility of poor compression, it should be observed that they are likely trying to develop a relatively sophisticated light system suitable for missiles, in the range of 500-1000 kg, not the 3500 kg design of the WWII Fat Man, which proved very reliable. Failure might be due to problems perfecting the design, or simply some test-related technical fault in an otherwise sound design.
The relatively low yield announced prior to the test was possibly to conserve plutonium of which North Korea has a fairly limited supply. [Source]
No they didn’t and the pentagon knows that for sure. Jack Wheeler has an article from 10/06...and he says the scientist screwed up, and it didn’t happen. So what they’ve sold to the Syrian’s is materials for dirty bombs. That’s what the Israelis’ were after....they were tipping warheads with radioactive materials on their missiles.
North Korea is a surrogate for Red China and Russia.
Remember, It’s relatively easy to make a 20-80 kt fission weapon. As long as you accept size restrictions (need at least a Volkswagen bus to carry it), and weight restrictions (2-4 tons) the science is easy, and any nation state can probably obtain the Pu.
Miniaturization, small size and small yield requires high tech, however. The DPRK blast was TOO small to be a high order burst.
In my version, the christian makes a cross out of two twigs, then crosses himself and says a quick 5 second prayer out loud asking to be rescued. The muslim snickers and says “is that all you got?” He then weaves a rug out of grass, faces mecca, removes his shoes, washes his feet, kisses the ground several times, kneels on his rug and prays and mumbles for an hour, weeping and wailing at times. Afterwords, the christian and the muslim look at the jew to see what he can contribute to their predicament...then at this point our jokes become basically the same.
I told it to some muslim students when I was in grad school. They didn’t like it.
One can only hope!
Well, for what I know from what God says, it's certainly more than a hope. It's an absolute certainty. It's only a matter of the timing. And the timing looks to be pretty close now. I've been watching for this event to happen for quite a while (a number of years now) and it certainly does look to be coming right around the corner, at this particular point in time.
You never have to wonder "if" these things are going to happen, as God tells us. You know it's going to.
Regards,
Star Traveler
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