Report: Israel hit Syria nuclear reactor

NEW YORK - An Israeli airstrike on Syria last month targeted a partially built nuclear reactor that was years away from completion, the New York Times reported Saturday, citing U.S. and foreign officials.

The report said President Bush's administration had intense discussions with the Israeli government before the strike and U.S. officials were divided over whether it would be premature.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has said Israel bombed an "unused military building" in the Sept. 6 raid. Israel has been extremely secretive about the affair. It only recently relaxed censorship to allow Israel-based journalists to report that Israeli aircraft attacked a military target deep inside Syria.

In the weeks that followed the attack, U.S. officials said it was aimed either at a nuclear or missile facility that Syria operated jointly with North Korea.

The New York Times said the nuclear reactor was modeled on one North Korea had used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, though the role of any North Korean assistance in building it remains unclear. North Korea has denied involvement in any such activities in Syria.

Satellite photographs detected the partly constructed Syrian reactor earlier this year, the Times said, citing American officials.

The Syrian reactor was years away from be able to produce the spent nuclear fuel that could be reprocessed into bomb-grade plutonium, the newspaper said.

Syria's nuclear program has long been considered minimal, and the country is known to have only a small research reactor.

The New York Times cited American officials as saying Israel's strike may have been intended as a signal to Iran and its nuclear aspirations. In 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor being built by Saddam Hussein's regime.

Neighborhood Bully ~ Bob Dylan

Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man,
His enemies say he’s on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive.
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin,
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He’s wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He’s always on trial for just being born.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized,
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad.
The bombs were meant for him.
He was supposed to feel bad.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
‘Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

He got no allies to really speak of.
What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love.
He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone,
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon.
He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand,
In bed with nobody, under no one’s command.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin’, they say.
He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers?
Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still,
Neighborhood bully.

>>>...perhaps they had intel that the “incomplete” facility was in fact made to look that way<<<

Whatever it is (was!), it presented a clear and present (thanks Tom Clancy) danger to Israel.

For all that is speculative about this attack, we do know that the Israeli's have the best intelligence in the Middle East. Their continued existence depends on it. Therefore is is a pretty good bet that this joint Syrian, North Korean, Iranian sandbox pile represented a substantial threat in the near term.

Reactors in and of themselves are not a danger. No one launches a reactor at anyone. Its the stuff you can get out of them that is the long term threat.

Seems to me to make little sense for Syria to invest in building a reactor since their butt buddies Iran is in the process of trying to activate one and Libya had one under development and both are under huge pressure from the International Community to quit the process. Libya gave up. Iran is hedging its bet by installing gas centrifuges to obtain uranium. But they are under intense scrutiny and pressure to stop as well as threat of attack from the US and/or Israel.

I don't think Syria wants to sign on for that much grief. It is possible that whatever it was that came off the boat was destined for Iran and it would have given them an ability to strike Israel with something seriously nuclear short of a bomb; ie:(dirty bomb). Very few believe that Iran is close to weaponizing a nuclear warhead for a missile....although I have read that they are evidently doing research along that line.

Alternatively, I wouldn't doubt that Iran has talked Assad into making a strike against the "Zionist Entity" with stuff snuck out of the DPRK prior to the US negotiated shutdown. That way Ahmadinejad thinks he can coax the 12th Imam out of the well without as much risk of retaliation as if Iran had done it themselves. What worries me is that very very few seem willing to admit the level of danger....except Israel.

Weird world! We live in "interesting" times!

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