Posted on 01/10/2008 4:15:55 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Israel planned 1991 strike on NKorea-Syria ship: report
Wed Jan 9, 2:47 AM ET
Israeli agents prepared to strike a ship suspected of smuggling missiles from North Korea to Syria in 1991 but cancelled it at the 11th hour under US pressure, a Japanese newspaper reported Wednesday.
Undercover agents of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency secretly attached a guidance system for an airstrike on a cargo vessel believed to be carrying 23 short-range Scud missiles to Syria, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.
The Yomiuri, reporting from Jerusalem, said it spoke to one of the agents involved in the operation, whose name was transliterated into Japanese as Michael Ross.
Ross said he and two colleagues disguised themselves as workers for shipping carriers and headed to Casablanca, Morocco.
In February 1991, they managed to get close to the ship, which was believed to be jointly owned by Syrian and Jordanian firms, and swam underneath it to set up equipment to guide an airstrike, the report said.
Israel had planned to destroy the vessel and missiles, which with a range of 500 kilometers (300 miles) would put the Jewish state at risk.
The incident came during the first Gulf War, during which the United States, managing a coalition with Arab states including Syria, pressured Israel not to respond to Scud missile attacks by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
The Yomiuri said Israel's then prime minister Yitzhak Shamir called off the airstrike on the North Korean missiles at the last minute.
"Probably the prime minister gave up on the plan out of consideration to the United States," Ross was quoted as telling the Yomiuri.
"If we blew up the vessel, it would have been inevitable to have many Syrian casualties and it might have been taken as a declaration of war against Syria," he was quoted as saying.
Impoverished North Korea, one of the few non-Muslim states that has no relations with Israel, is believed to rely on weapons exports as one of its top money-makers.
In September Israel launched an air strike in Syria, which Western media reports said targeted a nuclear facility developed with North Korea.
Ping!
There you go: Saddam didn’t need to produce any WMD, he could have smuggled a warhead from the Norks and placed it on a Scud or an al-Hussein.
BTTT
Oh, so this was Madelaine Halfbright’s handiwork...? Oh great! Typical!
ping
ping
Why they didn’t go for it OH MAN LOL!
The South Korean report is incorrect. The agreement to buy the Scud-C’s was inked in Damascus in January of 1991. The coalition had no prior knowledge of the shipment and to avoid detection the al-Yarmouk sailed around the horn of Africa. Casablanca was its last port to bunker (refuel). The cargo manifest stated that the final port was Cyprus (a short sail from the real destination, Lattakia). Interestingly, Sec of Sate James Baker arrived in Damascus for talks the same day the shipment arrived. He knew nothing about it.
Michael Ross. Interesting name, but probably common. There is a Michael Ross convicted in Connecticut for molesting girls. Wonder if there is any connection to Epstein and Maxwell and Shamir. Ghislaine Maxwell was supposed to be imprisoned in Connecticut, but for some reason this was changed to Florida.
Also in January 1991 was the event in the Philippines:
....1,400 terrorists made their way to Baghdad in the final months of 1990 as he prepared to face the coalition assembled by the United States to oust him from Kuwait. He dispatched others to attack U.S. interests around the world. On January 18, 1991, one day after the Gulf war began, an Iraqi terrorist posing as a day laborer managed to plant 26 sticks of TNT in a flower box below a window of the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Jakarta, Indonesia. The dynamite wasn’t completely buried, and a gardener found it before the bomb exploded. The following day in the Philippines, two Iraqis blew themselves up in a plot known to CIA veterans as Operation Dogmeat, a botched attempt to bomb the U.S. Information Service headquarters at the Thomas Jefferson Cultural Center in Manila. The failed attack on the U.S. government-run center received the active support of the Iraqi ambassador to the Philippines....—— American Spectator
Also in January 1991, Iraqi and Chinese papers gladly reported that al Dhouri, Saddam’s red headed general, was dead.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.