Free Republic

1735 HRs Local, Sunday, June 7, 1981. Al-Tuwaythah Nuclear Research Facility, outside Baghdad, Iraq. Iraqi Colonel Fakhri Hussein Jaber is in shock. His jaw drops, mouth gaping open as a strained moan leaves his throat. Despite the hot desert temperature his limbs feel cold. He cannot believe what he is seeing. Eight F-16s painted sand-colored desert camouflage flying in a single-file attack formation at rooftop level hurtles over the outskirts of Baghdad from the southwest. They bank hard left, slicing white tendrils of vapor from their missile-clad wingtips in the evening air. One at a time they light their afterburners...

An upcoming joint US-Israel report on the September 6 IAF strike on a Syrian facility will claim that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein transferred weapons of mass destruction to the country, Channel 2 stated Monday. Furthermore, according to a report leaked to the TV channel, Syria has arrested 10 intelligence officials following the assassination of Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh.

THE FOILING OF AN Islamist terrorist plot this week in Germany is noteworthy for several reasons that may not have been obvious from the headlines. The first is the involvement of an ethnic Turk. On Tuesday, police in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia seized three men identified as a Turk and two German converts to Islam (under German court rules, their full names were not released). While the activity of converts in terrorism is not new, the Turkish community in Germany has so far been free of the plague of religious extremism. Turkish and Kurdish immigrants to Germany and...

N Korean ship 'linked to Israel's strike on Syria' By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem Last Updated: 4:52pm BST 17/09/2007 A suspicious North Korean freighter that re-flagged itself as South Korean before off-loading an unknown cargo at the Syrian port of Tartous is at the centre of efforts today to investigate Israel's recent airstrike on Syria. Israel has not given any details on the operation in Syria An Israeli on-line data analyst, Ronen Solomon, found an internet trace for the 1,700-tonne cargo ship, Al Hamed, which showed the vessel started to off-load what Syrian officials categorised as "cement" on Sept 3....

Syria got N. Korea help for N-facility 03/31/2008 BY NANAE KURASHIGE THE ASAHI SHIMBUN An Israeli airstrike against Syria last September targeted a nuclear-related facility that was under construction with technical assistance from North Korea, according to Israel's prime minister. Japanese government sources said over the weekend that the Israeli leader, Ehud Olmert, briefed Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda about the attack during summit talks in Tokyo on Feb. 27. It is apparently the first time that the intended target had been disclosed to the head of a foreign government. Previously, Jerusalem had only acknowledged it carried out the Sept. 6,...

Israelis hit Syrian ‘nuclear bomb plant’ Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv and Michael Sheridan in Seoul 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...

Two influential Republican members of the U.S. House have castigated the Bush administration for failing to brief Congress on Israeli bombing of a suspected nuclear facility in Syria last month. In an op-ed piece in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, senior GOP member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the senior Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote: “[The Bush administration] has thrown an unprecedented veil of secrecy around the Israeli air strike. It has briefed only a handful of very senior members of Congress, leaving the...

Israel obtained detailed photographs from inside an alleged Syrian nuclear facility prior to carrying out an air strike on September 6, ABC News reported over the weekend. An unnamed senior source in the US told the news network that the Mossad had discovered in the summer that Syria was constructing a nuclear facility and proceeded to either place a mole inside the plant or convince one of the workers to supply Israel with intelligence. Through the mole, the source said, Israel received pictures from the ground that showed a large cylindrical structure, trucks, and a pumping station - all of...

In its first official admission by a state official, Syria confirmed that an air raid carried out by Israeli fighter jets deep in Syrian territory on September 6 was, indeed, an attack on a Syrian nuclear facility, Israel Radio reported Wednesday morning. A Syrian envoy disclosed the nature if the target during a meeting of a UN committee where Israeli envoys were also present. A senior source in the Foreign Ministry confirmed the statement made in New York by the Syrian official. Since first announcing on September 6 that an incursion into Syrian airspace by IAF jets took place, Syria...

Mysteries still surround Israel’s air strike against Syria. Where was the attack, what was struck and how did Israel’s non-stealthy warplanes fly undetected through the Russian-made air defense radars in Syria? There also are clues that while the U.S. and Israel are struggling in the broader information war with Islamic fundamentalists, Tel Aviv’s air attack against a “construction site” in northern Syria may mean the two countries are beginning to win some cyberwar battles. U.S. officials say that close examination of the few details of the mission offers a glimpse of what’s new in the world of sophisticated electronic sleight-of-hand....

Articles indexed to sept62007 (in order of time indexed.) Israeli official: Russia behind tension with Syria ^   Posted by knighthawk On News/Activism ^ 08/30/2007 2:14:47 PM PDT · 9 replies · 322+ views al Bawaba ^ | August 30 2007   Russia uses Syrian port to demonstrate its power in the Med  ^   Posted by sukhoi-30mki On News/Activism ^ 09/01/2007 7:34:04 AM PDT · 12 replies · 379+ views The Jerusalem Post ^ | Aug 31, 2007 | ALEX KOGAN   Syrian army says it fired on IAF craft violating its space ^   Posted by Nextrush On News/Activism ^ 09/06/2007 4:57:51 AM...

<p>On Sept. 6, something important happened in northern Syria. Problem is, no one knows exactly what. Except for those few who were involved, and they're not saying.</p> <p>We do know that Israel carried out an airstrike. How then do we know it was important? Because in Israel, where leaking is an art form, even the best-informed don't have a clue. They tell me they have never seen a better-kept secret. Which suggests that whatever happened near Dayr az Zawr was no accidental intrusion into Syrian airspace, no dry run for an attack on Iran, no strike on some conventional target such as an Iranian Revolutionary Guard base or a weapons shipment on its way to Hezbollah in Lebanon.</p>