Remember when Israel blew the crap out of a non-descript building in Syria and nobody said anything about it? Well, that’s a bit of exaggeration. There were rumors at first, then Syria came out and admitted it. Now video surfaces of North Koreans helping out around the facility:
A video taken inside a secret Syrian facility last summer convinced the Israeli government and the Bush administration that North Korea was helping to construct a reactor similar to one that produces plutonium for North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, according to senior U.S. officials who said it would be shared with lawmakers today.
The officials said the video of the remote site, code-named Al Kibar by the Syrians, shows North Koreans inside. It played a pivotal role in Israel’s decision to bomb the facility late at night last Sept. 6, a move that was publicly denounced by Damascus but not by Washington.
Sources familiar with the video say it also shows that the Syrian reactor core’s design is the same as that of the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, including a virtually identical configuration and number of holes for fuel rods. It shows “remarkable resemblances inside and out to Yongbyon,” a U.S. intelligence official said. A nuclear weapons specialist called the video “very, very damning.”
Of course, Syria is denying it all, saying that we shouldn’t trust the U.S. government more than the North Koreans and the Syrians. Personally, I’ll stick with the CIA on this one.
A passage from this article that really sticks out to me is here:
U.S. officials said that Israel shared the video with the United States before the Sept. 6 bombing, after Bush administration officials expressed skepticism last spring that the facility, visible by satellite since 2001, was a nuclear reactor built with North Korea’s assistance. Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal that it has never declared.
But beginning today, intelligence officials will tell members of the House and Senate intelligence, armed services and foreign relations committees that the Syrian facility was not yet fully operational and that there was no uranium for the reactor and no indication of fuel capability, according to U.S. officials and intelligence sources.
The first sentence makes sense, in that we are explaining how we saw the video. But then the second seems like some kind of anti-Israel texual Tourettes statement. I mean, it really doesn’t belong there. It’s like they had to get it in the story, but didn’t know where to put it, so they just jammed it in there and then they go right back to the story.
What does it even have to do with the fact that North Korea was helping Syria build a nuclear reactor? Nothing.
It seems, however, that the Iraq War is having a positive influence on the region:
Syria’s top envoy to Washington said the CIA briefings were meant to undermine diplomatic efforts with North Korea, not to confront Syria. Why, Moustapha said, are “they repeating the same lies and fabrications when they were planning to attack Iraq? The reason is simple: It’s about North Korea, not Syria. The neoconservative elements are having the upper hand.”
He added, “We do not want to plan to acquire nuclear technology as we understand the reality of this world and have seen what the U.S. did to Iraq even when it did not have a nuclear program. So we are not going to give them a pretext to attack Syria.”
Good call, Moustapha. Now let’s talk about Hezbollah.
