“A Ship Carrying Material From North Korea Labeled As Cement”
From The Washington Post Today:
Meanwhile, a prominent U.S. expert on the Middle East, who has interviewed Israeli participants in a mysterious raid over Syria last week, reported that the attack appears to have been linked to the arrival three days earlier of a ship carrying material from North Korea labeled as cement.
The expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid compromising his sources, said the target of the attack appears to have been a northern Syrian facility that was labeled an agricultural research center on the Euphrates River, close to the Turkish border. Israel has kept a close eye on the facility, believing that Syria was using it to extract uranium from phosphates.
The expert said it is not clear what the ship was carrying, but the emerging consensus in Israel was that it delivered nuclear equipment. The ship arrived Sept. 3 in the Syrian port of Tartus; the attack occurred Sept. 6 under such strict operational security that the pilots flying air cover for the attack aircraft did not know details of the mission. The pilots who conducted the attack were briefed only after they were in the air, he said.
Israel has imposed heavy censorship on reporters regarding the raid, so few details have leaked. The expert said that Israel appeared to have learned a lesson from its experience in destroying the Osiraq nuclear reactor in Iraq — that bragging about an operation only makes it easier for the world to condemn it.
( From JPost: However, on Saturday Syria denied these reports, and claimed that nothing in Syria was bombed by the IAF, and nothing was damaged.
Reports of such an attack are “ridiculous and not true,” Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar Ja’afari said. Ja’afari added that “Syria does not have North Korean nuclear facilities.” )
Adding to the mystery, Syria has made only muted protests about the raid, and North Korea, which rarely comments on international matters, swiftly condemned it.
Bruce Reidel, a former intelligence official at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center, said, “It was a substantial Israeli operation, but I can’t get a good fix on whether the target was a nuclear thing.” He said there was “a great deal of skepticism that there’s any nuclear angle here” and instead the facility could have been related to chemical or biological weapons.
But other sources who have been monitoring the Middle East said the attack was likely to be against a transit point for Iranian weapons bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon.
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So the big, bad, mighty Syrian war machine is all in a lather because once again the IDF kicked their ass. I’m fucking laughing at your response Mr Asshat Assad. Whine some more…I need another laugh…
September 15th, 2007 at 11:27 amWhat this event and other recent flyovers by IDF pilots has to tell Bashar is that if they Fk with the Israeli’s, they are in for a serious asskicking that they cannot stop.
It should also give Iran pause.
September 15th, 2007 at 11:38 amYeah, see there’s one thing you never hear anybody talk about with regard to Iran and Syria and that is Chemical and Biological weapons to use against Israel.
It would make more sense for them to use these types of weapons against Israel, because their ultimate goal is taking Jerusalem and giving it to the Palestinians, so why ruin the land with radioactivity?
The whole nuke thing is a very serious issue, but it could also be a distraction, a smokescreen for chem-bio weps.
YOu know, “Watch my right hand, everybody, what you see is an effort to build a nuke bomb. Don’t look at my left hand behind my back, which is making chem-bio weps. We don’t want you to even suspect…”
September 15th, 2007 at 2:23 pmhaha it was a north korean cement vessel..we all know how those north koreans are masters of making cement lol
September 15th, 2007 at 2:27 pmSyrian silence about the “what” means it’s something they don’t want even speculation about. That just about has to be nuclear. Combined with the stuff they imported from Saddam just before OIF, there are a few such targets to be had, it seems.
September 15th, 2007 at 9:19 pm