Officials in the Bush administration are divided over the significance of
intelligence provided by Israel that led to last month's strike inside Syria
on a reported nuclear facility, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
According to the Times, at issue is whether intelligence presented by Israel
months ago to the administration that Syria had begun work on a nuclear
weapons program was conclusive enough to justify military action by Israel,
and subsequently, a rethinking of American policy toward the two nations.
US Vice President Dick Cheney and other conservatives in the administration
are portraying the Israeli intelligence as credible and argue that it should
cause the US to reconsider its diplomatic overtures to Syria and North
Korea.
By contrast, the Times reports, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her
allies in the White House said they do not believe that the intelligence
presented so far merits any change in the American diplomatic approach. . . .
Besides Rice, officials said that Defense Secretary Robert Gates was also
cautious about fully endorsing Israeli warnings. Others in the Bush
administration remain unconvinced that a nascent Syrian nuclear program
could pose an immediate threat. . . .
Bruce Riedel, a CIA and National Security Council veteran and now a Middle
East expert at the Brookings Institution, said that American intelligence
agencies remained cautious about drawing hard conclusions about the
significance of the suspicious activity at the Syrian site.
However, Riedel said Israel would not have launched the strike if it
believed Damascus was merely developing more sophisticated ballistic
missiles or chemical weapons.
FULL TEXT
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"Israel
admits to Syria air strike," BBC News, October 2, 2007
[They said it would have been years before the Syrians could have used the
reactor to produce the spent nuclear fuel that could, through a series of
additional steps, be reprocessed into bomb-grade plutonium.--David E. Sanger
and Mark Mazzetti, "Analysts
Find Israel Struck a Nuclear Project Inside Syria,"
Washington Post, October 14, 2007]
[The Syrian project has been going nowhere for 40 years, as Joseph
Cirincione, author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons
and a senior fellow and director for nuclear policy at the Center for
American Progress, informs us:
"It is a basic research program built around a tiny 30 kilowatt reactor that
produced a few isotopes and neutrons. It is nowhere near a program for
nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel."--Justin Raimondo, "The Dair El Zor
Hoax," antiwar.com, October 15, 2007]
[US intelligence 'found no radiation signatures after the bombing, so there
was no uranium or plutonium present,'--Justin Raimondo, "The
Syrian 'Nuke' Hoax," antiwar.com, October 19, 2007]
[ElBaradei said he had no information that North Korea had been supplying
nuclear know-how to Syria and noted the U.N. charter only permitted the use
of force in the face of an imminent threat or with the prior approval of the
world body.--Jon Boyle, "Iran
seen to need 3-8 yrs to produce bomb," Reuters, October 22, 2007]
"IAEA
chief criticizes Israel over Syria raid," Reuters, October 28, 2007
"'USAF struck Syrian nuclear site',"
Jerusalem Post, November 2, 2007
William J. Borad, "Syria
Rebuilds on Site Destroyed by Israeli Bombs," New York Times, January 12, 2008
[A senior Syrian official confirmed that a group of North Koreans had been
at work at the site, but he denied that the structure was related to
chemical warfare. . . .
There is evidence that the pre‘mptive raid on Syria was also meant as a
warning about - and a model for - a preemptive attack on Iran.--Seymour M. Hersh,
"What
did Israel bomb in Syria?," New Yorker, February 11, 2008]
Gordon Prather, "Another Act of
War," antiwar.com, February 9, 2008
Robin Wright, "N. Koreans Taped At Syrian Reactor: Video Played a
Role in Israeli Raid," Washington Post, April 24, 2008
[Cheney and allies in Congress and the media are also using the Syrian
reactor hubbub to undermine efforts by the U.S. state department, a primary
hate object for neocons, to implement the nuclear weapons freeze with North
Korea. State department boss Condoleezza Rice has run for cover, leaving her
chief negotiator with North Korea to twist in the wind.--Eric Margolis, "The neoconning of a nation ," Toronto Sun,
April 27, 2008]
