Syria?
I’m getting too old to put up with this garbage. The claim that Syria was building a nuclear facility is based solely on Israeli intelligence. Israeli intelligence are the people who didn’t know that Hezbollah was building a reinforced tunnel complex throughout south Lebanon despite constant overflights, satellite imagery, agents on the ground, and military watch towers and patrols along the border. I guess the Lebanese were using invisibility cloaks and using dwarfs to do the tunneling.
The Israeli prime minister and military establishment have been trying to recover from the many problems exposed by the Lebanese war, and they has been working 24/7 to come up with a success. They have been trying the Hedgemony’s “all terror, all the time” drumbeat and rotating through an enemy a week.
The latest “revelation” that Kevin Drum talks about in SYRIA UPDATE…., is that the Syrians have cleaned up the debris from the site without inviting anyone in to inspect it. I have no idea why anyone would expect the Syrians to arrange an inspection. Even if they proved there was nothing but a military warehouse at the location, nothing would be done. The US always vetoes sanctions against the Israelis, no matter what the evidence is, so why bother?
While Noah Schachtman called his post, Sayonara, Syrian Nukes, he remains skeptical that there was anything there more than a 47X47 meter [2209 meter²] square building.
Everyone has been linking to the ISIS report [PDF], which proves nothing more than a building was there and now it’s gone. The report does show the North Korean facility that the Syrians were suspecting of copying, but that facility is a 48X50 meter [2400 meter²] rectangular structure, even if you don’t include all of the ancillary equipment seen in the photo.
I hear all of these people talking about how suspicious it is that the Syrians cleaned up the site and regraded it. Well, it was subjected to multiple bombs so there probably weren’t any large chunks to deal with, and there are already facilities at the site, so they may intend to build something there, like another warehouse. I was unaware that there was an international protocol on how long you had to wait before cleaning up the site of a bombing.
Are the Syrians pursuing nuclear weapons? We don’t know, and before you start dropping bombs on people you really should.
7 comments
…well, yes, we should probably know the answer to that question before actually sending bomb-laden aircraft into other soverign airspace, but – as Turkey is threatening to demonstrate – 09/11/01 may not have changed everything as much as 03/20/03. The United States established that it is acceptable to take offensive action against another nation because of a perceived, unproven, possible threat rather than the existence of an actual demonstrable threat to national security. There is no longer any deference to the concept of “just war”…
how big a crater would the bomb[s] leave? they’ve carved away more of the hillside since the pre-bomb photo.
if the bomber[s] did a thorough enough job, about all the cleanup you’d need to do is shove the rubble around and scrape some dirt over it [whch is about what it looks like they did]. assuming all you planned to rebuild is a warehouse, that should be good enough.
if they’re planning to build a nuclear plant, one would hope they’re being a bit more thorough. either way, 7 weeks seems more than long enough to clear the spot.
the airfield in that report — it’s about the right size for a small airstrip [like the local flying clubs have around here], but that’s all they’ve got there [no infrastructure]. maybe it’s going to grow up to be an airfield someday.
google earth is the worst [best] timesuck evah.
Oops, sorry, doesn’t get it when you are dropping 250 pound bombs [and larger] on people, because bombs don’t discriminate. This preemptive war crap has to cease immediately. Since Syria has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, all you have to do is drop a dime for a call to IAEA and you will find out what’s going on. Of course, Israel can’t do it, because it never signed the treaty, but the US can. It’s like the WMDs, they don’t want the facts, they want the excuse.
Hipparchia, it depends on the exact ordnance that was used, and the structure of the building, but if you assume it was a warehouse, it probably got hit with 2 to 4,000 pounds of explosives, so almost nothing would be left. If it was a munitions storage facility, it would have pretty thick walls, but a light roof, to direct any blast upwards, so there should have been large chunks of concrete left. A nuclear containment building is even thicker so a lot of the structure would have survived with gaping holes.
What’s missing is the photos of the site immediately following the raid, so you could see how much of the structure was left standing, if any.
That “airstrip” is really impressive – a runway, no taxiways, no buildings, and not much in the way of roads. Not quite as improved as the “Navarre International Airport” that the local banner towing aircraft use.
The relationship of Israel to the United States is that while the Republicans control this country Likud will control that theirs. The alliance is too important for it to be otherwise, because the Bush administration would snub a non-Likud Israel.
And yes, I know nominally Israel isn’t Likud now. Just like nominally the Democrats control the legislature here.
oh, i dunno. it compares pretty favorably with one or two cow pastures i’ve flown into or out of.
AIPAC is really the Likud in the US and has little to do with the desires of the majority of Israelis. Sharon just created this Potemkin party because of the loss of support for Likud policies.
Hipparchia, there isn’t enough resolution to show the goats.