Israelis seized nuclear material in Syrian raid
September 23, 2007
Uzi Mahnaimi and Sarah Baxter
Israeli commandos seized nuclear material of North Korean origin during a daring raid on a secret military site in Syria before Israel bombed it this month, according to informed sources in Washington and Jerusalem.
The attack was launched with American approval on September 6 after Washington was shown evidence the material was nuclear related, the well-placed sources say.
They confirmed that samples taken from Syria for testing had been identified as North Korean. This raised fears that Syria might have joined North Korea and Iran in seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.
Israeli special forces had been gathering intelligence for several months in Syria, according to Israeli sources. They located the nuclear material at a compound near Dayr az-Zwar in the north.
Evidence that North Korean personnel were at the site is said to have been shared with President George W Bush over the summer. A senior American source said the administration sought proof of nuclear-related activities before giving the attack its blessing.
Diplomats in North Korea and China believe a number of North Koreans were killed in the strike, based on reports reaching Asian governments about conversations between Chinese and North Korean officials.
Syrian officials flew to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, last week, reinforcing the view that the two nations were coordinating their response.
One of the proudest achievements of the Clinton administration was the Agreed Framework with North Korea. Clinton assured us that it froze the North Korean nuclear program. North Korea gave us a piece of paper promising to freeze; we gave North Korea 500,000 tons of free oil every year and set about building -- also for free -- two huge $2 billion nuclear power plants that supposedly could be used only to produce electricity. Japan and South Korea were induced to give tons of foreign aid as well, Clinton being the committed multilateralist, even in extortion.
It turns out the North Koreans took the loot and lied. Surprise! All the while they were enriching uranium. They now brazenly admit to having a nuclear weapons program and other weapons of mass destruction. Krauthammer article below
One has to wonder when Jimmah Carter will stop bringing disgrace and disaster to American interests. I would bet that in Carter's mind, the nuclear program of North Korea was a step in the direction toward bringing equality between the poor commie nations and the selfish rich West. In fact, a good "truth test" for Carter would be if he believes that a Syria with nuclear power is a proper step in the process of equality, a matter of balance of power or morally evil. Carter, cannot even now understand that power is not divided equally for a good reason. Power is fate wasted or nurtured not a policy matter or a matter of freedom between nations to be legislated by some international commission.
Power is a necessity in which the freedom loving world must maintain dominance in order to overcome the corrupt destructive instincts of authoritarianism always seeking to grab more and oppress with ruthlessness.
In Carter's insane world view, the Syrians and Palis are oppressed because Israel retains a strategic advantage. In the case of Syria, over the Golan and in the case of the Palis, over the "west bank" a.k.a. Samaria and Judea. No where in Carter's corrupted morality, does real morality ever take hold.
Carter might tell you that imposed equality of incomes, potentials, land, weaponry is moral. In truth, this is "nuts". Intentionally inverting the weak and the strong or maybe better, selectively choosing who is weak and who is strong without consideration of the power of the "weaker" and the relative vulnerability of the "strong" and even the benefits and costs of either one's ultimate preponderance over the other reflects not an educated and erudite wisdom but a silly and formulaic prophesizing.
In Carter's mind, Israel is the behemoth and the Arabians the weak, North Korea, the diminutive little state versus the South Korean colossus client of the US, evil America against almost anyone. Carter selectively chooses his fights by taking the above approach and applying liberation theology, seeking to always make the smaller the oppressed and the bigger the oppressor. When the smaller is not the weaker, one wonders how Carter's mind processes such a phenomena? Carter's and his willing accomplice Slick Willy has set loose upon the world yet another very dangerous set of circumstances. Charles Krauthammer in the 2002 article below summarizes the situation nicely.
Jewish World Review Oct. 25, 2002/ 19 Mar-Cheshvan 5763
Charles Krauthammer
The Clinton Paper Chase (http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com) |
During the Clinton administration, which of these deserving nations became the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the Asia-Pacific region?
(a) The Philippines, longtime friend and ally.
(b) Indonesia, moderate, Muslim and developing.
(c) Cambodia, impoverished and rebuilding.
(d) North Korea, a deranged Stalinist dictatorship that feeds its million-man army while starving its people, that sells ballistic missiles to America's worst enemies and that is building nuclear weapons.
Did I tip my hand?
The great divide in American foreign policy thinking is between those who believe in paper and those who believe in power. The paper school was in charge of the 1990s.
In the 1990s the main objective of Clinton foreign policy was to get as many signatures as possible on as many pieces of paper as possible promising peace and brotherhood. There was a mania for treaties -- on chemical and biological weapons, nuclear proliferation and testing, land mines, antiballistic missiles, climate control. And, of course, treaties with mortal enemies.
One of the proudest achievements of the Clinton administration was the Agreed Framework with North Korea. Clinton assured us that it froze the North Korean nuclear program. North Korea gave us a piece of paper promising to freeze; we gave North Korea 500,000 tons of free oil every year and set about building -- also for free -- two huge $2 billion nuclear power plants that supposedly could be used only to produce electricity. Japan and South Korea were induced to give tons of foreign aid as well, Clinton being the committed multilateralist, even in extortion.
It turns out the North Koreans took the loot and lied. Surprise! All the while they were enriching uranium. They now brazenly admit to having a nuclear weapons program and other weapons of mass destruction.
Jimmy Carter just won a Nobel Peace Prize for, among other things, his 1994 intervention with the North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung that led to this agreement. Carter had returned from his talks in Pyongyang declaring, "The crisis is over." He was missing only the umbrella. (Carter also enthused that "there is an incredible reverence and exaltation of President Kim Il Sung," author of one of the most grotesque police states in all of history.)
At the time, the New York Times enthusiastically applauded this achievement of peace in our time ("Nuclear Breakthrough in Korea") and praised "U.S. negotiator Robert Gallucci and his North Korean interlocutors" for having "defied impatient hawks and other skeptics who accused the Clinton administration of gullibility and urged swifter, stronger action."
At the time, in this space, I called the agreement "worse than dangerous, it is shameful" and suggested that it should have been signed on the battleship Missouri, as it amounted to unconditional surrender.
Eight years and a few North Korean nukes later, the Times has seen the light. It concludes a deeply disappointed editorial with this priceless discovery: "Keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of dictators who want them requires more than signed agreements."
The North Korean fiasco was not the only Clintonian attempt at paper diplomacy. The bloodiest farce was the Oslo "peace" between Israel and the Palestinians. President Clinton insisted that it be signed on the White House lawn under his upraised arms. He then spent the next seven years brokering one new agreement after another while declaring the peace irreversible. He knew it was so because Yasser Arafat had promised -- in writing -- an end to violence and terrorism. Then Arafat decided to start up the violence and terrorism in September 2000, bringing on the worst Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed in this hundred-year war and leaving the Clinton paper-pushers surprised.
This is not that hard to figure out. Living by paper -- contracts and laws and courts and binding agreements -- is lovely. It's what makes domestic society civilized and decent. The problem is that the international arena is not domestic society. It is a jungle. It is a state of nature. At home, autoworkers make peace with GM with a signed agreement. That doesn't work with Kim Il Sung, or with his deranged son Kim Jong Il.
Agreements with them or Arafat or Saddam Hussein are not worth the paper they are written on. Laboring over every jot and tittle -- the life work of our paper-pushing peace processors -- is quite mad. The beginning of wisdom is giving up this supremely naive belief in paper.
It is not the end of wisdom, to be sure. It does not answer all questions. But it will keep us from repeating the disasters of the delusional '90s, disasters that haunt our sleep now and will haunt us for decades to come.
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