Israel's Attack on Syria

I've been trying to understand Israel's Sept 6 bombing of some site in northern Syria. Last week Raghida Dergham wrote that the Israeli Strike Aimed to Break the Syrian-Iranian Alliance. Now the story is that the Isareli's destroyed nuclear equipment sent from Iran. "The Israeli attack came just three days after a North Korean ship docked at the Syrian port of Tartus, carrying a cargo that was officially listed as cement."

The Washington Post reports Israel, U.S. Shared Data On Suspected Nuclear Site saying that North Korea was shipping nuclear material to Syria. "Syria has actively pursued chemical weapons in the past but not nuclear arms -- leaving some proliferation experts skeptical of the intelligence that prompted Israel's attack."

As Kevin Drum writes, "Either someone is dead serious about planting some disinformation about a Syria-North Korea nuclear connection in the press, or else there really is such a connection. I don't know what to think about it myself, but it's now officially a story to follow."

Now the London Times reports "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."

The Washington Post raises the question is this the neo-cons way of sabotaging the six party talks with North Korea? Last week ago China postponed talks. "Some North Korean experts said they are puzzled why, if the reports are true, Pyongyang would jeopardize the hard-won deal with the United States and the other four countries. 'It does not make any sense at all in the context of the last nine months,' said Charles 'Jack' Pritchard, a former U.S. negotiator with North Korea and now president of the Korea Economic Institute."

Newsweek asks is Israel's Raid on Syria: Prelude to a Nuke Crisis?. "A few months before he quit, according to two knowledgeable sources, [Cheney's Middle East adviser David] Wurmser told a small group of people that Cheney had been mulling the idea of pushing for limited Israeli missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz—and perhaps other sites—in order to provoke Tehran into lashing out. The Iranian reaction would then give Washington a pretext to launch strikes against military and nuclear targets in Iran."

The London Times reports "The United States Air Force has set up [Project Checkmate] a highly confidential strategic planning group tasked with “fighting the next war” as tensions rise with Iran. It reports directly to General Michael Moseley, the US Air Force chief, and consists of 20-30 top air force officers and defence and cyberspace experts with ready access to the White House, the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Checkmate’s job is to add a dash of brilliance to Air Force thinking by countering the military’s tendency to “fight the last war” and by providing innovative strategies for warfighting and assessing future needs for air, space and cyberwarfare."

I don't know what to believe but I'm not happy.