Gone, But Not Forgotten
Filed under: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Weapons, Syria — Marc Schulman on October 25, 2007 @ 11:56 pm CEST
Before and after the Israeli strike. A nice clean-up job by the Syrians.
A senior U.S. intelligence officer:
It’s a magic act — here today, gone tomorrow. It doesn’t lower suspicions, it raises them. This was not a long-term decommissioning of a building, which can take a year. It was speedy. It’s incredible that they could have gone to that effort to make something go away.
David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security:
It looks like Syria is trying to hide something and destroy the evidence of some activity. But it won’t work. Syria has got to answer questions about what it was doing.
Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear proliferation at the Center for American Progress:
It’s clearly very suspicious. The Syrians were up to something that they clearly didn’t want the world to know about.
I wonder what that could be.
1 Chris
October 26, 2007 @ 12:20 am CESTIt blows my mind that these people don’t think to build this stuff underground.
2 sashal
October 26, 2007 @ 12:38 am CESTBob Gates, speaking to reporters after NATO meetings in The Netherlands, in an attempt to further dissuade Ankara from a large-scale incursion into northern Iraq:
“Without good intelligence, sending large numbers of troops across the border or dropping bombs doesn’t seem to make much sense to me.”
This applied “for anybody” considering such action, he added. [emphasis added]
Pity Mr. Gates wasn’t around in March of ‘03 dispensing such wisdom!
h/t Belgravia dispatch
3 George
October 26, 2007 @ 12:57 am CESTOh, a picture*… ‘by golly’ since you’ve got the picture gotta be the truth!
*Adobe Photoshop CS3
4 kreiz
October 26, 2007 @ 1:37 am CESTWord has it that Iran has figured it out (building underground facilities). Perhaps the bellicose US rhetoric would be mollified if Iran embraced the IAEA rather than defyed it. After all, its use is only for civilian purposes.
5 Jim Et Al
October 26, 2007 @ 1:40 am CESTIt must be noted that bulldozing a pile of rubble is infinitely easier than is “decommissioning” a large structure. Too bad the agency didn’t release the full set of photos…
I wonder why?
6 Jim Et Al
October 26, 2007 @ 2:15 am CESTOK…There are more photos contained in Michael’s ISIS link, but my point was that there are similar photos taken every day which should be released, but probably weren’t because the bomb damage would have been indisputable…
Having said that, I tend to trust the ISIS reports as they are written by David Albright, Paul Brannan, and Jacqueline Shire…
7 Tully
October 26, 2007 @ 2:35 am CESTIt’s one thing to build a centrifuge farm underground, but breeder reactors require big old cooling towers. Without them they tend to melt down.
8 Pat
October 26, 2007 @ 3:10 am CESTTully
Which brings one to the question, “so what were they really doing?” Building a reactor to produce energy or building a bomb? Good catch in reference to the cooling towers. No cooling towers then it is safe to assume you aren’t building an energy plant! In all of the pictures I’ve seen of the Manhattan project, I never saw any with cooling towers! The layout of the Oak Ridge site is available through the History Channel (I think). The History Channel did a story about the Manhattan Project which included film and photos from those days when the actual work was ongoing.
9 Jim Et Al
October 26, 2007 @ 4:29 am CESTTully, Pat
In regards to your cooling tower hypothesis, go to the ISIS report and carefully examine aerial photo #6…
It appears rather obvious that a cooling system was partially constructed…
10 Pat
October 26, 2007 @ 10:13 am CESTJim Et Al
Sorry I don’t see any evidence of cooling towers. Help me out, but the photo (if I’ve got it right) #6 is a shot of the post bombing. In #5 there is a pre bombing picture and I see no evidence of cooling tower construction. I will submit to you that IF you wanted to cool the thing you could use water directly from the river and run it back into the river after using it (something that was done in Hanford, Washington for awhile before those darn “enviro” guys raised a ruckus and made them stop!)
There are two sets of ISIS pictures but the second link only has 5 pictures not six and the 5th picture is not of the Syrian site. One thing of note is that in the pre bombing pictures there is no evidence of power lines, or power line construction either. Maybe they were going to build those later though.
Point is Jim, that why would Syria (knowing full well the Israelis weren’t going to accept a nuke plant in their backyard) not just be open about it and insure IEAE inspectors were on site all the as a kind of human shield!
I could be convinced otherwise but I will still maintain that whatever this place was, it wasn’t for peaceful purposes.
11 Pat
October 26, 2007 @ 10:15 am CESTOops, I meant to say “not just be open about it and insure IAEA inpectors were on site all the TIME as kind of a political human shield!
12 Jim Et Al
October 26, 2007 @ 11:13 pm CESTPat,
I should have clarified my response. I didn’t see any evidence of cooling towers either, but photos #5 & 6 do show a “pumping station” and evidence of a possible pipeline/trench. It suggests that Syria may have understood that cooling towers would attract unwelcomed attention to the overall facility. On the other hand, one would expect Syrian intelligence to have known that is was under constant high elevation surveillance, and that any suspicious activity would be taken seriously…
13 Pat
October 27, 2007 @ 1:52 am CESTJim Et Al
Okay, cool, from the pics at least you can’t really tell what that other building is or does. But then, the whole complex may have been a goat house. Fact remains, why hide it? Could there be something we don’t know? Food for thought I guess. From my personal (I admit it) stance, I just don’t trust the Assad Gov’t, but I don’t trust mine either.
Thank you