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.
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
PoliGazette Comments Policy
PoliGazette encourages comments from all viewpoints, especially those that disagree.
Comments submitted must, however, adhere to the following standards. Comments that violate
these standards may be edited or deleted without notice at the sole discretion of the editors.
Commenters who repeatedly or egregiously violate these standards or who attempt to argue
publicly with editors regarding the comments
policy may be banned from commenting further.
(1) Comments should address the substantive content of the post. Comments that repeatedly or
willfully misrepresent the content of the post or of others' comments are not welcome. Comments that
respond to something other than which the contributor or commenter may have said are irrelevant and should
not be posted.
(2) Comments should avoid use of vulgar language as well as racial, ethnic, or religious slurs.
(3) Comments should not personally attack the character, personal integrity, or professional
reputation of any PoliGazette contributor or of other commenters.
(4) Comments should reflect the contributions of the commenters themselves and should not
include extensive cut-and-paste reproductions of others' words except insofar as necessary to supplement
the commenter's own arguments. Link spam, trackback spam, and propaganda spam will be instantly deleted.
(5) Public figures are considered open to all substantive criticism of their policies and statements.
Comments that present false factual information about public figures (i.e. "Obama is a Muslim) or
that attack public figures by attacking their families are not welcome. Comments that merely repeat
slogans for or against a candidate without engaging in substantive comment are not welcome.
Questions or challenges to these policies or their application should be directed to the editors
by email.
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