By Stan Goodenough
Apr 30, 2008
While Israeli leaders have been playing catch-me-if-you-can with Syrian President Bashar el-Assad, swearing publicly never to surrender the Golan while telling Damascus secretly it can get the Heights if it jumps high enough, the Syrians have been hard at work doing something secretive of their own.
Or at least they were until September 6 last year, when Israel Air Force fighter bombers came out of the sun and obliterated their nuclear reactor just weeks or, at the most, months before it went online.
Once hot, it would have taken just a year for Assad to get his hands on enough plutonium to make two atomic bombs, said CIA Director Michael Hayden in public statements Monday.
Last week, senior intelligence officials had told US President George W. Bush the Syrian facility was a plutonium reactor built with North Korean cooperation and intended to fuel a nuclear weapons program, according to Ynetnews.
Syria may, now and then, appear to be hinting at peace. But quietly, furiously, it continues to prepare for war. Assad's inheritance: The vision of Greater Syria and immortality to the leader who can help to bring it about by making the Middle East Israel-free.
That the Syrians could have advanced so far under cover, coming nearer than Iran - at least according to some intelligence estimates - to actually getting their unstable little fingers on the trigger of a nuclear weapon, raises all sorts of questions about just how effectively Israel, the United States, and the rest of the once-free world can prevent the atomic-arming of the Arab-Islamic states in this region.
America's confirmation of the true nature of the site bombed out of existence by Israel should galvanize Western nations to act, driving them to confront and forcefully brake the headlong Iranian and Arab rush towards nuclearizing the Middle East.
Instead, they continue to talk United Nations resolutions and the imposition of sanctions; not slowing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but encouraging him as Britain and France once encouraged Nazi Germany by restricting their response to Hitler's threats and trying to placate him with the Sudetenland.
They play this game at Israel's peril, and at their own.