Mystery Achievement

All that blather about how the Israelis hit a “nuclear site” or a site with “nuclear materials” in Syria the other week was really just a lot of hooey, but then again you knew that. Otherwise they wouldn’t have kept it such a Deep Dark Secret, now would they? Surely they would have touted the details to all the world’s media, as proof that Damascus is deserving of “regime change.” Now Laura Rozen, via Intelligence Online, provides us with some real details:

“In attacking Dair el Zor in Syria on Sept. 6, the Israeli air force wasn’t targeting a nuclear site but rather one of the main arms depots in the country.

“Dair el Zor houses a huge underground base where the Syrian army stores the long and medium-range missiles it mostly buys from Iran and North Korea. The attack by the Israeli air force coincided with the arrival of a stock of parts for Syria’s 200 Scud B and 60 Scud C weapons.”

22 thoughts on “Mystery Achievement”

  1. This appears to be further evidence that a strike on Iran is near. The Israelis surely understand that such a strike will have consequences throughout the region, and are taking pains to minimize “surprises” in the form of retaliatory missile strikes from places like Syria. Not to mention that this is good practice for bombing Iranian targets.

    As stated elsewhere, a very plausible scenario is a U.S. strike on Iranian Revolutionary Guard positions as the result of a ginned-up incident, knowing that the Iranians will be hard-pressed not to respond in some fashion. Then, the all-out U.S.-Israeli “coalition” strikes to take out the rest of Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities.

    Result: chaos beyond our imagining and the probable end of the American republic.

    1. This analysis strikes me as almost certainly correct. Why are we all so helpless to stop this?

    2. As well as the possible World Wide Nuclear confilict… now, with 8 billion population it’s really difficult to predict human specied demise. Also, recent reports from Chernobyl area indicate conservative optimizm – for most species in the area about 80% of vaious species pupulation got affected negatviely, whereas about 15% flourished, as if completely ignoring high radiation levels.

  2. Or we can believe Debka.org’s explanation:
    DEBKAfile Exclusive: Three groups of experts – Russian, Iranian and Syrian – still at sea over why Syria’s two early warning stations failed to protect its skies or identify Israeli air force raiders on Sept. 6.

    October 5, 2007, 8:59 AM (GMT+02:00)

    The Russian air defense system which failed

    This lapse was first revealed exclusively by DEBKAfile on Sept. 7:

    The Israeli jets said to have penetrated Syrian airspace Wednesday night escaped by jamming Russian-made Pantsyr-S1 air defense missiles

    DEBKAfile’s military experts conclude from the way Damascus described the episode that the electronic systems and radar of the Pantsyr-S1 air defense missiles were a letdown because they failed to down the intruders and therefore leave Syria and Iranian airspace vulnerable to hostile intrusion.

    Such information on the Russian weapons systems sold to Syria and Iran is essential to any US calculations of whether to attack Iran.

    Full article by DEBKAfile’s military sources of Sept. 7: HERE

    These revelations were followed up on Sept. 21 by DEBKA-Net-Weekly 318 (for subscribers): Syria’s vulnerability

    DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report that the Syrian early warning station, positioned at Marj as Sultan, 15 km east of Damascus and north of the Syrian air base at the international airport, is there to secure the Syrian capital and monitor Israeli air or missile activity on the Golan and from northern Israel.

    The Shinshar station south of Homs, near the small Syrian air base of Al Qusayr Shayrat, is located opposite northern Lebanon. Its function is to sound the alarm if airplanes, missiles or warships approach Syria from Lebanese territory of from the eastern Mediterranean.

    When the early warning stations in Syria were silenced, some communications systems, computers and cell phones were also knocked out in neighboring Lebanon – evidence that Syria had been bested in a cyber war against its electronic and radar systems.

    DEBKAfile adds: Syrian war planners are at sea on several key points, such as:

    1. When and from which did direction did the warplanes enter Syria airspace – the Mediterranean, Israel or Turkey?

    2. Was the incursion a one-off or one of several which went unnoticed?

    Until Israel released the bare information of the Sept. 6 air raid over Syria this week, neither Damascus nor Tehran knew for sure the identity of the air raiders, whether Israeli American or both

    1. This DEBKA analysis is an absurdity based solely on temporal circumstances that are not even certain, namely the timing of the ‘raid’ and the supposed date of delivery of the Pansyr S-1 air defense system. But in their haste to show off their intelligence prowess, these armchair analysts seem to have overlooked a simple military fact. The Pansyr is a tactical theater air defense weapon with limited range. It is not a strategic defense system and could by no means be used to defend the extent of Syria’s national territory. To accomplish that, the Syrians would have purchased the A- 300 SAM . Since a battery of Pansyr can only defend a limited area and considering the limited numbers purchased by Syria, they will be deployed very judiciously in the war theater, and they will deprive Israel the air supremacy that it requires to win any battle, even against lightly armed Palestinians or the more accomplished guerrilla fighters of Hizballah.

  3. Poor Syria. To think how very kind the Syrians have been recently to take in the thousands/millions of Lebanese and Iraqi refugees, made so by our and Israel’s barborous assaults on them. I still appreciate the courtesy Nancy Pelosi showed by her visit to Syria. Have a heart U.S.A. and Israel. Let Syria and Iran alone, for goodness sake.

    1. For folks like Marycatherine and Graeme who are oh so eagar to jump to Syria’s defense, here are some facts you ought to chew on regarding this Islamic-Faschist nation.

      First, Syria ATTACKED Israel in 1967 and 1973 in wanton aggression. If people say otherwise they are distorting history.

      Second, here are some facts from Human Rights Watch on Syria:

      Women must get their husbands permission to travel and a rapist can have a suspended sentence if he chooses to marry his victim. Leniency is shown for “honor” crimes where a wome who is raped gets murdered by her male relatives for shaming the family.

      300,000 syrian born Kurds are subjected to systmatic discrimination.

      There is arbitrary detention, torture, and “disappearences” of political dissidents and over 4,000 political prisoners remain locked up. The governement strictly limits freedom of the press, association, and assembly.

      Its funny, so many of you are so quick to jump on Israel and the United States for alleged human rights abuses, but I don’t see that same sense of outrage for the arab muslim nazi movement. Instead of outrage you run to defend these disgusting regimes and the Muslim radicals that support them.

      1. Islamofascism isn’t even a coherent term. It’s a made-up conflation intended to inflame.

        Radical Islam has its own problems but it is not fascist, that’s a different thing entirely.

        For a definition of what fascism really is you can study the history of Mussolini’s period.

  4. Yeah, but in Deep Background in AMCON Mag, Phillip Gilraldi says that Syria intentionally left their defense off so as to not give away capability info?

      1. Abraham,

        Why do you keep asking that same retarded question. Try out some new material already!

  5. Whether the Russian radar worked is still unclear. It might well be possible that a couple of Israeli fighter-bombers managed to evade it – but that doesn’t necessarily mean an entire fleet of Israeli aircraft would in a major attack.

    Israel may have been testing whether a couple such aircraft could evade such radar in preparation for a run at Iran, which it is clear Cheney would prefer, purely for political reasons, than having the US start the war. After all, once Israel attacks, any criticism of Israel over starting the war will be deemed “anti-Semitic” by the usual Zionist thugs such as Dershowitz.

    In the process, they may have decided to kill two birds with one stone by taking out the missile parts. After all, it’s one thing to evade, it’s another to actually engage a target while evading.

    The reason for Israel keeping it quiet allowed them to float the “Syrian nuclear program” nonsense, knowing that it will be picked up and repeated for days and become part of the neocon “folklore” – like the notion that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, which the bulk of the US population still believes.

    All in all, it was a successful operation. At this point, Syria should just lie back and accept it – since much worse is likely ahead and Syria should not waste military assets retaliating against Israel – especially since Israel is just waiting for that excuse to launch a major attack in coordination with their and the US attack plan for Iran.

    Syria will get its chance to do major damage to Israel once Israel makes the classic miltiary mistake of a “two-front war” by engaging both Syria and Hizballah at the same time – not to mention Hamas as a third front, most likely.

    The US and Israel intend to try to take down ALL their enemies at once very soon – a sure recipe for failure.

  6. In response to Mark Williams, the groups that want to stop this simply lack the muscle to alter the political landscape sufficiently to have any effect. The closest that those groups have come is the candidacy of Ron Paul, who has a substantial war chest – but not as substantial as Clinton, Obama, Giuliani, or Romney. Certainly those groups (which combined are a majority of the populace) lack the physical strength to change the leadership in nontraditional ways.

  7. Bjorn,

    Can you post what Gilraldi had to say on this? I wondered about this possibility myself and am curious to see what else he may add. Thanks.

  8. In response to Tim: Learn your facts please.

    “Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, as Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to conquer the Golan…[said] many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland…[Dayan stated] ‘They didn’t even try to hide their greed for the land…We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot.

    And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was…The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.'” The New York Times, May 11, 1997

  9. What?!?!? You should be subscribing to American Conservative yourself! It is the best magazine in the country (well-chronicles is up there, too!)
    At any rate– I’l go dig up and paraphrase what he had to say, but I’m sure Scott Horton will interview him again sooner or later to cover this…

  10. Anything specific listed on the topic of a credible PAC or front group for PACs that I could contribute to for the counterbalance of AIPAC’s influence on our foreign policy?
    Looking for an effective pro-U.S. foreign policy PAC
    rather than an Arab rights only PAC.

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