Drawings of alleged Syrian Reactor shown to Congress

Drawings of an alleged Syrian nuclear facility? Where have we seen this dog and pony show before?

In February of 2003, when the now disgraced former Secretary of State Colin Powell showed the UN and the world the "evidence" the U.S. had in regards to Iraq's chemical weapons program, he showed the UN "drawings" of what the trailers housing these facilities might look like.

5+ years and over one million dead Iraqi's later and the world knows now that the UN presentation by Powell was part of the effort by Israeli Zionists and DC Neocons to sell the U.S. on invading Iraq.

Now, this same spin machine is ramping up it's echo chamber made from lies, distortions and half-truths in order to sell the U.S. another war, this time against Syria and Iran.

Will we never learn or will we be suckered, hoodwinked and played for a fool again?

And how many people of Arab descent in the ME must Israel murder before it satisfies its blood lust?

Government Releases Images of Syrian Reactor

Only selected pictures were released by the intelligence agencies on Thursday, including a video that combined still photos and drawings, and had a voice-over that gave the presentation the feel of a cold-war-era newsreel about the Korean War. In fact, it was intended in part, officials said, to try to draw that war — in which the United States and North Korea never signed a peace treaty — to a close.

By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: April 25, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration released detailed photographic images on Thursday to support its assertion that the building in Syria that Israel destroyed in an airstrike last year was a nuclear reactor constructed with years of help from North Korea.

The photographs taken inside the reactor before it was destroyed in an air raid on Sept. 6 clearly show the rods that control the heat in a nuclear reactor, one of many close engineering similarities to a reactor halfway around the world where North Korea produced the fuel for its nuclear arsenal.

While the photographs were not dated, some taken on the ground seemed to go back to before 2002.

But after a full day of briefing members of Congress, two senior intelligence officials acknowledged that the evidence had left them with no more than “low confidence” that Syria was preparing to build a nuclear weapon. They said that there was no sign that Syria had built an operation to convert the spent fuel from the plant into weapons-grade plutonium, but that they had told President Bush last year that they could think of no other explanation for the reactor.

Among the photographs shown to members of Congress and reporters on Thursday was one of the manager of North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear plant with the director of Syria’s nuclear agency. A car in the background has Syrian license plates.

When asked about North Korea’s motivation for the project, one of the senior intelligence officials said simply, “Cash.” He refused to say how much.

The revelation of the plant’s existence is not new; The New York Times reported in mid-October that Israel had brought the United States evidence that the Syrian building was a partly constructed reactor. But no more than a handful of lawmakers had ever been briefed on the attack.

A senior administration official, briefing reporters with the help of the two senior intelligence officials, said for the first time that the White House had extensive discussions with Israel before the airstrike in September. The official said the White House had raised the possibility of confronting Syria with a demand that it dismantle the reactor or face the possibility of an attack.

At the C.I.A., Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the agency’s director, told employees on Thursday that they should “take heart because our team effort on the Al Kibar reactor is a case study in rigorous analytic tradecraft, skillful human and technical collection, and close collaboration.”

But even this victory, some experts note, raises questions about the agency’s focus. The reactor was built within 100 miles of the Iraqi border yet never identified even though the administration was searching for any form of such arms programs in Iraq.

Moreover, even some senior officials of the administration acknowledge that they are likely to leave Mr. Bush’s successor with a North Korea with roughly 10 nuclear weapons or fuel for weapons, up from the one or two weapons it had when Mr. Bush took office in 2001.

“I’d say the score is Kim Jong-il eight, and Bush zero,” said Graham Allison, a Harvard professor and author of “Nuclear Terrorism,” who was in Washington on Thursday to testify about Iran’s nuclear program. “And if you can build a reactor in Syria without being detected for eight years, how hard can it be to sell a little plutonium to Osama bin Laden?”