Syria resumes covert nuclear projects in partnership with North Korea

This little bugger is back at it with his pals the Syrians.

Am I insane or is it insane that Syria's source of money for all this is selling oil to the very countries they're conspiring against? What's nuttier, trying to destroy your best customers, or funding your worst enemies?

"DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

September 28, 2008, 9:38 PM (GMT+02:00)

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report that it took Damascus a year to recover from the demolition of its plutonium project at El Kibar in northern Syria, but already the nuclear scientists and technicians who were to have been employed there have been hired for new projects. This time the installations are scattered in different parts of the country. North Korean nuclear experts are back too.

Our military sources describe rising tension between Syria and Israel in the wake of the car bomb explosion Saturday, Sept. 27, which killed 17 people and injured 14 outside a Syrian security installation at Sidi Kadad on the highway to Damascus airport. The victims were not officially identified.

Various Arab sources report that one was a Syrian brigadier who was not named. After the attack, DEBKAfile’s sources raised the possibility that it might have targeted people involved in Iranian/Syrian nuclear activity.

Damascus has been wary of accusing Israel of engineering the blast, but unofficial Syrian intelligence sources have indirectly pointed the finger at Israel claiming it was an attempt to spoil Syria’s improving relations with the West.

Western intelligence sources note that Syria has been hit in the past year with attacks associated with its clandestine nuclear activities.

The El Kibar reactor was knocked out on Sept. 6, 2007 while it was under construction. On Aug. 2, 2008, Gen. Muhammad Suleiman was shot dead by a sniper in Latakia. He was a key man in the Syrian nuclear program and acted as liaison officer for Damascus with Iran and North Korea.

If Saturday’s blast did indeed cause the death of a high Syrian officer involved in the program, it would have been the third consecutive operation against Damascus’ revived application to clandestine nuclear projects."

http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5618

Strange how those involved keep turning up dead, isn't it? Oh well, "we sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm", don't we?

10,000 Syrian Commandos Heading For Lebanon

Syrian deployment on Lebanese border: Commandos on right; positions on hill, trucks below.


"Damascus is pressing forward with its plan to occupy Greater Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest city and port, DEBKAfile's military sources report. To this end, 10,000 Syrian commando troops have massed at Abboudieh on the Lebanese border ready to follow an advance force which occupied seven villages around the northern city earlier this month, as first disclosed by DEBKAfile on Sept. 20"


The next step in Lebanon's disintegration features, no big surprise, the Syrians, who have been prominent among those bedeviling Lebanon for decades now.

"... Syrian occupation of northern Lebanon will make profound inroads on the strategic position of the United States and Israel in this part of the Middle East, yet Washington and Jerusalem are turning a blind eye."

Perhaps Washingtom and Israel figure Syrian occupation of the area is preferable to the alternative.
True, from a certain point of view, all of Lebanon descending into chaos and serving as yet another battlefield for the Sunnis, Shiites, Wahhabis and all the other sects of the Religion of Peace to occupy themselves killing each other and leave the rest of us alone isn't a particularly unwelcome development.
However, this would be too near to Israel, meaning there's a far better chance of Lebanon turning into another Afghanistan, with infidel troops (under NATO, the UN, or who have you) soiling holy Muslim soil in a valiant fight to quell all that and drag the population into the 21st century etc, etc ...
Watch for this to get far worse.

http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5605

Lebanon Heading for Civil War?

The exceptionally reliable Debkafile's sources are reporting that "Pro-Western Siniora government and Iran-Syria-backed Hizballah forces exchanged fire in the streets of Beirut Wednesday, May 7."

Both sides are apparently calling up all the fighters they can muster. Worse yet, "Hizballah fighters clad in national army and police uniforms are infiltrating government party strongholds in the capital to seize control."

Hizballah infiltrating the apparatus of the crumbling Lebanese government, laying seige to the Beirut airport and worst of all, beefing up their missile network with a "secret underground telecommunications system" with the help of Iran.

Just when you thought the news from the Middle East couldn't get worse ...
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5248