Sortied Sentimental
A week ago reports emerged there was a mysterious air-strike by Israel against vague and unspecified targets in Syria
Syria-Israel bombing incident shrouded in mystery | International | Reuters. Syria at least alleged an air incursion with "munitions" dropped and "air defenses" deployed
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Israel's Syria 'raid' remains a mystery. Turkey has identified fuel drop tanks inside its borders which appear to have come from unidentified military aircraft. Israel for its part is saying nothing, except to allow they are satisfied with what they are not saying. This much was established in the days immediately following the incident.
After a few days two distinct narratives emerged. First the North Koreans added themselves to the list of people saying nothing
N.Korea calls Syria nuclear ties report conspiracy | U.S. | Reuters. This established the line that the Israelis had struck at a nuclear weapons material storage facility. Supposedly sold by the Korean's to Syria with or without Iranian money in the control of Syria, Iran, or Hezbollah. Depending on who was telling the story. All this commentary (occurring in only a few articles) seemed strangely muted. If true - or even if only believed to be true - I expected more reaction from the excitable. John Bolton (former ambassador) for one would be hanging from the ceiling of the Senate chamber by his claws speaking in tongues and calling for world war. William Kristal (editor) would be running through the streets of Washington DC naked; clutching photocopies of half-typed sheets of paper containing what half-alleged information he had.
The way this narrative appeared in such suggested fashion is indicative that people are seizing on this to supply an answer off their short wish list. A flag half raised for a war they think they want, but do not need in reality. William Kristal began complaining about the Bush administration's conduct of the Iraq war within months. As soon as the reality began diverging from his impossible fantasy. The idea of the war he is still sweet with. This does not mean something is not going on in the realm of nuclear technology transfer. Both the Washington Post
N. Korea, Syria May Be at Work on Nuclear Facility - washingtonpost.com and the New York Times among the American press have written cautious and non dismissive stories on this. So much so that they have opened themselves to criticism
North Korea-Syria nuclear ties: deja vu all over again? | FP Passport. This sort of preciously parsed reporting is not good journalism. If no agency or source is willing to acknowledge or confirm the story, speculation should be identified as baseless. But when weapons of mass destruction no one wants to climb out on a limb. The reward is a quiet kingdom of manipulated paranoia. A few days later a official source somewhere was willing to pull up alongside the Post and Times, and quoth that "there was a ship"
The cargo was transferred to the site that Israel later attacked, the
officials said. It is unclear exactly what the shipment contained. A
former top American official said the Israelis had monitored the site
for some time before the ship arrived. The ship's arrival in Syria
before the raid was first reported Saturday by The Washington Post.
Israeli Nuclear Suspicions Linked to Raid in Syria - New York Times.
This seemed to reinforce the notion that this was a specific and event driven occurrence, while revealing nothing.
The other possibility was that the Israelis, for their own benefit, decided to fly against Syrian SA-22 anti-aircraft missile batteries
SA-22 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This is a recent system recently acquired from Russia. As the Russians tell it, absolutely fatal once activated. Russian anti-aircraft missiles have previously been very effective, and have for periods been able to tilt the balance of airpower from offense to defense. The Israeli's can scarcely afford to leave such an unknown in the military equation and needed to have this system fired at them to test it and examine its capabilities. Usually my approach to things is to look at what Debka.com is saying about something in the middle east and taking whatever is the direct contradictory opposite as the real truth. But a week ago this is how they saw the incident
DEBKAfile - Advanced Russian Air Defense Missile Cannot Protect Syrian and Iranian Skies and I am inclined to think this was the greater part of what was going on.
The general importance of this is how it might fit into larger events. The SA-22 is, from what descriptions I've seen, a point defense weapon system. One that is not supposed to be susceptible to jamming or anti-radiation (home-on-radar) air to ground missiles. It consists of a heavy truck carrying tube launched missiles with a 24 km range, that can fly over 1000 meters per second. It also carries twin 30-mm guns controlled by the same radar. Iran has purchased this or similar systems to protect its nuclear facilities. The main purpose of such antiaircraft missiles is to keep an attack hurried enough so that any conventional weapons strike is unlikely to completely destroy the protected target. This forces a course of multiple strikes, probable losses, and the ability to react in between
Iran warns it could strike Israel as nuclear tensions mountAFP.com | Agence France-Presse, a global news agency. Alternately it pushes planners to think in terms of dropping hydrogen bombs. Potentially an inconvenient irony. I admire the FP correspondent who made an attempt to use Google Earth to ferret out an answer as to what lay at the end of the North Korean cargo's route
Tuesday Map: How not to find Syrian nukes with Google Earth | FP Passport. I tried the same thing myself, but did not immediately get much further. I would guess; though, that blocks of higher resolution photography do not always indicate recent interest in a locale, so much as imagery available - that Google was not inclined to update by lower quality though more recent imagery later. By conducting a mission where the Syrians would use this system, if that is what happened. They were mapping its abilities and weaknesses and demonstrating the feasibility of a strike against similar systems in the region
Israel sends Middle East a message with Syrian airstrike | csmonitor.com.
Update: I see Bibi (an Israeli politician) has jumped in to declare he gave his personal ok for this mission. Which seems to break the studied code of silence that has surrounded this. Also the title for this post is a play on words that refers to the French magazine that once released the Joy Division song "Dead Souls" as a flexi-disc.
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