* Evidence-based Bombing*
By publi****ng intelligence on a possible Syrian nuclear facility, the US
has endorsed after the fact Israel's illegal use of force in attacking it
* By Scott Ritter*
* 26/04/08 "**The Guardian*
<http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/scott_ritter/2008/04/evidencebased_bombing.html>*"
-- -I*t looks as if Israel may, in fact, have had reason to believe that
Syria was constructing, with the aid and assistance of North Korea, a
facility capable of housing a nuclear reactor. The United States Central
Intelligence Agency recently released a series of images
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2008/apr/25/nuclear.syria?picture=333750119>,
believed to have been made from a videotape
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2008/apr/25/syria>
obtained from
Israeli intelligence, which provide convincing, if not incontrovertible,
evidence that the "unused military building
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/25/israelandthepalestinians.usa>"
under construction in eastern Syria was, in fact, intended to be used as
a nuclear reactor. Syria continues to deny such allegations as false.
On the surface, the revelations
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/25/usa.nuclear>
seem to
bolster <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/24/usa.nuclear>
justification not only for the Israeli air strike of September 6 2007,
which destroyed the facility weeks or months before it is *****sed to
have been ready for operations, but also the hard-line stance taken by
the administration of President George W Bush toward both Syria and
North Korea regarding their alleged covert nuclear cooperation. In the
aftermath of the Israeli air strike, Syria razed the destroyed facility
and built a new one in its stead, ensuring that no follow-up
investigation would be able to ascertain precisely what had transpired
there.
Largely overlooked
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/25/syria.usa>
in the wake of
the US revelations is the fact that, even if the US intelligence is
accurate (and there is no reason to doubt, at this stage, that it is
not), Syria had committed no crime, and Israel had no legal
justification to carry out its attack. Syria is a signatory to the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and under the provisions of the
comprehensive safeguards agreement, is required to provide information
on the construction of any facility involved in nuclear activity "as
early as possible before nuclear material is introduced to a new
facility". There is no evidence that Syria had made any effort to
introduce nuclear material to the facility under construction.
While the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global watchdog
responsible for the implementation of nuclear safeguards inspections,
has pushed for the universal adherence to a more stringent safeguards
standard known as the "additional protocol of inspections", such a
measure is purely voluntary, and Syria has refused to sign up to any
such expansion of IAEA inspection activity until such time as Israel
signs the NPT and subjects its nuclear activities to full safeguards
inspections. While vexing, the Syrian position is totally in keeping
with its treaty obligations, and so it is Syria, not Israel, that was in
full conformity with international law at the time of Israel's September
6 2007 attack.
The United States and Israel contend that the Syrian-North Korean
construction project was part of a covert nuclear weapons programme.
However, even the United States admits that the facility under
construction in Syria lacked any reprocessing capacity, meaning its
utility for producing plutonium for a nuclear bomb was nil. Rather than
serving as the tip of the iceberg for a nuclear weapons programme, it
seems more likely that the Syrian facility was intended for the peaceful
use of nuclear energy.
Following the same path as Iran, Syria most probably was positioning
itself to present the world with a fait acompli, noting that the current
US-Israeli posture concerning the regime in Damascus would not enable
Syria to pursue and complete any nuclear programme declared well in
advance. By building the reactor in secret, Syria would be positioned to
declare the completed facility to the IAEA prior to the introduction of
any nuclear material, and then hope to hide behind the ****eld of the
IAEA in order to prevent any Israeli retaliation.
But this is all speculation. By bombing the Syrian facility, Israel not
only retarded any Syrian nuclear ambition, peaceful or otherwise, but
also precluded a full, definitive investigation into the matter by the
international community. Perhaps fearful that Syrian adherence to the
NPT would underscore its own duplicity in that regard, the Israeli
decision to bomb Syria not only allowed the Syrian effort to be defined
as weapons-related (an unproven and unlikely allegation), but by
extension reinforced the Israeli (and American) contention that the
nuclear activity in Iran was weapons-related as well.
The international debate that has taken place about the Syrian facility
shows how successful the Israeli gambit, in fact, was, since there is
virtually no discussion about the fact that Israel violated
international law in attacking, without provocation, a sovereign state
whose status as a member of the United Nations ostensibly affords it
protection from such assault. The American embrace of the Israeli
action, and the decision to produce intelligence information about the
nature of the bombed facility at this late stage in the game, only
reinforces the reality that the United States has turned its back on
international law in the form of arms control and non-proliferation
agreements.
The Bush administration seeks to use the alleged Syrian nuclear facility
as a lynchpin in making its arguments against not only the Iranian
nuclear programme, but also to scuttle the current discussions with
North Korea over its nuclear weapons activities. Having embraced
pre-emptive war as a vehicle to pursue its unilateral policy of regime
change in Iraq (and having sold that conflict based upon hyped-up
weapons of mass destruction charges), it should come as no surprise that
the Bush administration would seek to sup****t, and repeat, past patterns
of behaviour when pursuing similar policies with Syria, Iran and North
Korea.
Truth, and the adherence to international law, have never been an
impediment to implementation of American policy objectives under the
Bush administration.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/scott_ritter/2008/04/evidencebased_bombing.html
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