“Also, we have the reports from that Iraqi Air Force General that their WMD program was shipped to Syria under cover of a flood relief effort.”

That story was too convenient. I suspect it was a lie. If the story were true, physical evidence would have appeared by now (maybe it will after Obama assumes office).

The Iraqi link is an interesting possibility. While Syria was part of the Desert Storm Coalition (purely for show, I think) they are also a Battahist state, like Iraq. During the Yom Kipper War Iraq sent jet fighters to help Syria – but did not receive any useful instructions from Syrian command when they got there, sailed into the battle area without setting the correct IFF codes, and lost the entire force to Syrian SAMs within minutes. I think that curbed their enthusiasm.

Also, we have the reports from that Iraqi Air Force General that their WMD program was shipped to Syria under cover of a flood relief effort.

Politics makes strange bedfellows, especially in the Middle East. Most of the Iraqi Air Force that got in the air during Desert Storm flew to hated Iran.

And while I know of no link between Iraq and North Korea, we know definitely that North Korea and Iran have had a close association, with the Koreans selling Scuds to Iran and Iran providing space booster upper stage technology to the Koreans.

“Note though, that this briefing says the reactor was destroyed before it was loaded with uranium fuel, on Monday but the chief of the IAEA confirmed that they had found traces of Uranium at the site”

The Israelis obviously had a guy on-site providing them with intelligence. The best time to destroy a nuclear reactor would be when the unactivated fuel rods were on site but not yet loaded into the reactor. The unloaded fuel rods would not have been activated thus containing almost no fission products. Waiting to destroy the reactor until after its fuel rods were loaded would have been ill advised. Doing so could easily have resulted in a Chernobyl situation with a horrific fall-out plume spreading out over hundreds of kilometers (particularly if the reactor used a graphite moderator as seems to have been the case). However destroying the reactor with the fuel nearby but unloaded effectively killed two birds with one stone.

This action by Israel was brilliantly done and represents another feather in their cap (right next to the one they earned for destroying Saddam’s Osirak Reactor). Too bad they can’t seem to do anything about the Iranians.

You http://www.globalsecurity.org link was very interesting. Thank you for providing it. I quote the following from the globalsecurity interview:

“The Syrians constructed this reactor for the production of plutonium with the assistance of the North Koreans. Our evidence goes back an extended period of time. We have had insights to what was going on since very late ’90s, early 2000, 2001 that something was happening.”

The timing is very interesting. The American invasion of Iraq occurred on 20 March 2003. This Syrian reactor was in mid-construction when the Iraq War started. This raises the $64,000 question: Was this merely a Syrian/North-Korean nuclear program or was it a Syrian/Iraqi/North-Korean nuclear program? If Saddam was involved in this project from the very beginning then what we have here was a secret justification for the Iraq War. However, I should emphasize that this is not clear cut because the Syrians had no love for Saddam (Syria was part of the Desert Storm coalition against Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait).

As for an analysis of the North Korean involvement in the Syrian project, this briefing from April 2008 is pretty definitive: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/syria/2008/syria-080424-dni01.htm

Note though, that this briefing says the reactor was destroyed before it was loaded with uranium fuel, on Monday but the chief of the IAEA confirmed that they had found traces of Uranium at the site, although he could not say what the source of the traces was.

Just my speculation and opinion.

“If the Israeli’s did in fact destroy something, what was that something?”

Here’s my worthless opinion: The North Koreans realized that the jig-was-up with their nuclear weapons research and development program but they wanted to continue in that activity. Meanwhile, the Syrians wanted to be players in the nuclear weapons game but didn’t have the petro-dollars and technical experience. So the Syrians and the North Koreans got in bed together. The Syrians allowed the North Koreans to move their nuclear weapons research and development program to Syrian territory in exchange for the North Koreans providing the Syrians access to their technology (the Syrians could then leverage this new information against what they already had from the Iranians and Saddam). The North Koreans could then publicly close out all nuclear weapons R&D activity on their own territory and falsely claim that they were good guys and nuclear-free. In essence this was an attempt at deception by North Korea through Syria’s connivance.