Posted on 04/06/2008 2:27:23 AM PDT by Jet Jaguar
Syria strike details to be released Apr 6 04:31 AM US/Eastern
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Israel and the US are coordinating the release of details of a mysterious Israeli air force strike in Syria, according to reports.
The Haaretz newspaper says US officials might disclose details of the Sept 6 strike later this month during congressional hearings.
The Yediot Ahronot newspaper reported that the matter would come up April 17 before the congressional Committee on Foreign Relations.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev would not comment on the Haaretz report.
But Israeli security officials told The Associated Press that they object to any release of details to the committee, which is to hear testimony on North Korea's nuclear programme, including any nuclear activity in Syria.
Israel has maintained almost total silence since the attack, which Syria said hit an unused military installation.
But some foreign reports have claimed that Israel targeted a nuclear installation Syria was building with North Korean assistance.
Damascus denies having an undeclared atomic programme, and North Korea says it was not involved in any such project. Syria did not retaliate for the attack.
The New York Times has reported that the Bush administration knew about the strike before it happened.
According to Haaretz, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the Bush administration think it is now possible to disclose details because in their assessment Syria is unlikely to retaliate at this point.
ping
ping
Thanks for the ping Jet Jaguar.
Or is Bush threatening to abandon engagement with N. Korea and Iran?
I keep thinking in the last months of this administration there has got to be a lot of information about the WOT that will come out...not only for legacy building but to insure that the military gains made will not be thrown away by future administrations
Also if Bush is a poker player when does he put his cards on the table ?...I do think there will be some stuff that we will never know about but surely there is a point at which public perception needs to be played to
North Korean plutonium... Iranian missiles/warheads... Syrian assembly/distribution facility
The overthrow of the Taliban and Baath regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq are already part of his legacy that no one can take.
How can an ally trust the US if it is going to broadcast secret dealings every time the political winds change direction?
Is this the way to develop and nurture alliances? Other nations will be observing how loyal allies such as Israel get treated, and how well their secrets are respected.
These days, I begin to wonder if Bush we saw between 9/11 and 2006 midterm election was an aberration. I am pretty sure that if there was no 9/11, we have had "Open Border" by now, because that was what he was working on around that time.
The legacy he planned for himself at the beginning of his presidency was to embrace Hispanics and bring them to GOP. For that, he would have implemented "Open Border."
ping
It's looking more and more like Iran is going to get whacked this year.
smart
Why disclose anything? All interested bad guys knew what happened and why.
There are still many details of the attack that will not become public, for instance, how the Israelis were able to overcome the brand new, multi-billion dollar Russian made air defense system. I suspect it wasn’t entirely through jamming since jamming tells the other side you’re about to do something.
This is certainly worth keeping an ear to the ground this week.
If this hearing materializes, I would not be surprised if the majority of the testimony were done in closed session so that sensitive intelligence materials can be shared. The bar is set very high for these kinds of issues, and whomever does this brief had better come loaded for bear.
At the same time there will have to be something released to the American people because they are the ones who are demanding that the bar be set high, and I for one want to see exactly what it was they hit, how they hit it, and what we are going to do from here on out if the NoKos really were involved. I also want to know what other sanctions the Syrians would be eligible for if in fact they are as guilty as everyone expects they are.
If anyone is running a *ping* list on this topic, please add me...
Developing...
Exactly. You're the first I've seen mention this, which is of course key to the secrecy around the issue -- if you think about the implications that is :)
I suspect that the Israelis were able to hack into the system, or instal a virus, that made the radar act normal, no unusual aircraft returns, just routine traffic. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the Russian air defense Chiefs were de-briefed on the attack. Of course, that’s all speculation.
The Russian air-defense system is simply news-paper talk. In reality there was no newly delivered all singing and dancing Russian air-defense system delivered to Syria. The Israelis skirted through the Turkish border and delivered an attack an an installation that would have had no air-defense system deployed.
If you take a look at the images of what was struck there is no tell-tale signs of a protection system deployed. Most military installations have layered fence lines, guard posts and detailed track leading to gun pits etc. This had nothing. It appears that the Syrians didn’t want to draw the tell-tale signs to this location. If you start deploying air-defense radars, radar controlled guns and missile systems around an installation it is going to alert ELINT systems watching.
Even the guys tracking Syrian air defense sites and radars on Google Earth note the extreme lack of such air defense deployments around the Turkish border. The Israeli’s simpy exploited the fact that the Syrians didn’t give much air-defense coverage to the north of their country.
Wonder how many NKs were on hand for the event ?
Thanks!
Ever see one any bank robbery movies, where the guards are watching CCTV monitors, and the robbers have fed pre-made video in to those monitors?
It’s kinda like that.
Instead of jamming, it’s more like ‘substitution’.
The Syrians had been lulled into a false sense of security with their new Russian ADS, and had truly “fallen asleep” at the wheel.
No problems. If you look at the following links you’ll see the well known large SAM systems employed by Syria. The Israelis simply exploited the geographics to get to their unprotected target. The fuel-tanks from the Israeli F-15 were found in Turkey. The region on the left which juts down on the left on the Meditteranean Coast.
For years now the Israelis have been using the Turkish weapons ranges. Imagine large training strike packages of F-15/16s and their Boeing 707 tankers going north to these bombing ranges? The Syrians would routinely monitor them on their large air traffic control and early warning radars. The use of the bombing ranges in Turkey has been going on for years and it would have lulled Syria into a fall sense of security. The Israelis know the weak points of the Syrian air-defense networks and exploited it fully using Turkish airspace as a cover. All they had to do was take their strike package up near the coast of Turkey and zip across the region where the fuel tanks were found. They could then skirt around the well established SAM sites, hug the Turkish border and then have all that unprotected area to carry out their attack. Before the Syrians know what hit them the Israelis would have re-skirted the Turkish border and used the pan-handle again to get out back into the Med. Simply put the Israelis would take the path of least resistance. It would catch the Syrians completely unaware and there was nothing that they could do about it.
The Syrians have neither the money or resources to protect their entire country with air defense systems. They took a gamble on not protecting this site deep inside Syria, in the old familar ways, and lost. The media simply latched onto articles in Debka etc about some magical Russian deployed air defense system. There was never any evidence of such systems being sold to Syria apart from the likes of Debka. Debka even informed us that the whole of Tehran was proteced by the Pansyr system. It really is something to be taken with a good pich of salt. The Pantsyr system is a missile/gun system. A tiny system with only a few kms range. It can’t defend a whole nation! Simply put the Syrians took the gamble and it backfired badly.
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/364913/
http://geimint.blogspot.com/search/label/SAM%20Network%20Overview
The left hurt America and themselves just to hurt Bush and try to gain power. They really are traitors.
I agree
According to Janes or Aviation Week, can’t remember which, the Israelis, using equipment developed in collaboration with the US, exploited vulnerabilities in both the Syrian AD sensors, and the CC network, and turned the system off, nationwide.
shutdown -h 0
For at least three months afterward, persistent multi-sourced (broad spectrum) reports from Israel, Syria and Lebanon noted problems with cell phone, radio and satellite TV reception.
At the time the raid was first disclosed publicly, there were a few (credible IMO) reports that the US had “intel platforms” airborne along the Iraqi-Syrian border, the most commonly cited number of these platforms was six.
WARNING: YOU ARE SUPERUSER
Russian SEAD system pwn3d.
KOOOL!...;0)
I will ping you to anything I find.
Hopefully.
I suspect this has a lot to do with the convoys of trucks that left Iraq going to Syria pre-war.
It wasn’t baby-milk.
Boy talk about wonderful ....we can only hope
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