Disappearing Act

New commercial satellite photos show that a Syrian site believed to have been attacked by Israel last month no longer bears any obvious traces of what some analysts said appeared to have been a partly built nuclear reactor.

Two photos, taken Wednesday, show the site near the Euphrates River to have been wiped clean since August, when imagery showed a tall square building there measuring about 150 feet on a side.


The Syrians reported an attack by Israel in early September; the Israelis have not confirmed that. Senior Syrian officials continue to deny that a nuclear reactor was under construction, insisting that Israel hit a largely empty military warehouse.

But the images, federal and private analysts say, suggest that the Syrian authorities rushed to dismantle the facility after the strike, calling it a tacit admission of guilt.

"It's a magic act — here today, gone tomorrow," a senior intelligence official said. "It doesn't lower suspicions; it raises them. This was not a long-term decommissioning of a building, which can take a year. It was speedy. It's incredible that they could have gone to that effort to make something go away."

A "senior intelligence official". That says a lot all by itself.

A much more reasonable reason why it was cleaned up so quickly is that it was actually only an mostly empty military warehouse as claimed, four walls and a roof, not much to clean up at all.

Another point... I don't believe anyone could build a nuclear reactor in a building only 150 feet square. Where's the containment building? Where's the cooling towers? Where's the absolutely needed pond - or lake - of cooling water?

Maybe it was an unfinished reactor. But the Israelis and our government have lied to us so many times it is now impossible to ferret out the truth in anything they say or claim... and the above "before" picture ceertainly doesn't look like any nuclear facility I've ever seen.