An Israeli Strike on Syria Kindles Debate in the U.S

Shalom:

DT 7:2 The Lord commands the Israelites to "utterly destroy" and shown

"no mercy" to those whom he gives them for defeat.

DT 20:16 "In the cities of the nations the Lord is giving you as an

inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes."

JS 11:8-15 "And the lord gave them into the hand of Israel, ...utterly

destroying them; there was none left that breathed ...."

EZ 9:4-6 The Lord commands: "... slay old men outright, young men and

maidens, little children and women ...."

IS 13:15 "Everyone who is captured will be thrust through; all who are

caught will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed to pieces

before their eyes; their ... wives will be ravished."

Syria Next:

1KI 20:29-30 The Israelites smite 100,000 Syrian soldiers in one day.

A wall falls on 27,000 remaining Syrians

Azoy gait es! - That's how it goes!

An Israeli Strike on Syria Kindles Debate in the U.S.

By MARK MAZZETTI and HELENE COOPER

Published: October 10, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - A sharp debate is under way in the Bush

administration about the significance of the Israeli intelligence that

led to last month's Israeli strike inside Syria, according to current

and former American government officials.

At issue is whether intelligence that Israel presented months ago to

the White House - to support claims that Syria had begun early work on

what could become a nuclear weapons program with help from North Korea

- was conclusive enough to justify military action by Israel and a

possible rethinking of American policy toward the two nations.

The debate has fractured along now-familiar fault lines, with Vice

President Dick Cheney and conservative hawks in the administration

portraying the Israeli intelligence as credible and arguing that it

should cause the United States to reconsider its diplomatic overtures

to Syria and North Korea. By contrast, Secretary of State Condoleezza

Rice and her allies within the administration have said they did not

believe the intelligence presented so far merits any change in the

American diplomatic approach.

"Some people think that it means that the sky is falling," a senior

administration official said. "Others say that they're not convinced

that the real intelligence poses a threat."

Several current and former officials, as well as outside experts,

spoke on the condition of anonymity because the intelligence

surrounding the Israeli strike remains highly classified.

Besides Ms. Rice, officials said that Defense Secretary Robert M.

Gates was cautious about fully endorsing Israeli warnings that Syria

was on a path that could lead to a nuclear weapon. Others in the Bush

administration remain unconvinced that a nascent Syrian nuclear

program could pose an immediate threat.

It has long been known that North Korean scientists have aided

Damascus in developing sophisticated ballistic missile technology, and

there appears to be little debate that North Koreans frequently

visited a site in the Syrian desert that Israeli jets attacked Sept.

6. Where officials disagree is whether the accumulated evidence points

to a Syrian nuclear program that poses a significant threat to the

Middle East.

Mr. Cheney and his allies have expressed unease at the decision last

week by President Bush and Ms. Rice to proceed with an agreement to

supply North Korea with economic aid in return for the North's

disabling its nuclear reactor. Those officials argued that the Israeli

intelligence demonstrates that North Korea cannot be trusted. They

also argue that the United States should be prepared to scuttle the

agreement unless North Korea admits to its dealing with the Syrians.

During a breakfast meeting on Oct. 2 at the White House, Ms. Rice and

her chief North Korea negotiator, Christopher R. Hill, made the case

to President Bush that the United States faced a choice: to continue

with the nuclear pact with North Korea as a way to bring the secretive

country back into the diplomatic fold and give it the incentive to

stop proliferating nuclear material; or to return to the

administration's previous strategy of isolation, which detractors say

left North Korea to its own devices and led it to test a nuclear

device last October.

Mr. Cheney and Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, also

attended the meeting, administration officials said.

The Israeli strike occurred at a particularly delicate time for

American diplomatic efforts. In addition to the North Korean nuclear

negotiations, the White House is also trying to engineer a regional

Middle East peace conference that would work toward a comprehensive

peace accord between Arabs and Israelis.

The current and former American officials said that Israel presented

the United States with intelligence over the summer about what it

described as nuclear activity in Syria. Officials have said that

Israel told the White House shortly in advance of the September raid

that it was prepared to carry it out, but it is not clear whether the

White House took a position then about whether the attack was

justified.

One former top Bush administration official said that Israeli

officials were so concerned about the threat posed by a potential

Syrian nuclear program that they told the White House they could not

wait past the end of the summer to strike the facility.

Last week, Turkish officials traveled to Damascus to present the

Syrian government with the Israeli dossier on what was believed to be

a Syrian nuclear program, according to a Middle East security analyst

in Washington. The analyst said that Syrian officials vigorously

denied the intelligence and said that what the Israelis hit was a

storage depot for strategic missiles.

That denial followed a similar denial from North Korea. Mr. Hill, the

State Department's assistant secretary for East Asia and Pacific

affairs, raised the Syria issue with his North Korean counterparts in

talks in Beijing in late September. The North Koreans denied providing

any nuclear material to Syria.

Publicly, Syrian officials have said that Israeli jets hit an empty

warehouse.

Bruce Riedel, a veteran of the C.I.A. and the National Security

Council and now a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution,

said that American intelligence agencies remained cautious in drawing

hard conclusions about the significance of the suspicious activity at

the Syrian site.

Still, Mr. Riedel said that Israel would not have launched the strike

in Syria if it believed Damascus was merely developing more

sophisticated ballistic missiles or chemical weapons.

"Those red lines were crossed 20 years ago," he said. "You don't risk

general war in the Middle East over an extra 100 kilometers' range on

a missile system."

Another former intelligence official said that Syria was attempting to

develop so-called airburst capability for its ballistic missiles. Such

technology would allow Syria to detonate warheads in the air to

disperse the warhead's material more widely.

Since North Korea detonated its nuclear device, Ms. Rice has prodded

Mr. Bush toward a more diplomatic approach with North Korea, through

talks that also include Japan, Russia, South Korea and China. Those

talks led to the initial agreement last February for North Korea to

shut down its nuclear reactor in exchange for fuel and food aid.

That agreement angered conservatives who believed that the Bush

administration had made diplomacy toward North Korea too high a

priority, at the expense of efforts to combat the spread of illicit

weapons in the Middle East.

"Opposing the Israeli strike to protect the six-party talks would be a

breathtaking repudiation of the administration's own national security

strategy," said John R. Bolton, former United States ambassador to the

United Nations.

But other current and former officials argue that the diplomatic

approach is America's best option for dealing with the question of

North Korean proliferation.

"You can't just make these decisions using the top of your spinal

cord, you have to use the whole brain," said Philip D. Zelikow, the

former counselor at the State Department. "What other policy are we

going to pursue that we think would be better?"