Axis of Evil The Junior Partner

(11 pm Time for new content. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Never ones to rest on their laurels of incompetence and failure the NEO-Con’s have set their sights on Syria deciding that it is now a Junior Member of the Axis of Evil while this is consistent with their vision of remaking the Middle East its how they are making the case for Syria’s inclusion that is interesting. As is their real goal which involves derailing the Six Party Talks on North Korea’s nuclear program.

As has been widely reported in the mainstream press on September 6 Israeli war planes made an incursion into Syrian airspace for reasons as yet unknown. But this hasn’t stopped the press or anyone else for that matter from speculating on exactly what happened even though both the Israeli and Syrian governments have never issued an Official Statement on the incident.

Was Israel’s attack aimed at testing Syria’s radar defenses? Did the air strike seek to disrupt arms shipments to Lebanon’s Hezbollah? Was it a dress rehearsal for a possible future strike on Iranian nuclear facilities?

Feeding the speculation, a familiar clutch of hawks in the administration of US President George W Bush appear to be suggesting that Israel’s apparent air strike targeted a joint North Korea-Syria nuclear venture.

“We know that both Iran and Syria have long cooperated with North Korea on ballistic-missile programs, and the prospect of cooperation on nuclear matters is not far-fetched.

  That’s a quote from an OP/ED written by John Bolton which appeared in the Wall Street Journal about a week before the incident took place. Considering just how difficult it is to develop a ballistic missile program considering the technology involved  the North Koreans have had some success in their quest for a delivery system. The actual test launches have met with limited success.

Here is North Korea’s statement over the speculation that they are providing Syria with assistance in developing a nuclear program.

It is groundlessly misleading,” said the North’s official Central News Agency, quoting an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesperson.
“We already declared in October 2006 that we as a responsible nuclear state would prohibit nuclear proliferation altogether,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying, recalling the time Pyongyang tested its first nuclear device last year.

?? “Our words are never empty, and we do what we promise to do, and never do things we say we will not do,” the spokesperson said, pointing at The New York Times and other unidentified media outlets as being behind the allegations that Pyongyang is cooperating with Syria in nuclear proliferation.

  From Yonhap a Korean News Service I know this is a statement made by the North Korean government. That said it has always been a stated goal of theirs to have full diplomatic and economic relations with the United States. So why would they risk the complete collapse of the Six Party Talks by involving themselves in such a venture. Does the North have a relationship with Syria yes but that has always been for the transference of ballistic missile technologies.

Further statements like these just fuel ones paranoia about the NEO-Con’s and George Bush’s real goals concerning the Middle East.

Comments made by a US State Department official last Friday fanned the flames and bolstered the neo-conservative argument. Andrew Semmel, acting deputy assistant secretary of state for nuclear non-proliferation policy, told the Associated Press that the US believes Syria has a number of “secret suppliers” to obtain nuclear equipment as part of a covert program.

Fortunately there are those who willing to call it what it is.

Joseph Cirincione, director for nuclear policy at the Washington-based Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank, has gone so far as to describe the story as “nonsense”.
Selective leaks are being used to play up the Syria-North Korea connection, he writes on the online site of the journal Foreign Policy.

“This appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted ‘intelligence’ to key reporters in order to promote a pre-existing political agenda. If this sounds like the run-up to the war with Iraq, then it should,” he writes.