MOPping up

 
Jammie Wearing Fool braves dim waters: namely, carefully perusing the drivel excreted by the New York Times.

Just harken back to 2003 for a minute. Suppose George W. Bush called a press conference and told the world he had evidence Syria was building a covert nuclear facility and the United States was prepared to take action... What do you suppose the reaction would have been from the media?

Well, now we know for sure they indeed were building such a facility and, thankfully, the Israelis took it out... Yet here we now have the New York Times pointing the finger at the administration, taking them to task for not doing something... Just imagine the reaction if we leveled the place four years ago.

...a satellite photo showing that the main building was well under way in September 2003 — four years before Israeli jets bombed it...

The long genesis is likely to raise questions about whether the Bush administration overlooked a nascent atomic threat in Syria...

You just cannot win with these people... Of course, back in 2003, John Bolton raised the specter of Syria developing nukes, but was dismissed by some in the intelligence community.

In related news of the Middle East Nuclear Whackjob variety, JR at The Astute Bloggers notes an ominous article in The Australian:

...Nestled deep in George W.Bush's latest $190 billion request to Congress for emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a tantalising little item that has received scant attention.

The US Department of Defence has asked for an additional $US 88 million to modify B2 stealth bombers so they can carry a 13,600kg bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator (or MOP, in the disarming acronymic vernacular of the military). The MOP is an advanced form of a "bunker-buster", an air-delivered weapon with an explosive capacity to destroy targets deep underground. Explaining the request, the administration says it is in response to an "urgent operational need from theatre commanders".

What kind of emergency could that be? Pat yourself on the back if you correctly identified the subterranean nuclear enrichment facilities operated by the Iranian Government in its pursuit of an epoch-altering bomb. The debate in Washington about what to do with the increasingly recalcitrant and self-confident Iranian regime has taken a significant turn in the past few weeks. And the decision to upgrade the bombing capacity of the US military is perhaps the most powerful indication yet that the debate is reaching a climax...

Let's hope the first one has Madman Ahmadinejad's name on it.

Hat tip: Larwyn