Who hit that site in Syria? Isreal or the US?

[Fash]

It was widely said that Isreal did it... but they never admitted to it. Now Al-Jazeera claims it was the US.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? ... 2FShowFull

The September 6 raid over Syria was carried out by the US Air Force, the Al-Jazeera Web site reported Friday. The Web site quoted Israeli and Arab sources as saying that two strategic US jets armed with tactical nuclear weapons carried out an attack on a nuclear site under construction.

The sources were quoted as saying that Israeli F-15 and F-16 jets provided cover for the US planes.

The sources added that each US plane carried one tactical nuclear weapon and that the site was hit by one bomb and was totally destroyed.

At the beginning of October, Israel's military censor began to allow the local media to report on the raid without attributing their report to foreign sources. Nevertheless, details of the strike have remained clouded in mystery.

On October 28, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the cabinet that he had apologized to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan if Israel violated Turkish airspace during a strike on an alleged nuclear facility in Syria last month.

In a carefully worded statement that was given to reporters after the cabinet meeting, Olmert said: "In my conversation with the Turkish prime minister, I told him that if Israeli planes indeed penetrated Turkish airspace, then there was no intention thereby, either in advance or in any case, to - in any way - violate or undermine Turkish sovereignty, which we respect."

The New York Times reported on October 13 that Israeli planes struck at what US and Israeli intelligence believed was a partly constructed nuclear reactor in Syria on September 6, citing American and foreign officials who had seen the relevant intelligence reports.

According to the report, Israel carried out the report to send a message that it would not tolerate even a nuclear program in its initial stages of construction in any neighboring state.

On October 17, Syria denied that one of its representatives to the United Nations told a panel that an Israeli air strike hit a Syrian nuclear facility and added that "such facilities do not exist in Syria."

A UN document released by the press office had provided an account of a meeting of the First Committee, Disarmament and International Security, in New York, and paraphrased an unnamed Syrian representative as saying that a nuclear facility was hit by the raid.

However, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, SANA said media reports, apparently based on a UN press release, misquoted the Syrian diplomat.

tactical nukes? have those been used before?.. very skeptical of this report considering the source.

[cadalano]

theres no freaking way that nuclear weapons would be used in a situation where the US would need to conceal their involvement. thats as smoking gun as it gets.

[Aardor]

I have no idea if we were involved or not, but I can't take anything Al-Jazeera says seriously. Al-Jazeera has recently claimed we dropped a neutron bomb on the Baghdad International Airport in 2003. The support for this was burns on soldiers, while buildings were all left intact. That's not really the way neutron bombs work at all, disregarding that US troops were at the airport not too long after we bombed it/took it over, and no radiation was found. Pretty sure that most of the world would have been pissed off at the US when they detected the 1 KT explosion (2 orders of magnitude stronger than any other non-nuclear weapon in existence, so 100x stronger) going off.

As far as tactical nukes being used before, no, a nuclear weapon has not been used in battle since World War II. It is easy to detect an atmospheric (not underground) nuclear explosion going off, so there would be no way to hide this from the public. I really doubt the US would even bother bringing nukes anywhere near Iraq, just because they can launch them easily enough from a carrier or the homeland, and because Iraq is not a threat in regards to making a nuclear offensive against the US. Plus, why risk a broken arrow, when there is no possible reason to actually use the nuke?

I just don't see this being true: There is no reason why the US would have just had the Israel air force escort them, and cover it up, when the Israels are fully capable of making the strike themselves.

[Ashur]

Propganda.

[Al]

Propoganda indeed. There is no need for a tactical nuke when a couple 2000lb guided bombs would have the same effect. A tactical nuke is most useful in situations where the extra bang is needed to take out a heavily fortified target. Why spend $100,000,000 when you can spend $100,000 and get better results?

[Aardor]

Propoganda indeed. There is no need for a tactical nuke when a couple 2000lb guided bombs would have the same effect. A tactical nuke is most useful in situations where the extra bang is needed to take out a heavily fortified target. Why spend $100,000,000 when you can spend $100,000 and get better results?

Are you implying that it takes $100,000,000 to make a nuke?

[Boogahz]

Propoganda indeed. There is no need for a tactical nuke when a couple 2000lb guided bombs would have the same effect. A tactical nuke is most useful in situations where the extra bang is needed to take out a heavily fortified target. Why spend $100,000,000 when you can spend $100,000 and get better results?

Are you implying that it takes $100,000,000 to make a nuke?

Are you implying that the Pentagon would spend less than that on anything?

[Nick]

Al Jazeera isn't a bad news station by most standards (since the usual standard is "sub par"). Obviously the fact that it doesn't have all white middle class men reading its news means it is viewed with a degree of suspicion.

It would hardly be surprising if this were true, who knows. Probably nonsense though

[Zaelath]

Given there's no such place as Isreal, it must have been the US.

[Arborealus]

Ermmm detonating even a tactical nuke would have a distinct signature that is readily detectable. You just don't cover up nuclear detonations. Putin would have been all over any use of nuclear weapons for political leverage. I don't see any upside from US forces actually participating.

[Boogahz]

but tactical nukes are used in movies all the time!

[Al]

Propoganda indeed. There is no need for a tactical nuke when a couple 2000lb guided bombs would have the same effect. A tactical nuke is most useful in situations where the extra bang is needed to take out a heavily fortified target. Why spend $100,000,000 when you can spend $100,000 and get better results?

Are you implying that it takes $100,000,000 to make a nuke?

I wasn't going to dig around to find the exact figures for the cost of developing a nuclear weapon. I was implying that high yield conventional explosives are an order of magnitude less expensive and easier to come across than nuclear weapons of any type.