North Korea Nuclear Watch: Syrian Plutonium Reactor Close to Completion

These satellite images, taken August 5, 2007 (Top) and October 24, 2007 (Bottom), show a suspected nuclear facility in Syria.

North Korea made a deal with the United States to disable their nuclear weapon facilities so they “OUTSOURCED” them.

The Bush administration will tell Congress tomorrow that a nuclear facility in Syria built with North Korean help was nearly complete when Israel bombed it in September, and that Pyongyang has not provided any further nuclear assistance to the hard-line Arab nation, at least at that site, U.S. officials said.

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and other intelligence officials are expected to brief several congressional committees in closed-door sessions, breaking the administration’s silence on the issue.

The Syrian facility has become a key issue in six-nation negotiations to end the North’s nuclear programs.

“The belief is that the reactor was nearing completion,” said one official familiar with the content of the briefings. “It would have been able to produce plutonium.”

Another official said that the facility in Syria was similar to North Korea’s main nuclear complex at Yongbyon, which has been almost disabled by U.S. experts.

Both programs were based on technology to produce plutonium, a man-made element that is the most common ingredient used to make the fissile core of atomic bombs.

Thank God, Israel bombed the facility. How did Israel and the United States know?

They had the North Koreans on tape.

A video taken inside a secret Syrian facility last summer convinced the Israeli government and the Bush administration that North Korea was helping to construct a reactor similar to one that produces plutonium for North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, according to senior U.S. officials who said it would be shared with lawmakers today.

The officials said the video of the remote site, code-named Al Kibar by the Syrians, shows North Koreans inside. It played a pivotal role in Israel’s decision to bomb the facility late at night last Sept. 6, a move that was publicly denounced by Damascus but not by Washington.

Sources familiar with the video say it also shows that the Syrian reactor core’s design is the same as that of the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, including a virtually identical configuration and number of holes for fuel rods. It shows “remarkable resemblances inside and out to Yongbyon,” a U.S. intelligence official said. A nuclear weapons specialist called the video “very, very damning.”

But, one has to wonder about negotiating with the North Koreans, now don’t we?

Remember former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright from the Bill Clinton Administration? See what appeasement buys one?

North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-Il and Secretary of State Albright

Trust but verify.

Now, what about the Iranians? Sanctions REALLY persuaded the North Koreans, right?

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