Just What DID Happen In Syria Last Week?

Especially, it seems, when it comes to nuclear matters, oftentimes the news media is mostly in the dark. For instance, it has never been ascertained exactly what happened off South Africa years ago, before the Apartheid regime in that country collapsed. Did the South Africans stage a nuclear test? Did the Israelis? Were the Israelis helping the South Africans? To this day, the truth remains unknown. It is not even certain there was a nuclear test at all. Maybe, intelligence agencies know. But they're not saying.

This comes to mind this week as the puzzle grows over just what happened over Syria last week. It is established that the Israelis initiated some kind of aerial incursion over the northeastern part of the country. But did they bomb anything? And, if so, was it an Iranian long range missile facility? Or was it a nuclear facility or nuclear equipment the North Koreans were providing to the Syrians? Or could renegrade Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan have somehow been involved in whatever was being provided to the Syrians?

There has been quite a bit of speculation, although precious little of it has been in either the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times. Both the Washington Post and the Associated Press have printed more about it.

The Post said Thursday that North Koreans were present in Syria and may have provided the regime of Bashar Assad with something nuclear, and that this had become known to the Israelis who have been conducting aerial surveillance over Syria.

Then, this morning, in a story out of Rome, where a nuclear nonproliferation conference is being held, the Associated Press quoted Andrew Semmel, the acting deputy assistant U.S. Secretary of State for nuclear nonproliferation, as saying that the North Koreans were present in Syria and may have been providing the Syrians some nuclear equipment.

Semmel was the first American official named as a source in this murky story. Neither the Israelis nor the Syrians have said very much. The North Koreans, however, did issue a complaint about the Israeli incursion last week, and Syria notified the United Nations of the incursion, but did not ask for any action by that body. Turkey did publicly ask the Israelis for an explanation, reporting that Israeli aircraft had dropped some munitions over Turkey, without causing any damage, and perhaps as a means of better enabling the Israeli aircraft to evade Syrian missiles fired at them. There also were published reports that the Turkish Army, without telling the Islamist-minded Turkish prime minister, had provided security information about nuclear activities in Syria to the Israelis.

The Israelis were reported to have used five F151 long range bombers in the flights over Syrian territory. But did these planes conduct an actual strike? There were various reports, none so far verified, that they had, either knocking out Iranian missiles in transit to Hezbollah in Lebanon, or "leaving a large hole" in the ground where the Iranian equipment had been, or striking the North Koreans, whatever they were doing.

Such an air strike undoubtedly would have caused casualties among, possibly, Syrian, Iranian or North Korean personnel. But none of these countries admitted to taking any casualties.

The Jerusalem Post, which usually does a more comprehensive job covering Middle Eastern developments of all kinds than any other newspaper, ran lengthy stories in recent days on the foreign news reports, but had nothing in the way of direct reporting on the Israeli explanations or non-explanations. The Israelis may have invoked Israeli censorship to prevent the media in Israel from saying anything directly about what the Israelis had done.

Strangely enough, among all the speculation abroad, no one to my knowledge has yet taken note of the fact that the purported location of an Israeli strike would have been very close to the Iraqi border. But if the Iranians were creating a long range missile base, or the North Koreans were creating something nuclear, so close to Iraq, this could be as much of a threat to American forces in Iraq as it could be to Israel, and we would expect the U.S. to be most concerned. In fact, it is not inconceivable by any means that the U.S. would stand idly by if it believed such a threat existed.

At a time when the U.S. has been involved in seemingly fruitful denuclearization talks with the North Koreans, and there have even been international inspections of North Korean nuclear facilities, it would obviously be a matter of the highest concern if the North Koreans were moving nuclear materials outside of North Korea to the Middle East. Yet in his remarks in Rome, the U.S. State Department official suggested this may have been done.

What Semmel said was conditional, but the fact that he was speaking on the record at all was somewhat remarkable. State Department officials do not usually make public statements about anything without clearance from the home office in Washington.

The AP story quoted Semmel as saying, "There are indications that they do have something going on there. We do know that there are a number of foreign technicians that have been in Syria. We do know that there may have been contact between Syria and some secret suppliers for nuclear equipment. Whether anything transpired remains to be seen.

"So good foreign policy, good national security policy, would suggest that we pay very close attention to that. We're watching very closely. Obviously, the Israelis were watching very closely."

In the background of the War on Terror, one of the most disturbing things is the fear, frequently expressed, that the terrorists might somehow acquire nuclear weapons and then use them against the Israelis, the Americans or other Western countries. This is a major component of all the concern about the unstable poiitical situation in Pakistan, which is a nuclear-armed state where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have been growing in influence and are in defacto revolt against Pakistani authority in regions bordering Afghanistan.

In the Israeli air incursion over Syria, the nuclear situation in this part of the world became more than just a matter of concern, and possibly passed into the realm of action. Stay tuned, this may only be beginning.

--

Larry Stewart had a wonderful 35-year career as a writer about sports television, and now he has a new assignment: horse racing for the L.A. Times. I always enjoyed Stewart's column and wish him well in the future.

On Balance, Progress In North Korean Issue

On balance, I believe the tentative deal with North Korea looking forward to a stand down in its nuclear weapons program represents a positive development for the Bush Administration and U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy in general.

Three noteworthy things happened after the North Koreans detonated a small nuclear device on Oct. 9.

First, the test itself was something of a fizzle, with the explosion being smaller than perhaps the North Koreans had planned and hoped for. This may have shown them that they weren't as far along in developing a workable atomic weapon as they had thought.

Second, the Chinese government's reaction was quite negative. China joined in the moderate sanctions that were adopted at the U.N., it joined the banking sanctions in Macao that the U.S. had encouraged, and it apparently cut some military aid to North Korea and threatened further cuts. All this showed that the Chinese, like the Bush Administration and the Japanese, were concerned about the prospect that North Korea could become a full fledged nuclear power.

Third, the U.S. abandoned its policy of not talking to the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il directly. The Administration sent its able lead negotiator, Christopher Hill, to Berlin to talk bilaterally with the lead North Korean negotiator, and out of this precedent-setting meeting came the bare bones agreement that has now been reached in the six-party talks in Beijing.

Anything can happen. Past agreements with the North Koreans have not proved lasting. But in this case, the North Koreans stand to receive quite a bit more in aid, in oil and so on, if they honor their assurance that their main nuclear plant will be shut down within 60 days and let in U.N. inspectors to verify that it has been. Further steps, such as disassembly of present nuclear weapons and/or turning them over to international bodies, have not been ruled out.

It could well be that once Kim Jong Il begins moving in a more peaceful direction, the pressures on his regime will build to undertake even more reforms. North Korea, to put it mildly, has not been an economic success. Like East Germany in 1989, once the ice is broken, pressures may well build up on the regime for even more substantive change. In this respect, South Korea, Japan and China can all be helpful to the U.S.

Once it became obvious that the Bush Administration was in no mind to undertake military action to block North Korea becoming a nuclear power, then some such deal was probably in the cards, and we now have to wait to see what happens next.

It also should be recognized that what happens with North Korea may have some impact on the relations of the U.S. and other Western countries with Iran in respect to its nuclear plans.

Just this morning, at his news conference, President Bush joined the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Pace, in distancing himself somewhat from anonymous U.S. military briefers in Baghdad over the weekend who had suggested that senior members of the Iranian government were responsible for the alleged use of Iranian weapons, such as roadside bombs and other anti-tank devices, against American forces in Iraq.

It could well be that, just as Hill's contact with the North Koreans proved useful in Berlin, some mid level bilateral diplomatic exchanges may soon get underway between the U.S and Iran, looking forward at least to stemming tensions that have been building up between the U.S. and Iran in the Iraq war and elsewhere in the Middle East.

One place to watch is Lebanon. If Iran backs off there, and Hezbollah suspends or lessens its efforts to depose the Siniora government, it could be viewed as an introductory positive step. But yesterday's bombing of a bus carrying civilians in Lebanon, the first such attack, was ominous. Also, of course, the doings of the Iraqi radical, Moktada al-Sadr, who reportedly has gone to Iran, bear watching.

--

The departure of Vernon Loeb, an investigative editor at the L.A. Times, to return to the Philadelphia Inquirer as metro editor is another sign that under Tribune ownership, and all the uncertainties about the Times future that that entails, the paper is losing key personnel and sinking. Tribune did enter into one sale this week, that of Hoy, its Spanish-language paper, in New York. But it has not proceeded expeditiously as yet to make other sales, and its stock price continues a slow decline. Unless the Times is sold soon, the departures of John Balzar, Alissa Rubin and now, Vernon Loeb, will only be followed by others.

Loeb was a leader in the Times city room in trying to fashion reforms at the paper. He was a strong and outspoken supporter of the ousted editor, Dean Baquet. Under the circumstances, we can only wish him well at the Inquirer.

China And South Korea Bail Out On North Korean Sanctions

--Written from Center Harbor, N.H.

The United Nations system is failing us again in the aftermath of North Korea's nuclear test. Already, China and South Korea are using imprecise terms in the wording of the U.N. Security Council's resolution on sanctions to indicate it will be business as usual for them with the Kim Jong Il regime. In order to escape a veto, the U.S. had to agree to allow the resolution to request, not require, actions against North Korea.

The consequence is that once again, the U.N. has fallen on its face. In recent years, this woebegotten organization has proved more a facilitator of tyranny and even genocide than a control over it. Now, in the case of North Korea, and probably Iran as well, the U.N. is proving useless in stopping nuclear proliferation.

What we saw in Rwanda, in Darfur, in East Timor and so forth we are now seeing again: the incapacity of an international organization to take any meaningful steps to keep the peace.

North Korea, in short, seems to have gotten away with it, despite all the vows of President Bush, the Japanese governent and others that they would not accept or tolerate a North Korean nuclear weapon. In fact, there are now signs of a possible second North Korean test.

Even the U.S. shows little sign thus far of following through with permitted inspections of North Korean vessels to prevent an arms trade which threatens stability far beyond the area of East Asia.

We live in a time, due in part to the Iraq war and all the difficulties it has caused for the U.S., when very large numbers are adopting a policy of escapism: They foolishly contend now that North Korea is really not our business. They say we should let South Korea or China handle the problem.

The trouble with that policy is that North Korea's number one target in the world, after South Korea perhaps, is the United States.

A North Korean atomic bomb is threat enough to us, but if that bomb is sold to terrorists, or if the knowhow ie exported to foreign countries, some day there may be a nuclear explosion somewhere in America, and we won't even know the origin. For it's certain that the most foolproof way of delivering a nuclear weapon is not by missile but by smuggling it in to another country and then detonating it.

This is why we can't turn our heads. Contrary to those who say we can afford to withdraw from world power conflicts and then the world will let us alone, there is no sign that enemies of the U.S. and the American system of democracy will let us alone, even if we let them alone.

In these circumstances, we must be our own defender. Neither the U.N., nor anybody else, can protect us adequately.

Two Experts On North Korea Have Sharply Conflicting Views

--Written from Boston

The New York Times ran two articles on American policy toward North Korea at the top of its Op Ed page in the last couple of days with sharply conflicting views. One portrayed the regime of Kim Jong Il as a suitable negotiating partner. The other said he is a fascist, with possibly suicidal inclinations.

No surprise, it is former President Jimmy Carter who thinks we can negotiate. Carter was the man who sent Ramsey Clark to negotiate with Khomeini and subsequently lost his presidency in the Iranian hostage crisis. He has been a far better ex-president than a president, however, and he negotiated a "settlement" that collapsed with North Korea more than a decade ago.

B.R. Myers is an associate professor of North Korean studies at Korea University. He is not so sanguine about Kim Jong Il as Mr. Carter.

"While Kim may not be suicidal himself, he shares Hirohito's penchant for encouraging this quality in his people," Myers writes. "Defense until Death, is an increasingly popular slogan. In 2003 a colorful poster was disseminated to the foreign press showing a fat missile in flight with a suicide-readiness slogan on it. "Yankee, take a good hard look." That isn't bad advice."

Myers compares North Korea today to the Japanese Empire that took the country into World War II.

At a time when the Bush Administration seems to be waffling on its response to North Korea's small nuclear test, and the United Nations is already proving it can't take tough measures, with China and Russia the key obstacles, we have a large stake in whether Mr. Carter or Mr. Myers is right. Unfortunately, I'd bet on Mr. Myers and believe that action to change the North Korean regime, rather than negotiations, offers the best prospect.

This is a hard judgment, but in light of Kim Jong Il's record -- mass counterfeiting of American money, terrorism in the air, executions at home, famine for his people, a determination to have nuclear weapons -- I believe that ultimately it is the safer and sounder one.

Carter's article may be compelling. He is always the creature of sweet reason. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work when it comes to tyrants.

In North Korea's Case, Only Military Action, Not Sanctions, Will Suffice

The United States is off on the same fruitless course, using the useless United Nations, in trying to curb North Korea after its presumed nuclear test. And the talk is of sanctions, not military force.

But only military force, in my view, will suffice to deal with the regime of Kim Jong Il, before he has accumulated enough nuclear weapons to be uncontrollable. We can't afford to wait until he starts selling his nukes to the terrorists, Iran, Syria, or someone else. We can't afford to wait until Japan, South Korea and a whole host of other countries start to develop their own nuclear arms.

Perhaps, it is not so outlandish to think that that military action would come from China.

Last night, it was notable that the Chinese used a very strong word to describe the nuclear test. They called it "brazen," (and followed it up today with "fragrant") and when the North Koreans did them the courtesy of notifying them, in advance that the test was imminent, the Chinese immediately sent an emergency message to the U.S., saying the event would occur at any moment. So the Bush Administration learned of it from them just before it happened.

This sequence of events betrays the fact that the Chinese are now very concerned. They could act in a quasi-military way to cut off oil to North Korea, leaving the regime there to wither on the vine. Or they could do something even more dramatic. They might not have the scruples we would have.

It is worth remembering that when Pol Pot went wild in Cambodia after the North Vietnamese had won the Vietnam war, Vietnam finally turned on him and invaded militarily to oust that fanatical regime. Similarly, Tanzania finally took action against Idi Amin's Uganda. Regimes that are truly crazy often have to be removed by military force. Just like cults have to be eradicated.

As for President Bush, he has, so far, not been helped by the nuclear test. It compounded his problems in the Mid-Term election, because it shows him unable to perform on his promises.

Mr, Bush said a nuclear-armed North Korea was "unacceptable," and he said he would not "tolerate" a nuclear North Korea, but so far today, all he has done is go to the U.N. He hasn't taken any action. He's beginning to look, as he has for some time in Iraq, like a wimp.

Now, there's a word not too many have used about him, but fortified with all the attention I got today from Al Martinez, I'm doing so. It's best, I think, to recognize that the situation we face with nuclear proliferation is despierate, since we are the prime target.

Time Magazine Slips Further Into Appeasement Mode

(Only hours after this was written, the North Korean dictatorship announced it had conducted an underground nuclear test, and the U.S. said it had detected a seismic event in North Korea. This, I believe, represents a terrible failure of will by the Bush Administration. North Korean nuclear facilities should have been attacked last week, and should be attacked now, without delay. Certainly, going to the United Nations will be a waste of time).

Time magazine has, in recent months, slipped further into views reminiscent of the British appeasement advocates of the 1930s. It reaches a new low this week when it suggests, initially on its Web site, but perhaps in the forthcoming week in the magazine itself, that the U.S. enter into bilateral talks with the North Koreans.

Such a policy would make America susceptible to North Korean extortion. There would be no end to what this tyranny would ask us to do to get it to promise to end its quest for nuclear arms and its sales of such technologies to others. And then, as in the past, when the Clinton Administration made concessions, it would violate any pledges it had made and go right ahead with its nuclear development. In other words, talking with the North Koreans would be self-defeating.

What Time and its dilettante editors seem to want more and more is that we give in to the exponents of violence all around the Earth, in hopes they can be dissuaded from their designs on America, Japan and Western European countries. They are wrong, I believe. Psychopaths only gain determination to continue their mayhem when people give in to them.

Time is preaching folly of the worst sort. Unless we resist the Kim Il Jongs and the Mahmound Ahmedinejads of the present world, they are more and more going to dominate the Earth. They will not be dissuaded by appeasement from pursuing their evil agendas, and we, by entering into talks with them, can only lose, possibly everything.

Time casts it this week as recognizing reality, and sees a choice between that and, in the North Korean case at least, regime change.

Rather than give in on our values I favor regime change, but not necessarily by injecting the U.S. military into another long, stalemated war, as in Iraq. Means such as selective bombing, or timely assassinations of tyrants, might prove more effective. We might be able to enable the North Korean people, on their own, to rid themselves of the dictator.

If North Korea entices the U.S. into direct talks, through threatening a nuclear test or actually staging one, it will only be the first sip of a bitter cup it shall offer us time and again in the years ahead. We cannot afford to let that happen. This regime must be given a shove, and warned very clearly that any North Korean attack on South Korea, Japan or us will be met with a full nuclear response, and the resulting end of North Korea.

It's a difficult time for the Bush Administration, and the Mid-Term elections may make only it more difficult. Still, the consequences of giving in to North Korea, or Iran for that matter, are too awful to contemplate.

--

Michael Kinsley, stung bitterly by his ouster as the incredibly ditsy editor of the Los Angeles Times editorial pages, seems to have gone off the deep end in his resentment at the paper and of Jeffrey Johnson, the publisher who wisely dispensed with his services.

Kinsley, who is now writing for the Left wing Guardian paper in England, Time magazine and elsewhere, this morning, in space he was foolishly given in the L.A. Times Current section, envisions folding the L.A. Times into a "National Tribune" paper that would somehow join the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times into a new national publication. This almost certainly will never be.

But I do agree with Kinsley, in his latest article, when he says the L.A. Times Web site is the worst of any major newspaper these days. One reason, of course, is that the Tribune Co. refuses to allow it to make any investments into a better product.

Bomb The North Korean Nuclear Facilities--Now

--written from Carlsbad, California

The time has come to stop mere words on the North Korean nuclear threats and take action, bombing the North Korean nuclear sites. It ought to be done without further delay.

North Korea's threat to test its nuclear weapons must not be met with further bluster. Two American administrations, Clinton's and Bush's, have said that a North Korea nuclear capacity is unacceptable. Since the foul dictatorship of Kim Il Jong apparently is not listening, we ought to act.

The cost and danger to the U.S. of the North Koreans being allowed to further develop their nuclear arms is immense. If a nuclear device is exploded, it probably means that Japan, and even possibly South Korea will develop nuclear weapons as well, since they could no longer trust in the U.S. to take timely action against the North Koreans. And we cannot rely on a fledgling anti-missile program of our own to reduce the danger to American cities of a nuclear-armed North Korea.

President Bush accurately called North Korea and Iran part of an axis of evil several years ago. Now is the time to act on North Korea and, if the Iranians go on with their nuclear enrichment, it will be time to act on them too.

Certainly, we cannot count on the United Nations to act to preserve the peace. We see already in the Middle East how worthless UN assurances are, as they waffle with implementation of the peacekeeping force in Lebanon and refuse to fight their way into the Sudan. This is an organization that is dying, and, pretty soon, in the world it's going to be each country for itself.

North Korea has gone too far with its threats this morning. And perhaps an attack on the North Korean coast also ought to include missile launching facilities. Despite the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have forces at the ready in the Far East, and they should not be used.

Fifty years ago, it was a mistake to end the war with North Korea in a truce. Now, we are paying for that folly.

--

Sen. Bill Frist, the Republican leader in the Senate, says on a visit to Kabul he is convinced the Afghan war cannot be won, and we ought to negotiate to bring the Taliban into the government. This would be like making an agreement to cut your own throat. Thank goodness, Frist is leaving government. He does not belong there.