Obama adviser wrong on Syrian nuke program

Gabriel Schoenfeld:

Was North Korea helping Syria build a plutonium-producing reactor? The emerging consensus in the intelligence world is that it was. Indeed, the evidence, now including videotapes taken inside the facility before it was obliterated by Israeli jets last September 6, appears almost unequivocal.

It is therefore fascinating — and disturbing — to recall the alacrity with which Joseph Cirincione, Barack Obama’s top expert on matters nuclear, the author of a book called the Bomb Scare, was so quick back in September to dismiss the report as “nonsense.”

To Cirincione, writing on the blog of Foreign Policy Magazine, the Israeli strike and the stories surrounding it that North Korea was building a Yongbyong-type plutonium reactor not far from the Euphrates River, was nothing more than a lie. It was a reprise, wrote Cirincione, of the way in which administration officials “misled the press” in the run-up to the second Gulf war.

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There is much more. Cirincione needs to revise and extend his remarks. Put this guy in with the Carter foreign policy team he has and it looks like some guys who rely on wishful thinking instead of analysis. Read it all.