In Harrisonville, thousands line street to keep Phelps clan away from soldier’s funeral
By DONALD BRADLEY
The Kansas City Star
Todd Feeback
In Harrisonville on Tuesday, James Turner of Independence was among the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people who came to ensure that Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church/family congregation did not disrupt the funeral of Army Cpl. Jacob R. Carver.
Thousands support fallen soldier
Funeral of Cpl. Jacob R. Carver in Harrisonville
Breaking News
As if a bell tolled a neighbor’s trouble, folks came running.
The first showed up before the sun Tuesday, huddling and shivering in the cold and the dark. Others soon came, and before long their numbers stretched a block on both sides of Mechanic Street in front of Harrisonville’s Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church.
People drove from three or four counties away. Buses arrived, bellowing exhaust into the cold, bringing loads of schoolkids and senior citizens. People took off work. Some brought dogs. Farmers parked pickups nearby.
It wasn’t a fire, but a burning sense of what was the decent thing to do for one of their own who had given his all.
By 9 a.m., an hour before the funeral of Army Cpl. Jacob R. Carver, an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people, many of them waving American flags, lined nearly a half-mile of the street in front of the church, making sure Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church/family congregation were crowded out, peacefully kept far from shouting distance of the funeral.
“This soldier died so (Phelps) could do what he does, as stupid as that is,” said Steve Nothnagel of Harrisonville as he looked at the turnout. “I’m so proud of what is happening here today. This is a community coming together. I know it’s not just Harrisonville; they’re coming from all over.”
The call had gone out by word of mouth and Facebook: Come to Harrisonville, line the streets. Let’s protect this family on this saddest of days.
Not long ago, the same strategy against Phelps was pulled off in Weston. As one woman that day said: “We’re like any small town. We fight a little between ourselves. But today, we’re all together.”
By the time the Phelps clan rolled into Harrisonville, the only spot open to them was next to a Casey’s Store nearly a third of a mile from the church.
The seven protesters got out of their van and waved their signs and ranted their slogans that soldiers’ deaths were God’s punishment for America’s tolerance of homosexuality.
Opponents drowned them out with a rousing rendition of “God Bless America” and chants of “USA! USA!” and “Go home! Go home!”
“We can’t stop them, but we can be louder,” a man said.
After a near skirmish between the two groups, the Topeka group bailed before the funeral procession passed.
Angel Needham, 15, a sophomore at Cass Midway High School — from which Jacob Carver graduated in 2008 — said she believed in free speech and the First Amendment.
“I just don’t get why he (Phelps) has to do it at funerals,” Angel said.
With parental permission, Cass Midway students were allowed to attend the funeral and take part in the human buffer.
Carver, 20, a member of the 101st Airborne Division from Freeman in Cass County, was killed Nov. 13 along with four other soldiers in a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan.
He came from a large family and joined the Army shortly after graduation from Cass Midway, where he played football, loved to dance, and was known as the boy who would take any dare.
“He was a really good kid,” said Principal Doug Dahman, who joined a group of letter jacket-clad students in the line in front of the church.
Next to him was a man from Platte City, who got up at 4:30 a.m. Farther down was John Yeager, who came as part of a group of Blue Springs firefighters.
“We’re here for the family,” Yeager said. “Nobody should have to hear that on this day.”
So many people agreed with that sentiment that officers from the Belton and Pleasant Hill police departments, the Cass County Sheriff’s Office, and the Missouri Highway Patrol helped with crowd control.
Truck driver Tom Anderson said of the outpouring: “It’s heartbreaking and it’s heartwarming.”
As usual, the Patriot Guard Riders, braving subfreezing temperatures to get to Harrisonville, provided a motorcycle escort for the funeral procession.
“Look at all those flags out waving out there,” said Donna Byam, a member of the group. “He’s (Phelps) responsible for that.”
Her husband, Brad Byam, nodded: “A silver lining in a dark cloud.”
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/11/23/2467169/in-harrisonville-thousands-line.html#ixzz16DvAxuR8
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
whats the connection: Palins' backers
Sarah Palin's Mystery Research Firm
— Flickr/Roger H. Goun
Why's an incendiary Dutch journalist on the payroll of the ex-Alaska governor's political action committee? A Mother Jones investigation.
— By Andy Kroll and Daniel Schulman
NEWSLETTERSHARE
106 Comments | Post Comment
Mon Nov. 22, 2010 3:00 AM PST
In recent months, Sarah Palin's political action committee, SarahPAC, has paid thousands of dollars to a mysterious company that's gone to significant lengths to mask its ownership. Addresses linked to the firm lead to mail drops. It has no website. No phone number. Not even the California lawyer who incorporated the company knew who was behind it. But a Mother Jones investigation has found that this firm is run by an unlikely foreign political operative.
Federal Election Commission filings show that SarahPAC has paid the company, Paideia Research LLC, at least $16,000 for its services. The payments to Paideia—which takes its name from the ancient Greek word meaning "education" or "instruction"—are the only research-related expenditures listed on the PAC's latest disclosures.
Advertise on MotherJones.com
Managed by a shell company, and incorporated in a state with favorable tax laws and scant disclosure requirements, Paideia's corporate structure virtually assured anonymity. But interviews and a review of domestic and international business records led to the identity of Paideia's owner—which presented yet another mystery: Why is Palin's political action committee employing a Dutch right-wing journalist named Joshua Livestro, who is known for incendiary rhetoric?
Two recent federal filings for SarahPAC list a Sheridan, Wyoming, address for Paideia Research. When one local blogger visited the address, he found a low-slung, non-descript building that's home to Sheridan Answering and Secretarial Services, a company that handles phone calls and mail for customers. (Other bloggers soon started asking questions about Palin's mystery research firm.) When asked by Mother Jones about Paideia, Sheridan Answering's owner, Ginger Horton, replied, "I have no idea who they are."
Wyoming business records show that Paideia was incorporated in July. In addition to the local Wyoming address, these records list another in southern California. That address, in turn, traces to another mail forwarding service. Paideia's corporate filings also indicate that it is managed by Pyramid Management LLC, which belongs to a California-based ex-lawyer and realtor, David DeLoach, who specializes in setting up untraceable LLCs and pre-fab shell companies in Wyoming and Nevada—states that don't tax corporate income and have exceedingly lax disclosure rules.
In a brief phone interview, DeLoach said he vaguely remembered setting up Paideia. But as his website promises, the entire process was confidential. He said he himself didn't know who was behind Paideia or why it was created.
So it appears the owner of Paideia truly wanted to keep its origins secret. And he might have succeeded, had Karen Wheeler, the Wyoming Secretary of State's business compliance director, not told Mother Jones that she had recently spoken to Paideia's owner by phone. She didn't get his name, but said he "had quite the English accent" and told her he was based in England.
A search of British business records turned up a company called Paideia Limited. Livestro is its sole director and shareholder.
The 40-year-old is not your typical hire for an American political operation. He has worked as a columnist for the Benelux version of Reader's Digest and the Dutch newspaper De Telegraf. He's also the founder and editor-in-chief of De Dagelijkse Standaard (or, The Daily Standard), a right-wing political blog that weighs in frequently on Palin. In the 1990s, he worked with England's Conservative Party; he went on to become an assistant to Frits Bolkestein, then a European Commission member for internal market and financial services.
More recently, he's been a combative contributor to the website Conservatives4Palin. There he took on Palin's critics on the left and the right, attacking journalists including Marc Ambinder (then of The Atlantic, now of National Journal), Politico's Ben Smith, and National Review's Jonah Goldberg, among many others.
Not surprisingly, Livestro's views skew to the right. He helped to found the Edmund Burke Foundation, a right-wing Dutch think tank created to push back against progressive politics in the Netherlands. In one manifesto, citing the number of Muslims in the Netherlands, the foundation warned of ethnic conflict and said the country's borders should be closed. In the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland, Livestro once wrote that the gruesome photos depicting detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib resembled little more than an out-of-control frat party; he complained that Abu Ghraib critics were "cry-babies" exaggerating the episode's signficiance. On his blog, Livestro similarly quipped that the CIA's torture techniques—with the exception of waterboarding—were milder than the hazing methods of fraternities. On the issue of climate change, Livestro falls into the denier camp: Last year, he wrote that the Climategate e-mail scandal showed there was no need for tackling a global climate treaty.
SarahPAC's filings note that Paideia provides "research consulting." On Friday, in an article about Palin's 2012 aspirations, Real Clear Politics reported in passing that Livestro had been hired by the Palin camp to advise her on the European debt crisis. (The story didn't mention Livestro's company, Paideia.) Recently, Palin, who is positioning herself for a possible presidential bid, has increasingly been weighing in on financial matters. Earlier this month, she panned the Federal Reserve's decision to buy billions in Treasury bonds to boost the economy. And she jousted with the Wall Street Journal, which had debunked some of her views on monetary policy.
Contacted by Mother Jones, Livestro would not discuss his work for Palin or answer questions about Paideia. He referred questions to SarahPAC, which did not respond to calls and emails.
Livestro's hiring has raised eyebrows on the right. "Why is a potential president relying for economic advice on freelance journalists rather than Nobel Prize winners?" David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, asked on his blog. "It's almost as if Gov. Palin finds the idea of expertise—not merely incomprehensible—but actively repugnant." Livestro shot back: "I know it's not on a par with a Nobel Prize winner, but to suggest Gov. Palin's decision to hire me instead is evidence of some anti-expertise attitude is perhaps a tad off the mark—like all of your writing about her."
For Livestro, working for Team Palin is a significant step toward fulfilling his biggest dream. "His greatest wish is to work for the 2012 Sarah Palin presidential campaign," reads his bio on one conservative blog. With Paideia's cover blown, the mystery that remains is why this Palin fan was so secretive about his work for her.
Andy Kroll is a reporter at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. Email him with tips and insights at akroll (at) motherjones (dot) com. Follow him on Twitter here. Get Andy Kroll's RSS feed.
Daniel Schulman is Mother Jones' Washington-based news editor. For more of his stories, click here. To follow him on Twitter, click here. Email him at dschulman (at) motherjones.com. Get Daniel Schulman's RSS feed.
— Flickr/Roger H. Goun
Why's an incendiary Dutch journalist on the payroll of the ex-Alaska governor's political action committee? A Mother Jones investigation.
— By Andy Kroll and Daniel Schulman
NEWSLETTERSHARE
106 Comments | Post Comment
Mon Nov. 22, 2010 3:00 AM PST
In recent months, Sarah Palin's political action committee, SarahPAC, has paid thousands of dollars to a mysterious company that's gone to significant lengths to mask its ownership. Addresses linked to the firm lead to mail drops. It has no website. No phone number. Not even the California lawyer who incorporated the company knew who was behind it. But a Mother Jones investigation has found that this firm is run by an unlikely foreign political operative.
Federal Election Commission filings show that SarahPAC has paid the company, Paideia Research LLC, at least $16,000 for its services. The payments to Paideia—which takes its name from the ancient Greek word meaning "education" or "instruction"—are the only research-related expenditures listed on the PAC's latest disclosures.
Advertise on MotherJones.com
Managed by a shell company, and incorporated in a state with favorable tax laws and scant disclosure requirements, Paideia's corporate structure virtually assured anonymity. But interviews and a review of domestic and international business records led to the identity of Paideia's owner—which presented yet another mystery: Why is Palin's political action committee employing a Dutch right-wing journalist named Joshua Livestro, who is known for incendiary rhetoric?
Two recent federal filings for SarahPAC list a Sheridan, Wyoming, address for Paideia Research. When one local blogger visited the address, he found a low-slung, non-descript building that's home to Sheridan Answering and Secretarial Services, a company that handles phone calls and mail for customers. (Other bloggers soon started asking questions about Palin's mystery research firm.) When asked by Mother Jones about Paideia, Sheridan Answering's owner, Ginger Horton, replied, "I have no idea who they are."
Wyoming business records show that Paideia was incorporated in July. In addition to the local Wyoming address, these records list another in southern California. That address, in turn, traces to another mail forwarding service. Paideia's corporate filings also indicate that it is managed by Pyramid Management LLC, which belongs to a California-based ex-lawyer and realtor, David DeLoach, who specializes in setting up untraceable LLCs and pre-fab shell companies in Wyoming and Nevada—states that don't tax corporate income and have exceedingly lax disclosure rules.
In a brief phone interview, DeLoach said he vaguely remembered setting up Paideia. But as his website promises, the entire process was confidential. He said he himself didn't know who was behind Paideia or why it was created.
So it appears the owner of Paideia truly wanted to keep its origins secret. And he might have succeeded, had Karen Wheeler, the Wyoming Secretary of State's business compliance director, not told Mother Jones that she had recently spoken to Paideia's owner by phone. She didn't get his name, but said he "had quite the English accent" and told her he was based in England.
A search of British business records turned up a company called Paideia Limited. Livestro is its sole director and shareholder.
The 40-year-old is not your typical hire for an American political operation. He has worked as a columnist for the Benelux version of Reader's Digest and the Dutch newspaper De Telegraf. He's also the founder and editor-in-chief of De Dagelijkse Standaard (or, The Daily Standard), a right-wing political blog that weighs in frequently on Palin. In the 1990s, he worked with England's Conservative Party; he went on to become an assistant to Frits Bolkestein, then a European Commission member for internal market and financial services.
More recently, he's been a combative contributor to the website Conservatives4Palin. There he took on Palin's critics on the left and the right, attacking journalists including Marc Ambinder (then of The Atlantic, now of National Journal), Politico's Ben Smith, and National Review's Jonah Goldberg, among many others.
Not surprisingly, Livestro's views skew to the right. He helped to found the Edmund Burke Foundation, a right-wing Dutch think tank created to push back against progressive politics in the Netherlands. In one manifesto, citing the number of Muslims in the Netherlands, the foundation warned of ethnic conflict and said the country's borders should be closed. In the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland, Livestro once wrote that the gruesome photos depicting detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib resembled little more than an out-of-control frat party; he complained that Abu Ghraib critics were "cry-babies" exaggerating the episode's signficiance. On his blog, Livestro similarly quipped that the CIA's torture techniques—with the exception of waterboarding—were milder than the hazing methods of fraternities. On the issue of climate change, Livestro falls into the denier camp: Last year, he wrote that the Climategate e-mail scandal showed there was no need for tackling a global climate treaty.
SarahPAC's filings note that Paideia provides "research consulting." On Friday, in an article about Palin's 2012 aspirations, Real Clear Politics reported in passing that Livestro had been hired by the Palin camp to advise her on the European debt crisis. (The story didn't mention Livestro's company, Paideia.) Recently, Palin, who is positioning herself for a possible presidential bid, has increasingly been weighing in on financial matters. Earlier this month, she panned the Federal Reserve's decision to buy billions in Treasury bonds to boost the economy. And she jousted with the Wall Street Journal, which had debunked some of her views on monetary policy.
Contacted by Mother Jones, Livestro would not discuss his work for Palin or answer questions about Paideia. He referred questions to SarahPAC, which did not respond to calls and emails.
Livestro's hiring has raised eyebrows on the right. "Why is a potential president relying for economic advice on freelance journalists rather than Nobel Prize winners?" David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, asked on his blog. "It's almost as if Gov. Palin finds the idea of expertise—not merely incomprehensible—but actively repugnant." Livestro shot back: "I know it's not on a par with a Nobel Prize winner, but to suggest Gov. Palin's decision to hire me instead is evidence of some anti-expertise attitude is perhaps a tad off the mark—like all of your writing about her."
For Livestro, working for Team Palin is a significant step toward fulfilling his biggest dream. "His greatest wish is to work for the 2012 Sarah Palin presidential campaign," reads his bio on one conservative blog. With Paideia's cover blown, the mystery that remains is why this Palin fan was so secretive about his work for her.
Andy Kroll is a reporter at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. Email him with tips and insights at akroll (at) motherjones (dot) com. Follow him on Twitter here. Get Andy Kroll's RSS feed.
Daniel Schulman is Mother Jones' Washington-based news editor. For more of his stories, click here. To follow him on Twitter, click here. Email him at dschulman (at) motherjones.com. Get Daniel Schulman's RSS feed.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Can't get no respect Bush says
British deny George Bush's claims that torture helped foil terror plots
British officials say there is no evidence that waterboarding saved lives of UK citizens, as Bush claimed in his memoirs
Share
319
Richard Norton-Taylor and Ian Black
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 9 November 2010 21.37 GMT
Article history
George Bush at a booksigning in Dallas, Texas. The British have contradicted the former US president's claims about torture helping to save lives in the UK. Photograph: Tom Pennington/Getty Images
British officials said today there was no evidence to support claims by George Bush, the former US president, that information extracted by "waterboarding" saved British lives by foiling attacks on Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf. In his memoirs, Bush said the practice – condemned by Downing Street as torture – was used in CIA interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the US.
He said Mohammed, below, was one of three al-Qaida suspects subjected to waterboarding. "Their interrogations helped break up plots to attack American diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow airport, and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States," he wrote.
It is not the first time information extracted from Mohammed has been claimed as helping to prevent al-Qaida attacks on British targets. Mohammed cited attacks on Heathrow, Big Ben and Canary Wharf in a list of 31 plots he described at Guantánamo Bay after he was subjected to waterboarding 183 times following his capture in Pakistan in March 2003. The Heathrow alert in fact happened a month before his arrest, with army tanks parked around the airport, in what was widely regarded as an overreaction.
British counter-terrorism officials distanced themselves from Bush's claims. They said Mohammed provided "extremely valuable" information which was passed on to security and intelligence agencies, but that it mainly related to al-Qaida's structure and was not known to have been extracted through torture. Eliza Manningham-Buller,head of MI5 at the time, said earlier this year that the government protested to the US over the torture of terror suspects, but that the Americans concealed Mohammed's waterboarding from Britain. Officials said today the US still had not officially told the British government about the conditions in which Mohammed was held.
Kim Howells, former chairman of the Commons intelligence and security committee and Labour foreign minister, told the BBC that, while he did not doubt the existence of plots, he doubted whether waterboarding provided information instrumental in preventing them coming to fruition.
David Davis, the Conservative former shadow home secretary, said: "For [Bush] to demonstrate the use of torture saved British lives he has to demonstrate you can't get information any other way." He added: "We know from Iraq that whenever brains rather than brutality was involved, you get better results." Davis pointed to claims made by one detainee, Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, after he was tortured that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida and that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, both of which have proved not to be true.
Bush also mentioned Abu Zubaydah, waterboarded after his capture in Pakistan in 2002. Zubaydah told his interrogators that al-Qaida had links with Saddam Hussein and that there was a plot to attack Washington with a "dirty bomb". Both claims are now recognised by the CIA to be false.
Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC said that, by confessing to ordering torture, Bush risked prosecution. "George W Bush has confessed to ordering waterboarding, which in the view of almost all experts clearly passes the severe pain threshold in the definition of torture in international law."
Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty said: "After the atrocity of 9/11, the American president could have united the world against terrorism and towards the rule of law. Instead, president Bush led a great democracy into the swamp of lies, war and torture in freedom's name. Democracy can do better and, learning from the past, it will."
Syria maintained a discreet silence after Bush's revelation that he had considered a US attack on a suspected nuclear facility at Israel's request in 2007. The 2007 Israeli attack at al-Kibar on the Euphrates was and remains embarrassing for Syria, which is under investigation by the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. Satellite imagery showed that the remains were razed after the Israeli raid.
Diplomats said that Syria's silence was explained by its wish to avoid further deterioration in relations with the US at a time of renewed tensions over Lebanon which have set back hopes for a rapprochement under the Obama administration.
Iranian media reported the story but played down the fact that Bush had asked the Pentagon to study an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, focusing more on Syria and his comments on the war in Iraq. Bush's account is likely to be incorporated into the catalogue of Iranian charges against the US.
Bush wrote that the-then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, asked him to bomb Syria in 2007, that he discussed the idea with senior officials but did not pursue it because "bombing of a sovereign state without warning or justification would greatly affect the prestige of the United States". But the following year US forces mounted a commando raid on Syria's border with Iraq against a man suspected of smuggling foreign fighters, killing at least eight people.
US intelligence reports have said the al-Kibar site was a nascent North Korean-designed reactor. Syria denies concealing nuclear work from inspectors.
Bush's account of the Syrian reactor affair is likely to confirm Arab views of intimate coordination between the US and Israel, even though he insisted that he had not given a disappointed Olmert a "green light" to carry out its own attack. Olmert called the site an "existential issue" for Israel — the same terminology it uses to describe Iran's nuclear ambitions.
British officials say there is no evidence that waterboarding saved lives of UK citizens, as Bush claimed in his memoirs
Share
319
Richard Norton-Taylor and Ian Black
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 9 November 2010 21.37 GMT
Article history
George Bush at a booksigning in Dallas, Texas. The British have contradicted the former US president's claims about torture helping to save lives in the UK. Photograph: Tom Pennington/Getty Images
British officials said today there was no evidence to support claims by George Bush, the former US president, that information extracted by "waterboarding" saved British lives by foiling attacks on Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf. In his memoirs, Bush said the practice – condemned by Downing Street as torture – was used in CIA interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the US.
He said Mohammed, below, was one of three al-Qaida suspects subjected to waterboarding. "Their interrogations helped break up plots to attack American diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow airport, and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States," he wrote.
It is not the first time information extracted from Mohammed has been claimed as helping to prevent al-Qaida attacks on British targets. Mohammed cited attacks on Heathrow, Big Ben and Canary Wharf in a list of 31 plots he described at Guantánamo Bay after he was subjected to waterboarding 183 times following his capture in Pakistan in March 2003. The Heathrow alert in fact happened a month before his arrest, with army tanks parked around the airport, in what was widely regarded as an overreaction.
British counter-terrorism officials distanced themselves from Bush's claims. They said Mohammed provided "extremely valuable" information which was passed on to security and intelligence agencies, but that it mainly related to al-Qaida's structure and was not known to have been extracted through torture. Eliza Manningham-Buller,head of MI5 at the time, said earlier this year that the government protested to the US over the torture of terror suspects, but that the Americans concealed Mohammed's waterboarding from Britain. Officials said today the US still had not officially told the British government about the conditions in which Mohammed was held.
Kim Howells, former chairman of the Commons intelligence and security committee and Labour foreign minister, told the BBC that, while he did not doubt the existence of plots, he doubted whether waterboarding provided information instrumental in preventing them coming to fruition.
David Davis, the Conservative former shadow home secretary, said: "For [Bush] to demonstrate the use of torture saved British lives he has to demonstrate you can't get information any other way." He added: "We know from Iraq that whenever brains rather than brutality was involved, you get better results." Davis pointed to claims made by one detainee, Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, after he was tortured that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida and that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, both of which have proved not to be true.
Bush also mentioned Abu Zubaydah, waterboarded after his capture in Pakistan in 2002. Zubaydah told his interrogators that al-Qaida had links with Saddam Hussein and that there was a plot to attack Washington with a "dirty bomb". Both claims are now recognised by the CIA to be false.
Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC said that, by confessing to ordering torture, Bush risked prosecution. "George W Bush has confessed to ordering waterboarding, which in the view of almost all experts clearly passes the severe pain threshold in the definition of torture in international law."
Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty said: "After the atrocity of 9/11, the American president could have united the world against terrorism and towards the rule of law. Instead, president Bush led a great democracy into the swamp of lies, war and torture in freedom's name. Democracy can do better and, learning from the past, it will."
Syria maintained a discreet silence after Bush's revelation that he had considered a US attack on a suspected nuclear facility at Israel's request in 2007. The 2007 Israeli attack at al-Kibar on the Euphrates was and remains embarrassing for Syria, which is under investigation by the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. Satellite imagery showed that the remains were razed after the Israeli raid.
Diplomats said that Syria's silence was explained by its wish to avoid further deterioration in relations with the US at a time of renewed tensions over Lebanon which have set back hopes for a rapprochement under the Obama administration.
Iranian media reported the story but played down the fact that Bush had asked the Pentagon to study an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, focusing more on Syria and his comments on the war in Iraq. Bush's account is likely to be incorporated into the catalogue of Iranian charges against the US.
Bush wrote that the-then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, asked him to bomb Syria in 2007, that he discussed the idea with senior officials but did not pursue it because "bombing of a sovereign state without warning or justification would greatly affect the prestige of the United States". But the following year US forces mounted a commando raid on Syria's border with Iraq against a man suspected of smuggling foreign fighters, killing at least eight people.
US intelligence reports have said the al-Kibar site was a nascent North Korean-designed reactor. Syria denies concealing nuclear work from inspectors.
Bush's account of the Syrian reactor affair is likely to confirm Arab views of intimate coordination between the US and Israel, even though he insisted that he had not given a disappointed Olmert a "green light" to carry out its own attack. Olmert called the site an "existential issue" for Israel — the same terminology it uses to describe Iran's nuclear ambitions.
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