One thing is always a given in this world – we the people are out of the loop on the most pressing concerns to our country and humanity in general. The reason is the methods used to detect and stop major threats need to be protected under secrecy. Therefore we cannot publicize what we know because it is too easy to determine methods from backtracking on what we know and figuring out how it could have been intercepted by out intelligence.

But those watching the news can discern some interesting indicators by connecting some dots. Take, for instance, the news about a possible raid by Israel on a Syrian nuclear weapon of some kind, which is just one small chapter from a much longer story line. The general theme is smuggling nuclear material to terror states to the martyrs of Islam can have a way to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of infidels in one stroke. The martyrs would line up to be the first suicide bomber with an Islamo Fascist nuke sent into the heart of The Great Satan. So here is what we know in general about the story to date:

Andrew Semmel, a senior US State Department official, said Syria might have obtained nuclear equipment from “secret suppliers”, and added that there were a “number of foreign technicians” in the country.

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But why would nuclear material be in Syria? Known to have chemical weapons, was it seeking to bolster its arsenal with something even more deadly?

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“This was supposed to be a devastating Syrian surprise for Israel,” said an Israeli source. “We’ve known for a long time that Syria has deadly chemical warheads on its Scuds, but Israel can’t live with a nuclear warhead.”

An expert on the Middle East, who has spoken to Israeli participants in the raid, told yesterday’s Washington Post that the timing of the raid on September 6 appeared to be linked to the arrival three days earlier of a ship carrying North Korean material labelled as cement but suspected of concealing nuclear equipment.

Sadly this is not the first movement of nuclear material and devices into the region. In 2002 35 pounds of weapons grade uranium was found in Turkey heading for the Syrian or Iraqi border:

Turkish officials said Saturday they have seized 34.6 pounds of uranium and arrested two Turkish men in Urfa, a town in southeastern Turkey. U.S. officials are in touch with authorities to get information about the seizure.

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Authorities displayed the material, which they said was worth $5 million and originated in the former Soviet Union, to reporters in Urfa. It will be taken to Ankara for analysis, police said.

In 2006 another uranium smuggling effort was incovered in the UK:

A British company has been closed down after being caught in an apparent attempt to sell black-market weapons-grade uranium to Iran and Sudan, The Observer can reveal.
Anti-terrorist officers and MI6 are now investigating a wider British-based plot allegedly to supply Iran with material for use in a nuclear weapons programme. One person has already been charged with attempting to proliferate ‘weapons of mass destruction’.

I should note that the material which poisoned Alexander Litvinenko in the fall of 2006 was Polonium-210 and is used in nuclear triggers to detonate atomic bombs. And it should be noted there was a Turkey connection in that incident as well. In fact, lots of uranium has been stopped in Turkey over the years. And since the material keeps coming one must assume much of it is getting through despite all these interdictions.

Another area that is a problem and has ties to the Litvinenko story is Georgia, which has seen a couple of recent interdictions in nuclear smuggling as well. And as late as this March uranium smuggling out of Africa was still a problem (despite Joe Wilson’s tea sipping confidence to the contrary). The point is to smuggle all the elements it is best to have them flow through independent paths with plenty of redundancy in terms of numbers and amounts so that you can take hits on being discovered here and there, yet get enough of the material and pieces together to build the final product.

We have been pretending all this nuclear material running through the UK and Europe is some kind of Kremlin plot to go back to the days of the USSR. But the fact is the material keeps showing up in places and on people allied with Islamo Fascists. And now we have seen things get to the point someone had to bomb Syria to make sure a nuclear weapon was not used by Islamo Fascists. We are running out of time and options. The nuclear Genie is getting too close for comfort.