HEY CHUCK, HERE'S YOUR FIRST CRISIS – AT 8:43 A.M. ET:  Secretary of Defense designate Chuck Hagel, who never met an Arab dictatorship he didn't like, may have to confront a real whopper of a problem in his first days in office, should the Senate mistakenly confirm him.  From the Jerusalem Post:

'Financial Times' reports that up to 50 tons of enriched uranium may be in Syria, a stockpile large enough for five atomic bombs.

Concern is heightening over the possible existence of up to 50 tons of enriched uranium in Syria, the Financial Times reported Tuesday, a stockpile large enough for the production of five atomic bombs.

To date, governments have largely focused on the fate of Syria’s chemical weapons, and preventing their seizure by Islamic militants spearheading the ongoing uprising against President Bashar Assad's rule.

As the country descends deeper into a sectarian civil war, however, fears have grown over the possible existence, and security, of a stockpile of processed uranium inside Syria.

The worry stems from the Assad regime's attempt to build a nuclear reactor in the eastern city of at Al-Kibar in the mid-2000s. With assistance from North Korea, Damascus is believed to have nearly completed the facility prior to its destruction in an alleged Israeli airstrike in 2007.

Few details are known about the nature of the reactor, although experts believe the plant would have required approximately 50 tons of natural uranium fuel to become operational.

An IAEA inspection team that visited the Al-Kibar site in May 2008 found only traces of uranium, fueling speculation that a large stockpile of uranium had been moved.

COMMENT:  Gee, I wonder how they got that stuff.  Isn't it amazing how, in the last year, we've learned that Syria has a huge stockpile of chemical weapons, and now we're hearing they may well have up to 50 tons of enriched uranium?  That must have been some trip to Walmart.

Right before the Iraq war, credible sources were warning that there were huge convoys spotted going from Iraq into Syria.  Even then some thoughtful and experienced people were speculating that the convoys could easily have contained Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, sent to Syria for safekeeping. 

Of course, the left made major propaganda out of the fact that our inspectors didn't find WMD stockpiles in Iraq after the war.  (They did find the WMD programs ready to be restarted, but that has been vigorously ignored by the Obama state media.)  Is it possible that this new concern about uranium stockpiles in Syria has its origins in those convoys?  Just asking.  I doubt if the MSM is even interested.  I doubt if anyone will inquire.  Why let pesky questions get in the way of the accepted narrative of Iraq:  "Bush lied, thousands died"?

It reminds me of how the media developed an accepted narrative of Vietnam – that the United States "lost" the Vietnam War.   But the United States never lost a single battle in Vietnam.  How do you win every battle and lose a war?  Notice how the question has never been asked by the leaders of the mainstream media.  There are a lot of questions the mainstreamers won't ask, while insisting on the public's "right to know."

January 9,  2013