Mike Yared
September 14th 03, 03:34 AM
from http://www.washtimes.com/books/
On June 7, 1981, a flight of eight Israeli Fighter Falcon bombers
destroyed the French built 75-megawatt nuclear reactor at Osirak, 12 miles
east of Baghdad and two weeks from going operational. It was the first time
that an attempt had been made to neutralize a nuclear state by force. While
the Israeli preemptive strike was widely criticized at the time especially
in this country, it is now widely held that had Osirak not been razed,
Saddam Hussein would have had nuclear weapons at his disposal and very
likely would today be master of the Middle East. Today the then-leader of
the Israeli air force, David Ivry, presently ambassador to the United
States, has on his Washington embassy office wall a satellite photo of the
destroyed reactor taken 10 years after the raid. According to George Will,
the photo has this handwritten description: "For General David Ivry, with
thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the Iraqi nuclear
program in 1981 which made our job much easier in Desert Storm." It is
signed: "Dick Cheney, Sec. of Defense, 1989-93." And it certainly made it a
lot easier in April 2003. Two Minutes Over Baghdad (Frank Cass Publishers,
$19.50, 232 pages) by Amos Perlmutter, Michael I. Handel and Uri Bar-Joseph
with an introduction by Barry Rubin, is a gripping story of the bombing
updated by Mr. Bar-Joseph of Haifa University from the earlier 1982 edition.
Two of the co-authors — Perlmutter and Handel — have died since. The new
edition contains descriptions of the attack by the pilots themselves and
hitherto classified archives and photographs. One of the Osirak bomber crew
was a very young Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli in space, who tragically died
aboard the Shuttle Columbia last February.
On June 7, 1981, a flight of eight Israeli Fighter Falcon bombers
destroyed the French built 75-megawatt nuclear reactor at Osirak, 12 miles
east of Baghdad and two weeks from going operational. It was the first time
that an attempt had been made to neutralize a nuclear state by force. While
the Israeli preemptive strike was widely criticized at the time especially
in this country, it is now widely held that had Osirak not been razed,
Saddam Hussein would have had nuclear weapons at his disposal and very
likely would today be master of the Middle East. Today the then-leader of
the Israeli air force, David Ivry, presently ambassador to the United
States, has on his Washington embassy office wall a satellite photo of the
destroyed reactor taken 10 years after the raid. According to George Will,
the photo has this handwritten description: "For General David Ivry, with
thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the Iraqi nuclear
program in 1981 which made our job much easier in Desert Storm." It is
signed: "Dick Cheney, Sec. of Defense, 1989-93." And it certainly made it a
lot easier in April 2003. Two Minutes Over Baghdad (Frank Cass Publishers,
$19.50, 232 pages) by Amos Perlmutter, Michael I. Handel and Uri Bar-Joseph
with an introduction by Barry Rubin, is a gripping story of the bombing
updated by Mr. Bar-Joseph of Haifa University from the earlier 1982 edition.
Two of the co-authors — Perlmutter and Handel — have died since. The new
edition contains descriptions of the attack by the pilots themselves and
hitherto classified archives and photographs. One of the Osirak bomber crew
was a very young Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli in space, who tragically died
aboard the Shuttle Columbia last February.