Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Media desperately trying to debunk Syria nuke plant story

Hot Air linked to an LA Times piece from their "Babylon & Beyond" blog last night that works furiously to blow the lid off the Syria al Kibar nuclear plant story. It's a feeble attempt at best.

First, they cite this image as being manipulated, saying "The lower part of the building, the annex, and the windows pointing south appear much sharper than the rest of the photo, suggesting that they were digitally improved."


The image was lifted from a video slide show presented to Congress, which included much CGI animation. It's not a "digitally improved" photo...it's a Computer-Generated Image, you dolts!

Next, they enumerate the things that should have been there if this was a nuclear plant, but weren't:
  • Satellite photos of the alleged reactor building show no air defenses or anti-aircraft batteries such as the ones found around the Natanz nuclear site in central Iran.
  • The satellite images do not show any military checkpoints on roads near the building.
  • Where are the power lines? The photos show neither electricity lines or substations.
This is so simple, it's pathetic: The plant wasn't complete. If Syria was trying to keep this as secret as possible until the plant was operational, they'd have kept to a minimum the number of people aware of its construction. Obviously, the more supporting infrastructure and defenses, the more people become aware. That supporting infrastructure wouldn't have been put in place until the last possible moment before the site was to become operational.

Finally, the writer offers up two images of the facility, one showing a rectangular structure and the other a square one, with the accompanying text:

The site looks like a rectangle in the first shot, but more like a square in the second shot. Huh?


Once again, pure stupidity. Take a look at the curvature of the excavated area to the left of the structure. It's elongated in the one at top compared to the one at the bottom. One of the images (I'm guessing the "rectangular" one) has been resized without the aspect ratio being preserved, distorting the proportional sizing of all the objects in the scene.

Next!

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