The September 6, 2007 Israeli strike against a suspected Syrian nuclear facility remains a puzzle despite the confident assertion by U.S. intelligence officials last week (pdf) that the target was a Syrian reactor constructed for the production of plutonium with the assistance of North Korea.
An extensive, frequently updated collection of open source materials on the subject — including foreign and domestic news reports, satellite imagery and analysis — has been compiled by Allen Thomson in “A Sourcebook on the Israeli Strike in Syria, 6 September 2007” (currently 812 pages in a 15 MB PDF file).
An updated bibliography of Syrian nuclear science research, from reactor safety to laser isotope separation, was prepared by researcher Mark Gorwitz. See “Syrian Nuclear Science Bibliography: Open Literature Citations” (pdf), April 2008.
A list of all cooperative agreements between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Atomic Energy Commission of Syria, also compiled by Mr. Gorwitz, is here (pdf).
The web site of the Atomic Energy Commission of Syria is here.
No one will be surprised if we end up with a continuing resolution to push our shutdown deadline out past the midterms, so the real question is what else will they get done this summer?
Rebuilding public participation starts with something simple — treating the public not as a problem to manage, but as a source of ingenuity government cannot function without.
If the government wants a system of learning and adaptation that improves results in real time, it has to treat translation, utilization, and adaptation as core functions of governance rather than as afterthoughts.
Coordination among federal science agencies is essential to ensure government-wide alignment on R&D investment priorities. However, the federal R&D enterprise suffers from egregious siloization.