That’s what it looks like in “this AFP”:http://www.spacewar.com/2006/080426131406.jym0g8it.html story.

I had thought of most of the official’s arguments, but this one jumped out at me:

A *nuclear physicist close to the United Nations atomic watchdog* cast doubt Saturday on the veracity of US intelligence which claimed that Syria had been building a secret atomic reactor.

“When you look at the (US intelligence services) pictures, they show only raw construction,” an expert close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told AFP on condition on anonymity.

*”It was just the shell of a site, and the walls did not look like the ones needed for a plutonium reactor.”*

*Walls of a plutonium reactor “need a lot of piping, there was nothing like that on the pictures,”* he added.

Still trying to wrap my head around this, in between doing other things.