Did the government of Syria take a delivery of nuclear components from North Korea only to have the Israeli Air Force destroy the equipment in a high stakes air raid two weeks ago? That is the story you'll read in the Times of London. And the Daily Telegraph, on a related note, reports that "Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution, is prepared to settle her differences with Vice-President Dick Cheney and sanction military action."

The problem of course is that -- how delicately to say this -- the British press isn't that reliable. Yes, yes, yea, yea, I know I'll catch hell for saying that. And I'm an avid reader of British papers. But as I learned while doing full-time reporting on intelligence and national security topics the British press -- even, perhaps especially prestige outlets like the Telegraph, the Times, and the FT -- turn out to be far more porous than the American papers to agitprop of this kind, sundry false-flag bamboozlement and even cases where particular reporters (if not the papers themselves) were not above planting false stories at the behest of various European intelligence agencies.

And given what great shakes the US media is these days, that's saying something.

But what did happen in the Syrian desert a couple weeks ago? Most if not all the articles I've seen speculating about a Syrian nuclear program as the target of the raid have had quotes from the always presumptively suspect meddler John Bolton. See for instance today's editorial in the Jerusalem Post. But something of some consequence seems to have taken place. The very sketchy evidence available suggests that it was a substantial operation. And both the Syrians and the Israelis (no doubt for distinct reasons) are being extremely tight-lipped about what happened.

Other possibilities include a raid to take out weapons shipments being transshipped through Syria to Hezbollah or a probing raid to test beefed up Syrian air defenses.