January 17, 2003

Bet his mother is proud The Space Shuttle Columbia launched today with Israel's first astronaut, Col. Ilan Ramon as one of the seven-member crew. The Ha’aretz report notes that Ramon is a former fighter pilot and weapons specialist who fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and in the 1982 war in Lebanon. In 1981, he was a member of the mission to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, near Baghdad, before it became operational. Without the success of Ramon’s mission Iraq would have had nuclear weapons when it invaded Kuwait in 1990 and the US and the world would have faced the same problem then as the it faces with North Korea; the inability to take action against a nuclear armed country run by a dictator. 12:08:10 AM