Raid on the Sun : Inside Israel's secret campaign that denied Saddam the bomb

Rating:
Summary: Black Hawk Down meets Charlie Wilson's War, squished.
Review: Raid on the Sun is fascinating, enthralling, and a quick read. I received it in the mail on a Saturday afternoon and finished it by Sunday night.

Some reasons I liked it:

The book is objective. While the book clearly celebrates the destruction of Saddam's nuclear facility, the Israelis are shown in the book to be ruthless and almost paranoid at times. The Mossad, Irael's version of the CIA, kills almost without conscience, all over the world. The book doesn't shy away from the "innocent" Frenchman who was killed in the attack on the Osirak reactor. Rodger Claire details the duplicity Israel used in fooling its most trusted and closest ally, the United States, in order to gain better information and equipment. In other words, it is not simply a white-washed pro-Israeli book. It gives both sides, which is nice.

However, it does portray the Israelis as misunderstood heroes who were perhaps ahead of their time in understanding the threat of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. At the time, the United States officially condemned Israel for the strike, but clearly it was a gutsy move that the U.S. increasingly appreciates to this day.

The book has a good pace. It's not merely about a bombing mission. It goes into how the mission was meticulously planned, how the pilots trained and prepared, how intelligence was gathered all over the world, and how internal political changes in France, Iran, Israel, and the United States factored into the crafting of the plan.

I almost wish the book were longer and more in-depth; its brevity is one of its strengths and weaknesses all at once. The abbreviations are profuse, but there is a guide to them at the beginning of the book. After a a few dozen pages, the abbreviations (AAA, GCI, KH-11, MH-84, SAM, etc.) become easier to immediately identify and understand.

I would definitely recommend this book to just about anyone, because it sheds some light on the way things are in the world today, and because it is a real thriller of a book. Weapons of mass destruction were not some mythical and fabricated justification for war in Iraq, based on the history in the region. Intelligence experts in 2002-2003 had good reason to believe the worst of Saddam Hussein and his progress at "going nuclear," given his past. The book details Saddam Hussein's quest for nuclear weapons, as well as his motives for seeking them, dating back to the early 1970s.

I wish it had expanded on some of the Mossad activities, more of the political machinations, more of the policy ramifications, and more of the individual lives of the key players. In general, there could be much more amplification. But it is still an amazing book, and one you can probably finish on a plane ride or at the beach one afternoon.

Rating:
Summary: Exciting, true thriller
Review: When the United States invaded Iraq last year, one of the main objectives was to deny Saddam Hussein the use of weapons of mass destruction. More than two decades earlier, Israeli intelligence sources had already confirmed that Hussein was conducting a secret atomic weapons program and gearing up to produce weapons grant plutonium.

When Israeli Air Force pilots staged a daring military operation and bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, world reaction was harsh and the United States joined in the universal condemnation of Israel. The world would not be as safe today if these brave men had failed in their mission.

Now, for the first time, it is possible to read an inside account of one of the most daring military operations in recent history.

"Raid on the Sun" by Rodger W. Claire tells the story of Hussein's relentless attempts to achieve nuclear weapons as part of his plan to obliterate Israel, and of the small group of Israeli pilots whose complicated, and nearly impossible mission would be to cripple that plan in efforts to safeguard their country.

For more than two decades, details of the attack, as well as the identities of the pilots, remained classified. But Claire, an investigative reporter, gained access to the Israeli commander who planned the raid and subsequently was the first journalist to speak to the pilots.

"Raid on the Sun" reads like an exciting thriller; in the tradition of "Black Hawk Down" it captures all the details of the behind-the-scenes political intrigue, the state-of-the-art fighter bombers and the personal stories of the pilots whose mission faced seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Claire spoke with David Ivry, the former Israeli Air Force commander who later became Israel's Ambassador to the United States. Claire interviewed the IAF pilots who participated in the raid. One of the pilots with whom Claire spoke by phone was Ilan Ramon. Ramon agreed to get together with Claire for an extensive follow-up interview after he returned from participating in the Columbia space shuttle mission in 2003 as Israel's first astronaut. Tragically, that meeting never took place.

"You must be successful, or we as a people are doomed," then-IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Rafael Eitan told the mission pilots before they left on Operation Babylon.

Flying to the east, with the setting sun behind them, the IAF pilots beat the odds and leveled the Osirak reactor in just one minute and twenty seconds.

"Raid on the Sun," an extraordinary true story of Israel's successful air raid that destroyed Iraq's Osirak reactor, is fast-paced, suspenseful, and an exciting read.

Rating:
Summary: As Good as Tom Clancy But This Story is True
Review: With the cooperation of all of the major players involved, Rodger Claire is able to bring to life the incredible events behind Israel's destruction of Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981. The book is a pleasure to read, with Claire providing all of the relevant underlying details and facts without taking away from a thrilling human story. The security of Israel is safeguarded through the brave actions of the eight Israeli Air Force pilots as well as the hundreds of people who helped to plan and execute the mission. This timely book serves as a clear reminder that evil does exist and that good people everywhere need to be prepared to take action to put that evil down. There was no peaceful rationale for the reactor and yet the world let the French sale go through. Our inability to take action in North Korea is the ultimate reminder that the Israeli's were absolutely right in their actions. A wonderful story, very well written and easily read in a few hours. Highly recommended, especially given current world events

Rating:
Summary: This great technothriller is a true story!
Review: Wow! This exciting little book reads like a Tom Clancy technothriller, but it's the true story of the 1981 Israeli raid that is all that stopped Saddam Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons. Surrounded by enemies, tiny Israel has always had to be tough and resourceful to survive. When the Begin government learned that Saddam was building a reactor to enrich uranium to build atomic bombs, they tried diplomacy to convince France to stop providing the needed components. But when that failed, they fell back on their own resourcefulness, ingenuity, resolve and courage, and sent eight F-16 fighters on an astounding mission to destroy the reactor.

Rodger Claire interviewed all of the surviving planners and pilots, including Ilan Ramon, the youngest of the pilots, who became Israel's first astronaut and who died in the Columbia tragedy. In 250 pages, we get the exciting action story, and the thoughts and emotions of the participants as they meticulously planned and executed this extraordinarily dangerous mission. We also get some background on France's 30-year partnership with Saddam, and a photo of Jacques Chirac and Saddam grinning at each other in Baghdad in 1974, that speaks volumes to today's world.

Claire has a fine facility with language, making the book delightfully readable, and he weaves a gripping story that I stayed up until 2 AM to finish. There are occasional minor technical inaccuracies, that readers with detailed knowledge of military aircraft will notice, but they don't detract from this wonderful book.