Today is the 25th anniversary of the Raid on the Sun, aka Operation Opera -- the Israeli bombing raid that destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor at the Osirak power plant. Condemned universally at the time (even by a surprisingly short-sighted Ronald Reagan), the Israeli raid removed the nuclear threat to Israel's existence that Saddam Hussein sought to pose, and set back the course of Iraq's nuclear weapons plans by more than a decade. That raid proved critical in the First Gulf War, as SecDef Cheney noted in 1991, because Iraq had no nuclear deterrent to the US operation to rescue Kuwait.
Click the link for a detailed description of the attack.
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