Israel Matzav

The United States took 18 years to destroy its chemical weapons - how long will Syria take?

In 1993, the United States agreed to destroy its stock of chemical weapons. In 2004, it actually started the process of destroying them, a process that was not completed until 2011. Is it realistic to expect Syria to destroy its stock anytime in the near future?

Michael Totten explains why it took the US so long, and why it's not realistic to expect Syria's chemical weapons stock to be destroyed any time in the near future.

From 1962 to 2011, the US Army stored nearly four thousand tons of VX, Sarin, and HD blister agent (commonly known as mustard gas) at the Umatilla Chemical Depot along the Columbia River two and a half hours east of Portland, Oregon.

In 1993 the US signed a treaty forbidding the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons, and eleven years later, in 2004, the Army was finally ready to begin destroying Oregon’s stockpile.

They did it by incinerating the chemical agents in a 2,700 degree furnace. And they did it in a thinly populated part of the peaceful Pacific Northwest under the complete control of the United States Army.

It still took them eight years. Toxic munitions must be destroyed very slowly and very carefully.

A single drop of this stuff will kill you, and the facility is located right on the Columbia River which runs through Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington. And though Umatilla County is fairly remote, the Los Angeles Times reported that “disaster scenarios suggested that a major earthquake at the facility, followed by fire, could send a plume of poisonous residue as far as Portland, Seattle or Spokane.”

...

So people who live in that area felt a sense of relief when the Army finally finished destroying the stockpiles on October 25, 2011.

The Chemical Weapons Convention was drafted in New York and Paris. The United States signed it in 1993.

Syria agreed to sign it three days ago. A plan is now being put together to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.

Considering all of the above, which I’ve been all too familiar with for many years now, you can color me more than a little bit skeptical.

Read the whole thing. Hope the wind is blowing toward the east when and if we have to bomb their facilities. Due east.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Bashar al-Assad, chemical weapons, Syria, US Army, Vladimir Putin

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:54 PM