All Is Forgiven
"Disposal requires such rigorous processes to ensure there is no pollution or residual agent. On average it is costing (sic) about ten times more to destroy than it did to make the munitions."
Susannah Sirkin, international policy director for Physicians for Human Rights
"All of this is a slow process. Falling behind (schedule) is actually relatively easy."
Dieter Rothbacher, former UN chemical weapons inspector
FILE - In this Jan. 21, 2010 file photo Debra Michaels, Chemical Operations Manager uses a flashlight to inspect mustard agent shells in one of the bunkers at the Pueblo Army Chemical Storage facility in Pueblo, Colo. Three decades after the United States started destroying its own chemical weapons, the nation’s stockpile stands at more than 3,000 tons _ about three times what the U.S. now says Syrian President Bashar Assad controls. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)
Syria must be punished. For the use of chemical weapons against its own people. International conventions forbid, prohibit, deplore the use of chemical weapons, considered a 'weapon of mass destruction', for any reason, anywhere, targeting any human collective. It is inhumane, a human rights offence of massive proportions. Use conventional lethal weapons, the most advanced munitions the world has ever devised to mechanically and brutally destroy human beings and it becomes an unfortunate but predictable event.
Not to be overlooked however, with unconcern. After all, this is a regime in Syria which has declared its right to impose mechanical might over its unruly population of Sunni Muslims who dare defy the authority of its minority-Shia government. What the world really would like to do, would much prefer to be able to pull off, is the ravening attack-dog Baathist regime from slaughtering its vulnerable population by any means. Committing the international community to the chemical weapons rebuke substitutes.
America began its large-scale development of chemical weapons at the turn of the Century, increasing capabilities through WWII, to 1968. Their resulting stockpile of 31,500 tons, represented sarin, VX, mustard gas and other noxious killing agents. Russia, on the other hand, always prepared to match the United States in all matters military, assembled a stockpile of some 44,000 tons of the very same human-life-destroying materials.
In the 1970s a movement took place to destroy chemical weapons in the United States; then Congress authorized the Defence Department to eliminate the stockpile in the 1980s. The U.S. signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993 and embarked on a ten-year plan whereby all the remaining stockpiles of its chemical weapons would be destroyed. Nine sites were established across the country for their destruction; two active sites now remain.
If all goes as planned the Pueblo Chemical Depot near Colorado Springs in its completion stages, may be fully operational by 2015, and the 2,600 tons of mustard gas within projectiles and mortar cartridges may be destroyed by 2019. The Blue Grass Army Depot close to Richmond, Kentucky is roughly 70% complete. When it opens around 2020 it is expected that 523 tons of nerve and blister agents stored in rockets and projectiles should complete by 2023.
The two basic methods of destruction; chemical neutralization and incineration, require specialized facilities. Chemicals must be heated to thousands of degrees using incinerators. Destruction of old, leaky and hard-to-handle storage containers produce highly hazardous waste requiring careful storage. Those included in weapons packed with explosives present other dangers; accidental eruption, contamination of the environment among them.
The U.S. over the years has experienced holdups ranging from environmental concerns and political opposition to technical and safety challenges. Tough laws that restrict transport chemical weapons and assembling the tens of billions of dollars to pay for destroying the unwanted and dangerous cache of weapons all conspire to create delays, inconvenient and insurmountable at times.
Now that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have agreed to outline a way whereby Syria's mere yet seemingly insurmountable tonnage of weapons are to be disposed; how?
Through whose funding? Within an active theatre of war. When it is suspected that much of the chemicals may have been moved. When dealing with an unscrupulous and untrustworthy leader of a country approaching rigor mortis? Ah, not to worry: Russian President Vladimir Putin says Syria's 'efforts' are ample demonstration of its reliable and good, very good faith.
In the weeks, months and years to follow as Syria's civil infrastructure gradually disintegrates under rocket and artillery fire, and its borders continue to leak desperate refugees, while its morgues desperately attempt to keep up with the growing weight of the dead, and hospitals to succour the wounded, and children grow from childhood to bitter revenge, there will be ample opportunity to gauge Syria's ongoing 'efforts'.
Labels: Chemical Weapons, Conflict, Russia, Syria, United States
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, September 14, 2013
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