From the article:
The American stockpile, built up over generations, was shocking in its scale: Cluster bombs and land mines filled with nerve agent. Artillery shells that could blanket whole forests with a blistering mustard fog. Tanks full of poison that could be loaded on jets and sprayed on targets below....
American armed forces are not known to have used lethal chemical weapons in battle since 1918, though during the Vietnam War they used herbicides like Agent Orange that were harmful to humans....
The United States and the Soviet Union agreed in principle in 1989 to destroy their chemical weapons stockpiles, and when the Senate ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, the United States and other signatories committed to getting rid of chemical weapons once and for all....
[The United States] is now wrapping up decades behind schedule, at a cost close to $42 billion — 2,900 percent over budget....
Other powers have also destroyed their declared stockpiles: Britain in 2007, India in 2009, Russia in 2017.
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31 comments:
Things that make you paranoid?
Next do bioweapons, and start with the decades-long refusal (1980 to present) to destroy the last smallpox samples. One sample is held by the CDC in Atlanta, the other in a troubled Russian lab.
https://www.livescience.com/russia-lab-stores-smallpox-explosion-fire.html
Then, consider the CDC's role in letting Black men suffer from untreated syphilis for decades, and COVID-19...
"... remaining declared..."
That "declared" is a small word likely covering a LOT of asses.
Perusing Twitter I see the former VP casually warning about war against Russia.
https://twitter.com/hughhewitt/status/1676903596170854401?s=46&t=l7AwAEtkT-tXUq39kUwnyA
Should there be a chemical attack somewhere… not us, we don’t have chemical weapons. Don’t you read the news on the menu?
Now that the covid jig is up they need something as big or bigger to push their agenda. See Rahm Emanuel crisis how to.
Well...I cannot read the article, but I wonder what they mean by 'destroy'? Are these buried, en masse, in some pit alongside a river or creek somewhere, where they'll leach out and mix with the plastics from the plant up river and end up in the fish we eat or the water we drink? Just wondering.
And, once we realized we could shut down the world, or cripple entire nations with a virus, the chemical weapons seemed so passé.
An interesting story, but it's not news, nor is the project of destruction about to end. Not today. Not tomorrow. But sometime shortly, maybe, possibly. It's not news, but it does occupy space that would otherwise be filled with news embarrassing to the White House and the Democrats. We can't have that, can we?
There was a report that Russia used Lewisite in Ukraine. Might just be one of those rumors that float around, I haven't heard anymore about it. In WWII, everyone had stocks of poison gas, they just didn't use it, the risk of retaliation was too high and no one wanted to deal with it.
Because these are nasty chemicals, like drugs, except there's much more to look at over here, than there is in... other places. Plus, we're getting rid of them!
Wait, are you saying you think the news is a scripted production?
If the NYT says it’s happening, then you know that’s what They want you to believe.
Nice cost overrun there.
"They were a class of weapons deemed so inhumane that their use was condemned after World War I, ..." - Does anyone really believe this? Actually, the allies and their opponents found that chemical weapons were woefully inaccurate and inefficient, killing/maiming their own troops as often as their opponents.
I worked on the air permitting for the blue grass army depot in Madison Co, KY in the early 2000s while in grad school.
We’ve been under a treaty to dispose of those weapons for decades but because the air permitting for the disposal was subject to NEPA, environmental groups would sue and stop the disposal. There are three methods of disposal - incineration, chemical neutralization, and water neutralization. Every time the army picked a method, the groups would sue. The army would then try and permit different method to avoid the lawsuit. This has went on for years.
The permit in KY was finally issued but it takes years to dispose of the weapons. The weapons in KY already were in rockets so they complicated things.
In KY, there were three chemical agents - VX, Sarin, and Mustard. With two being nerve agents that could kill everyone in the county and surrounding counties, disposal must be carefully done.
I’m glad it’s coming to an end. It sounds like we continued to use these weapons through Vietnam even though they were banned after WWI.
Hope this helps.
Chinese spy balloon told them exactly where to missile strike for ultimate damage to the US. Now we'll finally get rid of our own vulnerable targets.
Note: "declared stockpiles".
I suspect the concern is that it took so long to rid our arsenal of these weapons. I was somewhat involved in a support capacity while still on active duty, and there were many problems with objections raised by the states and municipalities involved. Transportation was a big issue, and, IIRC, there was a suggestion that the destruction take place on an island in the Pacific. Glad to see the end in near.
two key words
declared stockpiles
Umm, it is not "suddenly" happening. This has been happening since 1989. It took a lot longer and cost a lot more than originally estimated, but they should have known it wasn't to be that easy. We had stockpiles in both Germany and Korea. Also many of the domestic storage locations were close to heavily populated areas (e.g., Aberdeen MD, Louisville, Salt Lake City), and since the decision was made to destroy domestic inventories in place (because transporting them was just not a good idea, since many of the munitions were seriously deteriorated), it created all sorts of problems; regulatory, public relations and technical.
I am quite surprised that we finished it so quickly and only for $42 billion. We had a lot of nasty shit.
It's probably a ploy to cover up some even more heinous implements of death they're developing or already producing.
And why is this not?
https://nypost.com/2023/07/05/missing-biden-corruption-case-witness-dr-gal-luft-details-allegations-against-presidents-family-in-extraordinary-video/
"Declared" being the operative word.
It’s no surprise to me that the US military chose to drag its feet getting rid chemical weapons. One of the things we learned in 2020 and 2021 was that the Department of Defense isn’t at all shy about ignoring orders they don’t like, civilian control be damned. Did that really start under Trump? It couldn’t have.
They aren’t the only ones, of course, given that Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci funded biological weapons development under the rubric of “gain of function research” a full half a century after Dick Nixon ordered an end to bio weapons development by the United States. That they moved the research offshore to institutions controlled by nations with an adversarial relationship to this country is just frosting on the cake to bureaucrats like them.
A 2,900 percent overrun probably isn’t even a record for the federal government.
BTW, this leaves the USA with precisely one weapon of mass destruction in our arsenal.
This must mean we are stockpiling chemical and biological weapons.
The CDC says that the US destroyed almost everything by 2012. A few stockpiles have taken ten years longer for some reason.
"...destroyed their declared stockpiles..."
Destroyed should be in quotes.
Declared should be highlighted and underlined.
I find it interesting that the background information in the article doesn't mention China at all. You don't find many articles on international affairs these days that don't mention them.
The PRC ratified the chemical weapons treaty in 1997 (same as the US). Chinese documents on the OPCW website spend most of their time complaining about chemical weapons left in China by Japan after WW2. Given their transparency issues in other areas, I assume they still have their own chemical weapons.
I must say, I understand the nuclear arms race, MAD and all that, but never saw the logic for a similar strategy for chemical or biological weapons.
"Other powers have also destroyed their declared stockpiles: Britain in 2007, India in 2009, Russia in 2017."
And China?
Has anyone heard of Johnson Island? It was used for the destruction of chemical weapons. I knew a couple of people who had worked there. The chemical weapons were burned at a very high temperature to destroy the nerve gas. It was not a fun place to work. If there was a leak the workers were supposed to don full protective gear and hope that they were warned in time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnston_Atoll_Chemical_Agent_Disposal_System
"[The United States] is now wrapping up decades behind schedule, at a cost close to $42 billion — 2,900 percent over budget.... "
NYT ... please publish the names of those government employees who have been fired, fined and/or jailed for not doing their jobs. Include the elected officials responsible.
Chemical weapons are better for poor nations, that is why they are banned. If nukes are the only wmd allowed then there are more barriers to entry, and poor nations suffer. Saddam could easily load chemicals on a scud for a reasonable cost. Remember the Japanese cult that released sarin in the subways?
Binary chemical weapons were quite safe, but they were developed too late. There is no moral distinction between nuclear, chem, and bio weapons. They all do the same thing and are equally fearsome. Large nations just prefer nuclear.
US chemical weapons have seen action, albeit unintentionally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raid_on_Bari
Just ship remaining to Ukraine, along with the cluster bombs. They promise to use carefully.
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