Michael Totten: on destroying Syria’s chemical weapons
And he knows whereof he speaks:
Let’s say, though, just for the sake of discussion, that the process goes just as smoothly in Syria as it did in Oregon, that it will take precisely the same amount of time to destroy Assad’s arsenal, and that they (whoever they are) can get started tomorrow.
They won’t finish until 2021. Because that’s how long it took down the road from my house.
Please read the whole thing.
As long as the ugly consequences are delayed long enough for another administration to clean up and it’s sellable in the near term, that’s good enough for the Obama administration.
Interesting point implied in the Totten article: Simply bombing chemical and biological weapons stockpiles risks releasing the agents into the environment rather than destroying them.
I’m not convinced that it would take as long to destroy Syria’s stockpiles as it did ours. It may have taken that long in the US due to heightened regulations and just the particular tempo of the US operation. Just because it takes me an hour to walk 4 miles doesn’t mean that’s the fastest way to travel 4 miles. Ie, perhaps it could have been done faster in Oregon.
Much of Iraq’s stockpiles were destroyed in the early 90s. The problem with Iraq was the remaining unaccounted for proscribed weapons and subsequent discovery of hidden stocks, risks which present for Syria. I don’t have details of either operation, but it seems the pace of destruction was faster for Iraq’s stocks than US stocks.
This is looking to be as effective as the attempt to ban guns. Meanwhile, the problem of free-willed human agents who have to be present to unleash such weapons (guns and WMDs alike) is studiously ignored. Billions for humanitarian invasions and occupations and nation-building fantasies but not a precious cent for even broaching the “raaaaacist” subject of armies of invader-immigrants staking their mosque-tents all over the free world.
The debate in America was never about whether Americans should pursue the interests of American exceptionalism in the world or not.
It was whether we would approach it from a Democrat perspective, where everyone else poorer than them are their slaves, or from a Republican perspective, which says that the US Constitution doesn’t like slaves and slave parts should be repealed, no matter what one’s personal like or dislike for the black race is.
In a sense, the whole Civil War argument was never settled to any particular faction. It’s still ongoing.
Putting my chemist’s hat on:
A depopulated hot desert is nature’s solution to nerve agents.
Oregon doesn’t have any… and the program was morphed into a financial hustle by the attorneys and the industry.
It is only necessary to stack up the ordnance and set ordinary charges in the manner that EOD teams are used to — out in the open desert.
Sarin, and all the rest, are quite unstable in nature. That’s why the act so quickly in the first place.
Notably, Sarin is destroyed by water vapor, a reaction that is neither very fast nor very slow.
All of the agents can’t suffer ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. They are volatile enough to rise to Heaven in Syria’s Fall climate.
Naturally, they break down upon hitting underground water.
These dynamics are typical across the entire range of chemical agents. Only reactive compounds will suffice, Duh.
The Johnston Island and Oregon and Rock Mountain Arsenal budgets are a testimony to an industry that was permitted to write its own ticket. They were turned into Moon projects — and careers for all involved: civil service, too.
Never did anyone approach the problem via reduction. (Hydrogen rich gases/ solutions in a SEALED environment)
Instead, everyone went with flame destruction. (Oxidation in a chamber, then venting) Such an approach produced super high temperatures.
In contrast, cooking Sarin in a steam bath, sealed, saturated with hydrogen would quantitatively destroy the agent in very short order. Exotic materials would not be needed.
Sacrificial glass shards would absorb all of the fuorine — otherwise a nasty element that really runs up expenses.
Syrian deserts are not short of silicon/ sand.
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As for Assad, himself, he ought to know that nerve agents are the worst kind of asset to have laying around during a civil war. Somehow they’ll manage to find their way to the rebels — and then the big man himself can’t be defended. He and his palace guard make a unitary target. Everyone else is laying in the grass.
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Which brings us to AQ. Barry is on their death list, as is Bush and Clinton.
The same dynamic holds for our Presidents: should the fanatics perfect chemical warfare, I would think that the President would become trapped in Washington.
Our leadership is highly visible, and out and about. The evil enemy is a back-stabbing crew willing and lusting for feral warfare.
This dynamic is not restricted to America. The entire leadership of the World is extremely vulnerable to suicide troops equipped with nerve agents.
That ought to focus even Putin’s mind. He’s on AQ’s death list, too, right along side of Assad and the mullahs. Prior working arrangements would be thrown over in a heartbeat if AQ thought that the way was clear for Allah.
There are a million reasons why it makes no sense for Assad to initiate nerve agent warfare.
And now we’re hearing tales that the gas attack victims are Alawite children kidnapped in the immediate days prior. The numbers nicely match up with French official estimates of the dead: less than 300 souls.
This kind of gambit would be typical for Muslims. In Iraq the US Army caught AQ in Iraq using severely retarded Shi’ite citizens as suicide bombers.
Syria is a sea of liars. We have no ‘side’ there. As Pallywood shows, the Arabs are first class victim-con artists. Without a doubt, Palestinians have joined the media fight, of which they are world class experts. All they have to do is drive east and turn left at Jordan.
my family lives near this:
Blue Grass Army Depot
Blue Grass Army Depot (BGAD) is a U.S. Army conventional munitions and chemical weapon storage facility located in east central Kentucky, southeast of the cities of Lexington and Richmond, Kentucky, operated by the United States Army. The 14,494-acre (58.66 km2) site, composed mainly of open fields and wooded areas, is used for munitions storage, repair of general supplies, and the disposal of munitions.
Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant
The Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant (BGCAPP) is a chemical weapons destruction facility under construction. The plant is being built to destroy the chemical weapons stockpile at the Blue Grass Army Depot (BGAD), near Richmond, Kentucky. The plant is dedicated to the destruction of 523 tons of nerve agents sarin (GB) and VX, and mustard agent, which constitute about two percent of the United States chemical weapons stockpile
so, there is 80 times that floating around the nation
the destruction started in the 1980s…
now let me tell you about the live anthrax in ny city on a tiny island here…
Russia entered the CWC with the largest declared stockpile of chemical weapons
they had a lot more than us..
and have continued making it more than 40 years after we stopped…
By 2010 the country had destroyed 18,241 tonnes…
thats really tiny if you know they had more than us, and one location in the use is 1/3 of that, with 80 times that remaining… ie. russia has destroyed less than 1% of theirs..
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and its also thought that they have not destroyed any nuclear weapons, just hid them under yamentau… a single shelter that is the size of the washington beltway that we (The US) helped them upgrade whiel we decommissioned ours.
The Soviet Union began a biological weapons program in the 1920s although the Soviet Union was a signatory to the 1925 Geneva Convention, which banned both chemical and biological weapons
they have a habit of breaking treaties as if they are nothing… which to them they are
By 1960, numerous BW research facilities existed throughout the Soviet Union. Although the USSR also signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the Soviets subsequently augmented their biowarfare programs. Over the course of its history, the Soviet program is known to have weaponized and stockpiled the following bio-agents
Bacillus anthracis (anthrax)
Yersinia pestis (plague)
Francisella tularensis (tularemia)
Burkholderia mallei (glanders)
Brucella spp (brucellosis)
Coxiella burnetii (Q-fever)
Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEE)
Botulinum toxin (botulism)
Staphylococcal enterotoxin B
Smallpox
Marburg virus
and to have pursued basic research on many more
These programs became immense and were conducted at 52 clandestine sites employing over 50,000 people. Annualized production capacity for weaponized smallpox, for example, was 90 to 100 tons. In the 1980s and 1990s, many of these agents were genetically altered to resist heat, cold, and antibiotics.
Boris Yeltsin admitted to an offensive bio-weapons program as well as to the true nature of the Sverdlovsk biological weapons accident of 1979, which had resulted in the deaths of at least 64 people.
this is the incident that they blame american bio labs for aids…
.
Sverdlovsk anthrax leak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak
All medical records of the victims had been removed in order to avoid revelations of serious violations of the Biological Weapons Convention.
2000s (decade): Academician “A.S.” proposed new biological warfare program “Biological Shield of Russia” to president Vladimir Putin. The program reportedly includes institutes of Russian Academy of Sciences from Pushchino
these places are still operasting, and one of the only two places that oculd manufacture the special anthrax that was released years ago…. but blamed on a US researcher that did not have access to the special silicon and other things.
and while western librals ad socialists complain about american programs and potential accidents, i guess they dont know agbout their dreamland
An outbreak of weaponized smallpox occurred during testing in 1971.
A research ship of the Aral fleet came 15 km away from the island (it was forbidden to come any closer than 40 km). The lab technician of this ship took samples of plankton twice a day from the top deck. The smallpox formulation– 400 gr. of which was exploded on the island–”got her” and she became infected
anyone who cooks would know what 400 grams is in a soviet cookbook… its about 3 1/2 cups (of flour)
Spores of weaponized anthrax were accidentally released from a military facility near the city of Sverdlovsk in 1979
The samples of Marburg taken from Ustinov’s organs were more powerful than the original strain. New strain called “Variant U” had been successfully weaponized and approved by Soviet Ministry of Defense in 1990
and you also have “The Chamber” (Kamera)
(“Laboratory No. 12”)
Kamera actively developed deadly poisons and gases.
[Kamera] it is it is now the main consumer and supplier of Department 12 of Directorate S of the SVR which handles biological warfare (under putin)
WSJ 2005: The KGB’s Poison Factory
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB111282082770699984.html
As I learned from his physician, Nikolai Korpan, whoever came up with his poison had produced a veritable bio-bomb, combining 2,3,7,8-TCDD with Alpha-Fetoprotein, a protein that helps the dioxin move around the body. Before this case, dioxin was considered an inappropriate poison because it can’t be dissolved in water, took effect only 10 to 13 days after contact and wasn’t fatal. But when mixed with the fetal protein, dioxin appears to be soluble and much more toxic, and acts almost immediately. Such creative combination is usually the claw mark of the Kamera.
the 1955 attempt on Nikolay Khokhlov, a defector from the KGB. He drank a cup of coffee at a public reception in Germany in 1957 and fell ill. In his blood the doctors found traces of thallium, a metallic substance commonly used as rat poison.
however, thallium treatment did not work
weeks later they discocered that this was radioactive thalium… so he was dying of radiation poisoning whiel they were treating him for thalium.
the gentleman killed by polonium was hoped thast the rare material would not be tested for!!!! as one needs access to a nuclear power plant to get enough to do that.
The Chechen rebel leader Khattab was poisoned by the FSB in March 2004
A KGB agent poisoned the food of the Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin in December 1979
Trotsky’s secretary Wolfgang Salus died mysteriously in 1957.
Lev Rebet was thought to have died from a heart attack in October 1957 until the KGB assassin defected four years later and told how he had sprayed a Kamera mist containing poisonous gas from a crushed cyanide ampoule into Rebet’s face as he passed him on a stairway
it wasnt cyanide… that woudl have come up in tests
today they say cyanide so copycats get caught
but years ago, they reported what it was…
Georgi Markov in 1978 was killed by Ricin in a bb about the size of a pin head… a defector filled us in on this
Georgy Okolovich was to be shot by a short range bullet in a gun that was a cigarette pack (james bond copies)
Polonium is so shockingly deadly that ONLY a state sponsor can initiate death by Polonium.
Polonium can kind of fake it as Oxygen in the organic chemistry of the body. Which is to say that once it’s well distributed, it can’t be swept out before the victim is dead. Unlike heavy metals, it refuses to be swept out of the body.
It’s so extremely deadly because it is a stew of alpha emitters. Indeed, Polonium has more isotopes (neutron variations) than ANY other nuclei. (!) So, in that stew, you have a brew of brutal alpha emitters that rip the DNA apart throughout the body.
Alpha emitters eject Helium nuclei. Until it slows down, this beast tears up every bond in its path.
The state sponsorship angle is there because ONLY a major atomic power has the big bucks required to extract it without promptly killing the atomic chemists! While the alpha emitters are easy enough to contain — Polonium is larded with Beta emitters and Gamma emitters, too. The latter is ruinous in a field weapon.
It’s a blessing that it’s so impractical as a weapon. It will always be restricted to wet work by the SVR/ KGB. It makes for an expensive ‘hit.’
In Western reactors, everything is done to suppress Polonium; which is normally waited out in cooling ponds nearby the reactors.
The only reason to use such a signature weapon would be to put out the word that Putin ordered the ‘hit.’ It’s such a trick element that it took Mr. Big to authorize it.
The players got the message.
blert – you are partially right. but the by-products are so toxic that open detonation of sarin or vx is just stupid.
btw, i worked at tooele.
Daneel…
In a war that has destroyed 100,000 lives the trivial risks of nerve agents burned/ released 150 miles from anywhere should be accepted.
The idea that you, me — anyone — has the TIME to dally around to do it the “right way” — with TIME as no object… cannot be sustained.
The single worst by product of nerve agent destruction tends towards HF or some of the phosphorous brews. Merely having spray towers up wind would cause the HF to condense and react with the desert sands/ rocks.
By selecting a hard rock formation, which get hot enough to fry eggs, the beasties cook themselves off.
Cloudless skies, UV factors beyond 8, and shear distance would do what man’s artifice has to do in the First World.
Wringing our hands because some of the stuff is nasty is not a solution to a dire threat posed by a loose inventory.
Some of the agents can’t survive the deep ocean — and are better off just sunk. Just make sure to do it in an oceanic desert — of which there is plenty.
What’s really not smart is to allow this ‘Sword of Damascus’ to hang over our world — hanging by only a thread. The need to cut it down is upon us.
Putin and Assad should see that chemical weapons + civil war = total disaster for the ranking politicians.
They have the potential to break our politics and our economy.
BTW, the number one reason for all of the separate elimination facilities is that no-one wants to ship these beasties often or far. Their contents are so chemically reactive that they’ve gone to work on internal seals and their containments, generally.
The biggest hitch in my proposal is that Assad is unable to even get the nasties out into the desert. His chemical warehouse is probably a disaster. They are the kind of thing that gets put away and left to decay. In the Third World that’s a very, very, scary situation.
And in other good news: AQ in Iraq has long ago embraced chemical warfare. AQ in Syria (al Nusra/ ISIL) has already been fingered by the Turks as having used Sarin. And the Turks are, more or less, on their side!
In these instances, the fanatics attacked Shia or Alawites — and then blamed Assad’s crew for using nerve agents. The Turks smelled a rat straight off.
When is Obama going to destroy his Weapons of Mass deception again?
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