Monday, November 14, 2005

Decades of dumping chemical arms leave a risky legacy

The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste - either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.

A Daily Press investigation also found:

These weapons of mass destruction virtually ring the country, concealed off at least 11 states - six on the East Coast, two on the Gulf Coast, California, Hawaii and Alaska. Few, if any, state officials have been informed of their existence.

The chemical agents could pose a hazard for generations. The Army has examined only a few of its 26 dump zones and none in the past 30 years.


But wait! It gets better:

The Army can't say exactly where all the weapons were dumped from World War II to 1970. Army records are sketchy, missing or were destroyed.


OK. Say it's next year. Or the year after that or the year after that. Florida has just been hammered by yet another "freak" hurricane, and the survivors are succumbing to toxins long since consigned to the Gulf's dark obscurity. How will FEMA react to that (if at all)?

2 comments:

eyemage said...

whose to say that hurricane survivors already are dealing with such toxins?

Ken said...

Indeed. Maybe they are. And, isn't this all just too cute. Nukes and nerve gas, bleep me a-runnin'!

The waste (no pun intended) by the military is actually unbelieveable. Just recently Rumsfeld said the Pentagon cannot accout for 2.3 TRILLION DOLLARS! Don''t know where it went. Sweet, huh? Meanwhile, grunts in Iraq are getting their asses blown off because Rummy sent a truly fine pickup truck to do the job of an ARMORED CAR OR TANK! God, give me strength; those fuckin' bastards. Incompetent bunch of fools running the show, while the men who really know what's going on and how to do it are out there risking their lives EVERY DAY, as the bureaucrats SCREW IT UP, by the numbers which they can't even FIND .... arrr.

So, a hunnerd years ago I was talking to an ex Navy man, and he told me this. In the late 1970s, he was on an aircraft carrier, based out of Pearl. So, they loaded the flight deck with trucks and jeeps, and proceeded a couple hundred miles off-island. Then, every single truck and jeep, and there were enough to literally COVER THE FLIGHT DECK was rolled overboard. How many's that? A thousand? Two? Cute, huh?

Of course, to be fair, it must also be admitted that the military has been doing an acceptable or better job of late, cleaning up its incredible past messes. When they can find them. Of course, the offshore dangers both here and in the Lower 48 will not be found.

Makes me think about Godzilla, it does. All pretty depressing to read. Infuriating.