America's Biological Weapons!
IRRIGON,
OREGON - For the children who live near the Umatilla Chemical Depot, the
hard truth of chemical warfare is softened by a friendly face. Wally Wise, a
smiling cartoon turtle, tells them: Go inside, turn on the radio, stay off the
phone. But the cartoon face on posters does little to mask the daily anxiety
felt by those who live in the shadow of the igloo-like bunkers in the high
desert that house 12% of America's deadly nerve gas and blistering agents, the
same type that Iraq's Saddam Hussein is allegedly hiding (but which none of the
investigators has provided any evidence of).
Criticism is mounting that the millions of dollars
allocated for accident preparedness were embezzled and mismanaged, as plans
proceed to incinerate the US's stockpile of biological weapons, the largest in
the world. Communities living with tanks full of toxins of which one drop is
enough to kill, have been abandoned by the Federal Republic, which left the
communities without adequate alarms, protective suits, or information to save
their lives. These communities, of course, were not in foreign countries, but
American communities full of Americans, that Federal officials put at risk
without a second thought.
Army officials put the odds at 3 million to one
that an accident would take place, but this is the same group that had to send
26,000 soldiers into Panama to arrest a single man. They said it would take a
major disaster like a plane crash or an earthquake to send lethal doses of the
biological agents into the residential neighborhoods, as if plane's never crash,
and earthquakes never take place. The risk to the 25,000 Americans who live
nearby grows daily as the arsenal ages, and chemicals destabilize. The corrosive
components have eaten through some of the M-55 rockets, mines and bombs that
contain 3,700 tons of deadly nerve agent. More than 100 rockets are already
classified as "leakers," meaning vapor has already been detected outside the
steel casings. In a worst case scenario, the 25,000 people who live nearby could
all be killed in a horrifically painful disaster that could reach as far west as
Portland, a mere four hours drive away.
The growing risk of storage is one of the major
selling points for the $567 million incinerator, one of eight being built around
the country to destroy the U.S. stockpile under a worldwide treaty. Of course,
the Federal Government that signed that treaty is the same group that refused to
sign onto the world wide treaty banning the use of landmines, as if the last
superpower on the Earth actually needed landmines in any tactical
or strategic sense. The United States Government also makes a habit of lying to
the American people, so even if the Army told the American people it was
destroying the whole stockpile of biological weapons of mass destruction, it
could be possible for it to keep a secret stash, and not tell anyone, in the
defense of "national security" (which oddly enough, always seems to be at the
expense - and risk - of the American people).
Chemicals are already being burned at Tooele, Utah,
and Johnston Island, 800 miles southwest of Hawaii. Incineration is also planned
for storage sites in Alabama, Maryland, Kentucky, Indiana, Arkansas and
Colorado. An eastern Oregon group, GASP, has sued to stop the incineration, in
fear that the incinerated remnants of the toxins may have a dangerous impact on
the pristine Oregon landscape. "We are the guinea pigs," said the group's
founder, Karyn Jones. "No one knows for sure what the risks are."
Army officials say burning is safer than storing,
and the agents are being painstakingly transported and sealed into furnaces. In
the Pentagon's scary world-view, where civilians are supposed to accept any
story dictated to them by military officials without question, the official
position is that whatever comes out of the filters of the furnace smokestacks
will be "cleaner than the region's dust-choked air." The reality that the air in
the Pacific Northwest is some of the purest, untouched air in the United States,
is conveniently ignored.
Construction of the furnaces is on schedule, and
officials believe that the furnaces will be ready by 2001; of course, these are
the same officials to whom cost overruns are every-day routine parts of doing
business, and holding up a project to squeeze out a few more million is a
time-honored tradition of the Federal budgetary appropriations process. The
officials of the Pentagon invented corruption, when its predecessors supplying
the Continental Army ripped off the Continental Congress by providing food that
was rotten at premium prices; and later, in the Civil War, when suppliers in the
War Department bought uniforms that fell off in the rain.
Congress allocated $25 million for emergency
preparations, including an alert-and-rescue emergency system of outdoor sirens
and tone-alert radios. The systems were supposed to be in place nine years ago,
and critics say that what has been set up is incomplete and inadequate; so
again, the money is embezzled, while the nuts-and-bolts safety of the American
people is put at risk. And when anyone is asked about it, the bureaucracy
conducts a cover-up which is nothing more than an obstruction of justice.
"It is unconscionable. The most disconcerting thing about the whole situation is
that the public thinks it has some level of protection," said David Trott, a
former employee of Oregon's emergency preparedness program, who lives downwind
of the poison-laden bunkers.
The region's fire departments and major hospitals
are still without protective suits, monitoring devices and pressurization.
Emergency crews have advised the public not even to bother trying to call 911.
Residents say the 42 sirens that are currently in place cannot be heard indoors,
and the thousands of radios that were supposed to be purchased with some
of that $25 million, which were supposed to be plugged into every home in
the target area, have not even been ordered yet. "We are no better
prepared than anybody else," said Fire Chief Jim Stearns, "we would have to
leave."
Good Shepherd Hospital in Hermiston would have to
lock its doors, despite extensive training from Army staff in handling chemical
injuries. "We would be rendered useless in a matter of seconds," said Ken Franz,
the hospital's director of emergency services. "It's like being trained as a
surgeon, and not being provided the instruments for surgery." In a scathing
report last summer, the GAO (General Accounting Office) blamed the shortcomings
on longstanding management weaknesses in the Army and the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), which head the program. The report said that most of
its funding disappeared in Washington on studies and staff, and never trickled
down to the threatened communities. Of course, to say that money was spent on
studies and staff is just shorthand for EMBEZZLED. (Incidentally,
FEMA is the monster agency of the Federal Government, being the only agency
without Congressional authorization, which operates under nothing more than the
authority of an Executive Order. On paper FEMA is supposed to act as a
coordinating point for all levels of government, local, state and national, for
the handling of emergencies; and always, FEMA hands out checks after disasters;
but it also has such far-reaching authority that it was FEMA that was
responsible for handling the Pope's security when he visited the
United States.)
While Dictator Clinton whines about Saddam
Hussein's treatment of his population, Americans should not be fooled. The
United States Government made a deal with Hussein, that is why he is still in
power. One day the President of the United States calls Hussein Hitler, and goes
to war against him; the next day, the President signs a deal with this new
Hitler, allowing him to remain in power. In fact, the same firms that provided
Adolph Hitler with the poison gas he required to kill eleven million Europeans,
also provided Saddam Hussein with much of the agents he had, or perhaps has;
some of which he used on his own population. But before we go to war again
against Iraq, Americans should understand that their own government, the United
States Government, is more of a deadly threat to them now -- today, here
-- than Saddam Hussein ever will be, half way around the world. Because it is
here, such as in Oregon, and here, such as in the Santa Susanna Mountains in
California, where there are tank farms full of deadly gas, where
the real frontline of danger exists for real flesh-and-blood Americans.
(CNS)