St. Petersburg Times wrote:ANNISTON, Ala. -- They told William Hutchings he would have his building by now.
But when Hutchings and the 550 students, teachers and staff in his school practice what to do if there is an explosion at the Army depot 5 miles away, they pile into a converted music room, not a state-of-the-art shelter. Exhaust from the incinerator travels through the pollution abatement system before going out the stack.
If there is an accident, the veteran principal declares, "everyone here would die. Everybody'd die."
As Hutchings talks, he paces in the lot where his shelter is supposed to be, behind C.E. Hanna school in Hobson City, just southwest of Anniston.
On the other side of the hill, the Army has stored enough nerve agent and mustard to kill or incapacitate millions. The rockets, artillery shells and mortar rounds are pointed toward the sky, awaiting destruction.
It has been that way for 40 years. But as the United States prepares to attack Iraq, partly over Saddam Hussein's failure to rid his nation of chemical weapons, Anniston is a vivid reminder that the weapons of mass destruction from the 20th century were a lot easier to make than they are to destroy.
Though the United States is required by international treaty to be rid of chemical weapons by 2007, nearly 75 percent of the nation's now-banned arms still exist. It amounts to a nationwide stockpile of 23,415 tons of liquid sarin nerve agent, blister-causing mustard agent, a deadly nerve liquid called VX and variants.
That's 46,830,000 pounds of chemicals. A teaspoon of any of them is enough to kill or maim.
Most of it is stored at eight sites around the country, still in the munitions into which it was loaded at the factory in the 1940s and '50s. It was never used in battle, only in practice. There are hundreds of other "nonstockpile" sites, as the Army refers to them, around the country. Several are in Florida, including the Tampa Bay area.
In Anniston, the more than 600,000 munitions that arrived in trains and trucks in the 1960s have long been the subject of whispers in the town of 24,276 in a county of 112,249. But as the date for their incineration approached last month, the whispers turned to debate.
Today, the residents of Calhoun County agree they want the weapons gone. But they divide sharply over how -- and how quickly -- the destruction should occur.
On one side are those who want the weapons to go away fast -- at least as soon as the Army prepares schools and homes just in case of an accident at the new incinerator at the depot.
On the other are those who have been fighting incineration for a decade. They hope the Army will be forced to scrap its burning plans in favor of what they believe is a safer process of chemical "neutralization" followed by disposal.
Look at how this evil nation has stalled the destruction of these weapons of mass destruction and chemical warfare for over forty years! the UN must act!
yeah it is, and the US is given this extra time beause we have never used it on oposition. or rather our own people like Sadamn.
Whenever death may surprise us,
let it be welcome
if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear
and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.
Nobody's gonna miss me, no tears will fall, no ones gonna weap, when i hit that road.
my boots are broken my brain is sore, fer keepin' up with thier little world, i got a heavy load.
gonna leave 'em all just like before, i'm big city bound, your always 17 in your hometown
It was never used in battle, only in practice. There are hundreds of other "nonstockpile" sites, as the Army refers to them, around the country. Several are in Florida, including the Tampa Bay area.
they have never been used. some accidents have occoured where the posability of leakage has happened, but never have they been used on their own people. accidents happen.
Whenever death may surprise us,
let it be welcome
if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear
and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.
Nobody's gonna miss me, no tears will fall, no ones gonna weap, when i hit that road.
my boots are broken my brain is sore, fer keepin' up with thier little world, i got a heavy load.
gonna leave 'em all just like before, i'm big city bound, your always 17 in your hometown
obviously they had a right to not allow it there, yet they must have voted to allow it there. when you accept something like that in your area you need to weigh the consequences, so there must be a plus to this site being here. and it must outweight the chance that leakage is possible.
Whenever death may surprise us,
let it be welcome
if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear
and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.
Nobody's gonna miss me, no tears will fall, no ones gonna weap, when i hit that road.
my boots are broken my brain is sore, fer keepin' up with thier little world, i got a heavy load.
gonna leave 'em all just like before, i'm big city bound, your always 17 in your hometown
and you yourself are a perfect being, that can judge the moral and the immoral right?
Whenever death may surprise us,
let it be welcome
if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear
and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.
Nobody's gonna miss me, no tears will fall, no ones gonna weap, when i hit that road.
my boots are broken my brain is sore, fer keepin' up with thier little world, i got a heavy load.
gonna leave 'em all just like before, i'm big city bound, your always 17 in your hometown
tional thinking tells you that government is not needed....right!
Whenever death may surprise us,
let it be welcome
if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear
and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.
Nobody's gonna miss me, no tears will fall, no ones gonna weap, when i hit that road.
my boots are broken my brain is sore, fer keepin' up with thier little world, i got a heavy load.
gonna leave 'em all just like before, i'm big city bound, your always 17 in your hometown
We're not trying to hide the fact that we have chemical weapons, I can give directions to anybody who wants to see where they're at. We have thousand of tons of mustard gas and other chemical weapons in Oregon. And an incinerator where it gets destroyed. They considered using the chemical neutralization process because it that would be faster, but I think it would have required using water and they didn't want to risk messing up the water around here.
It was dumb for us to have them in the first place. I wish they would speed things up a bit, but if it's a matter of safety while they're being destroyed or having them destroyed by the deadline, I would have to pick safety.
-Josh
I <3 Kiwi
"The fundamental thing about music is its destiny to be broadcast or shared." -Colin Greenwood of Radiohead
"Pussies dont like dicks, cause pussies get fucked by dicks.. but dicks also fuck assholes. Assholes who just wanna shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way, but the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick.. with some balls." - team america
"Pussies dont like dicks, cause pussies get fucked by dicks.. but dicks also fuck assholes. Assholes who just wanna shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way, but the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick.. with some balls." - team america
canada isn't in it because a) war is the last sanction of failure and our government and people feel that not all options have been exhausted and b) because we don't have the resources to make any kind of contribution.
this has nothing to do with canada being america junior. what does that even mean? if you're suggesting that canada is the same as the U.S. just not as big, wouldn't we be for the war rather than against it?
