ClumsyMonkey.net

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.

reno_ruelas wrote: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.

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.