O'Reilly: America and Syria

SYRIA LOADS SARIN GAS COMPONENTS INTO AERIAL BOMBS, US OFFICIALS SAY

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By Jim Miklaszewski and M. Alex Johnson, NBC News

The Syrian military is prepared to use chemical weapons against its own people and is awaiting final orders from President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday.

The military has loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs that could be dropped onto the Syrian people from dozens of fighter-bombers, the officials said. 

As recently as Tuesday, officials had said there was as yet no evidence that the process of mixing the "precursor" chemicals had begun. But Wednesday, they said their worst fears had been confirmed: The nerve agents were locked and loaded inside the bombs.

Sarin is an extraordinarily lethal agent. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces killed 5,000 Kurds with a single sarin attack on Halabja in 1988.

U.S. officials stressed that as of now, the sarin bombs hadn't been loaded onto planes and that Assad hadn't issued a final order to use them. But if he does, one of the officials said, "there's little the outside world can do to stop it."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated U.S. warnings to Assad not to use chemical weapons, saying he would be crossing "a red line" if he did so.

Speaking Wednesday at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Clinton said the Syrian government was on the brink of collapse, raising the prospect that "an increasingly desperate Assad regime" might turn to chemical weapons or that the banned weapons could fall into other hands. More >>

Source: Iran has 'armed' terror groups with chemicals

WND/ Reza Kahlili*

As the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas faction is escalating and rockets are hitting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Iran announced Friday that its missiles were being used against the Jewish state.

Rockets hit Tel Aviv Thursday for the first time since the 1991 Persian Gulf War when Iraqi scuds threatened the city. On Friday, Jerusalem also came under rocket fire from Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

According to a source in the Revolutionary Guards intelligence division, Iran has large stockpiles of chemical and microbial weapons and it has armed the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah with them. It also has Quds Forces in Gaza and other Palestinian territories to help Hamas and Islamic Jihad in setting up underground rocket facilities while training and supervising the Palestinians in launching attacks on Israel.

The escalation of the Gaza conflict was ordered by the highest authority in Iran, the source added, and rockets targeting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are in fact a warning to Israel that its Iron Dome missile defense system cannot thwart Iran’s ballistic missiles and tens of thousands of rockets and missiles in the hands of Hezbollah.

On the day that the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran is set to sharply expand its uranium enrichment in an underground site after installing all the centrifuges it was built for, the message was clear: An attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities will have destructive consequences for Israel.

The missiles fired by the Islamic Jihad that hit Tel Aviv were Iranian Fajr 5 missiles, according to the Islamic regime’s media outlet Nimrooz, which is close to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the mayor of Tehran and a possible candidate for president.

The outlet cited a recent quote by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic regime: “From now onward, we will support and help any nation, any groups fighting against the Zionist regime across the world, and we are not afraid of declaring this.”

The outlet said targeting the capital of the “Zionist regime” with this advanced technology is a big victory for the Palestinians and the resistance front — Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.

It quoted anonymous military analysts that the Fajr 5 has the longest range compared to other missiles launched from Gaza and then warned that Israel should expect bigger surprises. And the Fars news agency, the media outlet for the Revolutionary Guards, said Friday that 20,000 Basij forces are prepared to fight alongside the Hamas militants, even as Israel called up thousands of reserves for a possible ground operation.

Last month an Iranian drone launched by Hezbollah was shot down over Israel. The Islamic regime claimed that the drone flew hundreds of kilometers into Israeli airspace and got very close to the Dimona nuclear plant. It also claimed that the regime now possesses images of Israel’s sensitive sites.

As reported in August, an alarming commentary by Mashregh, a media outlet for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, claimed that Iran not only has WMDs but has armed its terrorist proxies with them.

The commentary recalled the doctrine of the founder of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini: “If they stand against our religion, we will stand against their world. … If all this bloodshed is to provide a better future for Israel, we will destroy their world.”

Mashregh said that in an all-out confrontation with Israel, “groups armed with weapons of mass destruction will surely target Tel Aviv.”

Iranian analysts believe America does not wish a confrontation with Iran and that Israel is on its own. President Obama in his press conference on Wednesday stated that there is still time for a diplomatic solution on Iran’s nuclear program and again reiterated that Iran can enjoy “peaceful nuclear power.”

But Friday’s IAEA quarterly report demonstrates that the Islamic regime is continuing its headlong approach to building nuclear weapons.

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Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and author of the award winning book “A Time to Betray” (Simon & Schuster, 2010). He serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI).

The Soviet ticking time bomb legacy

terrible. esta el asunto de las minas antipersonales que ha provocado cientos miles de mutilaciones y decenas de miles muertos. uno de los legados de los camaradas sovietivos que tambien transmitieron a los kaxtroz. hay un convenio internacional para evitar su empleo, pero los hp de siempre no lo han firmado entre ellos cuba. cientos [o miles que nunca se sabra] cubanos las han sufrido en los campos de mimas que rodean la base naval de guantanamo de lo cual nadie habla. hay cientos de miles sino millones de minas sembradas por militares cubanos en muchos lugares del mundo particularmente en africa y centroamerica. tampoco se habla de ello ni se piden responsabilidades  igualmente espantoso el asunto de las armas exportadas o regaladas a cualquiera que decia ser anti-yanqui. hoy cualquier idiota puede adquirir un akm-47 original en internet y causar una masacre. los otros - los yanquis digo-, tampoco se quedan atras.

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By Vasily Fedosenko

The Soviet Union collapsed overnight more than two decades ago. In Belarus, which suffered most in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, the sudden demise of the nuclear superpower five years later left enough lethal legacy of other types to endanger the lives of several future generations.

In a forest near the village of Savichi, some 160 km (100 miles) southwest of Minsk, one of these Soviet-era time bombs is still ticking. Here, under a thin layer of ground, hundreds of tons of highly toxic Soviet-made pesticides are stored in leaky dumps.

Located just 3 km (2 miles) from a busy motorway, the dump spreads the pungent smell of chemicals far beyond its perimeter marked by rows of barbed wire. The poisonous substances hastily buried here back in the 1960-70s include the dreaded dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, more widely known as DDT, banned worldwide for several decades because it can cause cancer in humans.

Belarus’s independence has given a new lease on life to places like Savichi, a forlorn area marked with signs reading: “Danger. Toxic chemicals.” A $5.5 million U.S. grant helps finance work aimed to clean up the pesticide disposal site. People clad in white chemical protection overalls and wearing gas masks load a greyish mixture of soil and chemicals leaked from rusty barrels into new blue-colored 70-kg (154 pound) plastic containers.

Last year, workers loaded and sent a total of around 950 tons of the toxic substance to Germany for environmentally safe processing. This year they are completing work at this old dump, having packed more than 600 tons of pesticides in more than 9,000 containers.

This project is coming to an end but officials say Belarus’s land holds several more huge Soviet-era dumps of toxic pesticides. And the time bombs continue ticking.

Soldados romanos hace 2.000 años, primeras víctimas de armas químicas

Universidad de Yale

Esqueleto del solado persa encontrado en los túneles de Dura-Europos

 

Soldados romanos de hace 2.000 años, las primeras víctimas de las armas químicas

#Libya: 'Chemical arms ability lacking'

Libya retains 9.5 tonnes of deadly mustard gas but no longer has weapons to deliver it, a watchdog agency has said, amid international concern that embattled leader Muammar Gaddafi might resort to its use.
Michael Luhan, spokesman for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), told Reuters the chemicals were under the army's control but were stored in a remote location far from the capital Tripoli, Gaddafi's main
bastion.

Full story
'Chemical arms ability lacking'

Gaddafi Ready To Use Chemical Weapons On Protesters!"

U.S. Worried by Remaining Libyan Chemical Arsenal

Is it an excuse like what happened with Iraq?

From NTI - Global Security Newswire

The status of Libya's remaining stockpile of mustard blister agent is a concern in the United States as it watches dictator Muammar Qadhafi try to hold on to power amid growing conflict in his nation, the Wall Street Journal reported today (see GSN, Feb. 23).

 

(Feb. 24) - Libya's old national flag is raised on top of a police station in the opposition-held city of Tobruk. Libya's mustard blister agent stockpile has been a source of concern amid widespread unrest in the North African nation (Patrick Baz/Getty Images).

Widespread unrest in the North African country continued today, with reports that foreign mercenaries and irregular security forces had mounted several attacks against opposition forces in areas close to the capital city of Tripoli, according to the New York Times. Qadhafi has said he is prepared to die rather than give up power and has urged those loyal to him to strike out against those seeking to topple his decades-old regime.
"When you have a guy who's as irrational as Qadhafi with some serious weapons at his disposal, it's always a concern," an unidentified U.S. official said. "But we haven't yet seen him move to use any kind of mustard gas or chemical weapon" in response to the protests.
Prior to this month's sweeping unrest, Libya had been making progress toward destroying its declared stockpile of chemical weapons. Tripoli has eliminated its arsenal of empty aerial munitions that could have been used to drop warfare materials and has destroyed more than 50 percent of its roughly 25-metric-ton cache of mustard agent, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said yesterday.
An OPCW spokesman this week said his agency believes Qadhafi years ago gave up the means to deploy his chemical weapons.
Sources in Washington said they are worried about the security of the chemical agents. They also left open the possibility that Qadhafi might try to somehow employ the mustard gas against his opponents.
"Had the destruction process not started, we would be facing a far more dangerous situation," former Bush administration disarmament specialist Paula DeSutter said. "On the other hand, one would certainly feel more secure if all of the mustard gas had been eliminated."
Qadhafi announced in 2003 he was ending his regime's effort to acquire a nuclear weapon capability and other WMD activities. Libya continues to possess outdated Scud B missiles and 1,000 metric tons of yellowcake uranium, according to U.S. officials.
Libya's destruction of its chemical arsenal has lagged as Tripoli and Washington have bickered over foreign financial support for the effort and other details. The North African state was supposed to have destroyed its mustard agent stockpile before 2010 was over but has been given an extension to May 15 (see GSN, Feb. 2).
Media reports on how much blister agent is left differ, with the Journal reporting 9.5 metric tons have yet to be destroyed (Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 24).
The Washington Times reported that issue experts estimate that Tripoli still holds almost 14 metric tons of mustard agent.
"Obviously, the security of the Libyan stockpile of chemical weapons is a concern," a U.S. intelligence officer said.
"You could see a scenario where Qadhafi takes troops away from these (stockpiles)," a Senate aide tracking events in Libya said. "He could be pulling his security forces off of his missions, and bring them to Tripoli and Benghazi and other towns he needs to secure to hold on to his regime and, as a result, these facilities will be unguarded."
DeSutter speculated that Qadhafi could use the blister agent against protesters even without munitions: "If you want to kill your people, you could pour it out on the street."
There are also concerns that extremists might exploit the security situation in the country and try to misappropriate the mustard gas.
"There are terrorists who may want to get their hands on these weapons, and, given the current state of chaos in the country, we need to be worried these chemical agents could fall into the wrong hands," Foreign Policy Initiative Executive Director Jamie Fly said (Eli Lake, Washington Times, Feb. 23).