Troy Turner is editor-in-chief and senior consultant for AlaDefense.com.
IT WAS, WHEN THE NEWS FIRST became public, a strangely quiet and subdued announcement, and somewhat ironic.
Several days prior, an ongoing media frenzy began and remained in full feast mode as news organizations during the short-staffed July Fourth holiday week desperately scratched for anything to fill space and time slots. The main dish for one and all: That week’s report that the United States would be sending cluster munitions to Ukraine to help in its trench warfare with Russia.
Then, on July 7, 2023, at 5:56 p.m. East Coast time on a FRIDAY, the U.S. Department of Defense included in its daily press releases this announcement:
“US Completes Chemical Weapons Stockpile Destruction Operations”
Excuse me?
As in, a category considered weapons of mass destruction?
As in, the end and celebratory goodbye and good riddance to a stockpile of some of the worst and most horrific weapons known to mankind?
As in, the completion of an international treaty between the United States and Russia in which the American military and government beat a deadline with compliance?
Surely such an important and meaningful feat was more media worthy than the repeat-then-repeat again rehashing about the effects and morals of fighting an evil, murderous invader with a cluster bomb?
Cluster bombs? How horrible, using a killing tool that kills so well. But oh, hey, did someone mention that the United States just destroyed the last of its declared chemical weapons stockpile?
It didn’t take too long before someone at the White House saw the DOD’s short announcement and did what folks there for generations have done so well, and that’s to jump in front of a parade.
Although true in this case, the parade had to be turned around from somewhere else first, that being the sudden expansion of media expertise in cluster munitions.
Soon after, the media began playing catch-up, and the chemical weapons-destruction story began to get more attention. Still, was it enough?
No, it wasn’t.
The good news, bad news
“We have a national security imperative and moral obligation to work toward eliminating the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction,” said Under Secretary of Defense William A. LaPlante. “This is the first time an international body has verified destruction of an entire category of declared weapons of mass destruction, reinforcing the United States’ commitment to creating a world free of chemical weapons.”
Read that last sentence again: “This is the first time an international body has verified destruction of an entire category of declared weapons of mass destruction.”
Isn’t that good news?
Isn’t that frightening news?
It certainly should be… news.
And worthy of asking from the cynic’s corner, just how much weight does the anchor word in that sentence garner when the reader considers the word “declared?” What about the “undeclared” weapons, if/however they may exist?
Understand what you missed
The Anniston Army Depot in Anniston, Alabama, was created as an ordnance depot in 1941 during the early years of World War II and serves as but one example of how close we lived with these weapons. By the year 2000, a population of more than 100,000 people resided, worked, went to school, traveled and lived daily lives within a few miles of the depot, while 7 percent of the nation’s chemical weapons stockpile sat near them.
The maintenance and the storage of chemical munitions there began in 1963 and, in accordance with international treaty, were successfully eliminated through demilitarization beginning in 2003 and concluding in August 2011.
Nationally, July 7, 2023, marked the end of the overall effort to destroy the U.S. military’s declared stockpile of chemical weapons.
“The United States destroyed over 30,000 metric tons of declared chemical agent contained in nearly 3.5 million chemical munitions, over 22,500 one-ton containers containing chemical agent, and over 50,500 bottles and containers containing chemical agent,” said Kingston Reif, deputy assistant secretary of defense.
Nearly 90 percent of the weapons were eliminated by 2012.
The last 10 percent was a greater challenge involving a complicated approach of neutralizing the remaining chemicals.
The last mustard gas munition was destroyed at the Army’s Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado, and the Blue Grass, Kentucky, facility destroyed the last missile loaded with Sarin nerve agent.
The good riddance of these horrible weapons deserved bigger headlines, more public education into what the threat was, the well-done behind the mission accomplished, and the goal of never having them again.
The United States with its treaty commitment finally reached the finish line.
That, in my book, deserved stopping the presses.
Such as they are.
*****
Troy Turner can be reached at troyturner@aladefensecom. AlaDefense.com is a website dedicated to reporting Alabama-centric military and defense industry news, as well as serving as the host platform for a strategic communications service specializing in business, cybersecurity, defense industry and military fields of interest. Turner is a 35-year veteran journalist and holds a master’s degree in History/International Relations.
