Today's new term: chem demil. ...today marks the beginning of the end of a 20-year struggle to rid Madison County of its weapons of mass destruction.
Love those bureaucratic contractions...this one is short for "chemical demilitarization."
This item caught my eye as I perused this morning's reading.
Whaddya know! My old hometown is in the news again. This time because the Bluegrass Army Depot (which we always referred to as "The Bluegrass Ordnance") will become an employer cash cow for the local economy thanks to the efforts of Senator Mitch McConnell and others....U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and local politicians, military leaders, project officials and activists will welcome a $2 billion chemical neutralization plant that will employ hundreds of people and change the face of Madison's industrial economy.
Not to put too fine a point on it, I'm glad we moved away from the area when we did. It is a blessing that dangerous stockpiles of nerve gas and who-knows-what-else stored in those igloos haven't leaked too much into the local environment (as far as anyone knows) but I feel much better to have grown up hundreds of miles away.
More important, it will destroy 523 tons of lethal nerve and blister agent stored at Blue Grass Army Depot, some of it since World War II.
At least one observer takes a jaundiced view of Senator McConnell's...what's the right word?...tenacity?...duplicity?...success?
I watched Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil again last week. John Cussack delivers a great line describing the defense lawyer. "That man could spin horse shit into Egyptian cotton."
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
My Old Kentucky Home
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2 comments:
My only observations in previous posts are:
1. The 523 tons, as the smallest chem wpns dump in the US, should have been destroyed 10 years ago with incineration - easily done, and affordable.
2. McConnell and his staffers never wanted to listen to facts, when there were constituents ready to slime the Army with junk science
3. The "alt tech" of neutralization has never been tested on such a large scale, and will definitely cost much more without providing additional safety.
4. As a result of McConnell, the US govt is defaulting on its international treaty requirements.
Other than that, McConnell's done a great job of bringing in blood money and allowing the chem wpns to fester in place for another 10-15 years to come.
Thanks for your comment. Your points are well-taken. When you see such shennanigans up close it makes you want to scream or cry. When Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex he said a mouthful. He might well have said military/political/industrial complex.
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