I can understand why no one wants to take the chemical weapons, but this is insane!
"The United States is considering plans to place the chemical components of the weapons on a barge where they would be dissolved or incinerated.... Officials did not say whether any chemical residue would be dumped in the ocean."
Better be careful what you haul up in your fishing net!
"Syrian troops take key town near Lebanon border; Government seeking control of supply lines" by Albert Aji and Bassem Mroue | Associated Press, November 20, 2013
DAMASCUS — Syrian government troops captured a key town near the Lebanese border from rebels on Tuesday, days after launching a broad offensive in the mountainous western region, state media, activists, and the army said....
Related: Syria Still About Regime Change
State TV reported troops were ‘‘in full control,’’ while the army said in a statement that it had captured the town Tuesday morning and that ‘‘large numbers of terrorists who took positions in the city were wiped out.’’ The Syrian government refers to all armed opposition fighters as terrorists....
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that government troops control the town. It said the rebels, including members of the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, had withdrawn.
But Nusra Front fighters and members of Al Qaeda’s Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant vowed to return to Qara soon, the Observatory added.
A reporter for the private Lebanon-based satellite channel Al-Mayadeen who is embedded with the Syrian army reported from inside the town that troops had begun dismantling mines and explosives planted by the rebels. The channel showed soldiers on patrol searching for booby traps.
The border offensive is part of a larger government push that started last month and has taken several objectives, including a string of opposition-held suburbs south of Damascus as well as two towns and a military base around the northern city of Aleppo.
Meaning regime change will have to be accomplished some other way.
Qara, some 160 miles north of Damascus, has borne the brunt of the offensive so far. On Monday, government warplanes and artillery pounded the town and surrounding countryside, according to the Observatory, which uses a network of activists to monitor the conflict.
In other developments, unable to find a country willing to dispose of Syria’s chemical weapons, the United States is considering plans to place the chemical components of the weapons on a barge where they would be dissolved or incinerated, said senior US officials....
Or DUMPED!
And is it really a good idea to sail the stuff out into the ocean? What if it is sunk or capsized due to terrorism or bad weather? A floating barge of chemical weapons doesn't exactly sound secure. If anything they should leave them where they are.
Officials from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which is operating in Syria to locate and identify the weapons, would monitor the destruction, which would be carried out following safety standards set by legislation in the United States and the European Union, according to officials familiar with the proposal.
Related: Slow Saturday Special: Nobel Peace Prize Purely Political
Officials did not say whether any chemical residue would be dumped in the ocean.
Meaning that is exactly what they intend.
But hey, it would all be done according to western regulations with monitors watching. Who could ever doubt them or the mouthpiece media, huh?
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