Monday, May 22, 2006
Who Are We?
In our recent post Life v Fiction, Juli Meanwhile and I discussed the morbid aspects of chemical warfare nerve agents housed (and leaking) along the Columbia River between Washington and Oregon, just a short drive from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where nuclear waste in the groundwater is now headed for the river.
In the course of our conversation, Juli rhetorically asked what kind of people would make such stuff. The answer, technically, is scientists, but I rather think she was referring to our heinous capacity as a country for gruesome murder. Still, a perhaps more apropos question--given the usage of chemical warfare by the US military against the residents of the Iraqi city of Fallujah last year--is who would authorize its manufacture and utilization?
The answer to that's really quite simple--Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. The same person who, as President Reagan's envoy, made available these weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s for use against Iran. Their later use against the Kurds aside, the mere existence of WMD nerve agents in our arsenal should horrify us--it does everyone else.
In the course of our conversation, Juli rhetorically asked what kind of people would make such stuff. The answer, technically, is scientists, but I rather think she was referring to our heinous capacity as a country for gruesome murder. Still, a perhaps more apropos question--given the usage of chemical warfare by the US military against the residents of the Iraqi city of Fallujah last year--is who would authorize its manufacture and utilization?
The answer to that's really quite simple--Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. The same person who, as President Reagan's envoy, made available these weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s for use against Iran. Their later use against the Kurds aside, the mere existence of WMD nerve agents in our arsenal should horrify us--it does everyone else.
