Above The Law
Well, it's official: the USA is once again in breach of international law on Weapons of Mass Destruction. On Wednesday, it quietly admitted that it would not meet its requirement under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention to destroy 45 per cent of its stockpile by April next year. This stockpile includes 3.3 million (yes, million) bombs, rockets, shells and cartridges, as well as the surprisingly precise figure of 315,682 'binary munitions', which spray lethal gas in flight. Nice.
This sort of this sort of thing is now so commonplace as to barely merit attention, but in this particular case raises an interesting point. The US is applying for an extension on the deadline, not because it feels - at least publicly - that the weapons are still needed. Instead, it's because of the sheer effort required to destroy these deadly chemicals, with constant setbacks and budget inflation leading to lengthy delays.
What, then, does this mean for the situation in the middle-east? How is it possible to square America's own difficulties with its demands for speedy disarmament elsewhere? Or for the apparent confusion over whether Iraq ever had an extensive chemical arsenal, and whether it was destroyed?
You can read more about it here.
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