BBC article - understanding who some of the Rebels are ! Opportunists
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24039309
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24039309
10 September 2013 Last updated at 12:44 ET
Mr Quirico said that paradoxically he was treated with most humanity when held by al-Qaeda
Mr Quirico's daughters appealed for information about their father on 1 June
Syria hostage Domenico Quirico 'treated like animal'
Mr Quirico said that paradoxically he was treated with most humanity when held by al-Qaeda
An Italian war correspondent held captive by multiple armed groups in Syria has spoken of how he was treated "like an animal".
Domenico Quirico was freed on Sunday, after being held hostage for five months along with Belgian teacher Pierre Piccinin da Prata.
In the pages of his newspaper, La Stampa, the 62-year-old described being subjected to two mock executions.
He said his captors were "mixed-up" men consumed by the pursuit of money.
Mr Quirico entered Syria from Lebanon on 6 April. He disappeared four days later near the city of Qusair - probably betrayed, Mr Quirico said, by members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
Over following months he and Mr da Prata were passed from one armed group to another.
The captives endured long, dangerous journeys that took them halfway across Syria as the battle frontlines shifted and they were forced to decamp.
He finally arrived home in early on Monday morning, after what Italian authorities said were extensive efforts by the Italian foreign ministry and other state agencies.
Money
"Our captors were from a group that professed itself to be Islamist but that in reality is made up of mixed-up young men who have joined the revolution because the revolution now belongs to these groups that are midway between banditry and fanaticism," he said.
"They follow whoever promises them a future, gives them weapons, gives them money to buy cell phones, computers, clothes."
Such groups, he said, were trusted by the West but were in truth profiting from the revolution to "take over territory, hold the population to ransom, kidnap people and fill their pockets".
Mr Quirico said he and his fellow captive were kept "like animals, locked in small rooms with windows closed despite the great heat, thrown on straw mattresses, giving us the scraps from their meals to eat".
Mr Quirico's daughters appealed for information about their father on 1 June
He said his guards seemed to take no interest in anything other money and weapons - spending entire days lounging on mattresses, smoking and watching old black-and-white Egyptian movies or American wrestling shows on television.
He said he felt these men took satisfaction from seeing what they would regard as two rich Westerners reduced to the status of beggars.
'Country of evil'
Once, Mr Quirico said he had borrowed a mobile phone from a wounded rebel fighter to call home. "It was the only gesture of pity I received in 152 days of captivity," he said.
"Even children and old people tried to hurt us. Maybe I am putting this in overly ethical terms but in Syria I really found a country of evil," he said.
Paradoxically, he said, "the only ones who treated us with humanity were those closest to al-Qaeda", because they had an attitude towards prisoners - a code of conduct - that other captors lacked.
Twice, Mr Quirico said, he was subjected to mock executions, including one in which a rebel held a loaded gun to his head.
He writes of his fear in a moment when his "executioner" stepped very close to him: "I could hear him breathing. I knew that he liked to have a man's life in his hands... that he liked making me afraid."
Mr Quirico does not write of exactly why he was finally released.
He talks of being forced to make a walk in the night and fearing that he was going to be shot in the back - but then hearing an Italian voice in the darkness, and realising that he was being freed.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/syrian-opposition-does-not-trust-russia
Syrian Opposition: "We Don't Trust the Russians"
| Tue Sep. 10, 2013 12:15 PM PDT
President Obama has reportedly thrown his support behind the Russian proposal for the Syrian regime to turn its chemical weapons over to the international community, agreeing to talks at the United Nations Security Council. But at a Tuesday morning press conference, representatives for the Syrian opposition made its position clear: "We don’t trust the Russians."
At the National Press Club in Washington, DC, members of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, the chief political body representing the US-backed rebels, asked for greater monetary and material support from the US, and made the case that the opposition was still capable of overthrowing the regime of Bashar al-Assad. But most pointedly, Farah al-Atassi, a Syrian Coalition member and president of the National Syrian Women Association, said that Russia’s close ties to the Assad regime have cost it any credibility in the negotiations. "After two and a half years of manipulating the Syrian revolution, of manipulating the situation on the ground, of aiding the regime with military weapons, with scuds, with money, with intelligence, with all of the support," she said, "we can’t trust them."
On Monday, Russia proposed a plan for Syria to turn its stockpile of chemical weapons over to the international community, after Secretary of State John Kerry said that was a possible option for avoiding a strike. The proposal has quickly gained momentum. The Assad regime embraced the proposal Tuesday morning, and by the afternoon, a bipartisan group of eight senators were drafting a Congressional resolution to give the United Nations time to take control of Syria's chemical weapons. The plan calls for them to be confiscated and ultimately destroyed, and could involve Syria recognizing the international weapons ban.
Russia has been a key supplier of arms and funds to the Assad regime, in addition to providing political cover, previously threatening to veto any plan for intervention at the UN Security Council.
"They’ve become part of the problem. They’re not part of the solution," said al-Atassi. "We will wait, and work according to the Syrian revolution’s interest. That will be our answer."
Consider how long the chemical weapon storage and destruction process will take - just using the US as an example and not constructing such a facility in an active war zone ! First a brief intro....Facility at issue in Kentucky began construction in 2006 ( just 72 percent completed today ) , not due to be completed until 2015 or later ! Assuming if is completed on time - chemicals in Kentucky will not be destroyed until 2023 ! That is a 17 year process - how long will it take to build such a facility in Syria , a warzone that is active ? Assume everything goes swimmingly , a best case scenario is probably twenty years at least ! And even more critically , the discussions / negotiations haven't started to reach an agreement , to start the process - of deciding how th chemical weapon issues presented by warzone Syria get addressed !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Grass_Army_Depot
Blue Grass Army Depot (BGAD) is a U.S. Army conventional munitions and chemical weapon storage facility located in east central Kentucky, southeast of the cities of Lexington and Richmond, Kentucky, operated by the United States Army. The 14,494-acre (58.66 km2) site, composed mainly of open fields and wooded areas, is used for munitions storage, repair of general supplies, and the disposal of munitions. The installation is used for the storage of conventional explosive munitions as well as assembled chemical weapons. The depot primarily is involved in industrial and related activities associated with the storage and maintenance of conventional and chemical munitions.[1][2]
The tenant organization, Blue Grass Chemical Activity, is responsible for the chemical weapons stored at BGAD. BGCA is part of the Army's Chemical Materiels Activity, headquartered in Edgewood, Maryland. The demilitarization of the chemical weapons is the responsibility of a third organization, ACWA.
BGAD provides munitions, chemical defense equipment, and ammunition support to the joint warfighter. It is the Department of Defense’s primary center for surveillance, receipt, storage, issue, testing and minor repair for the Chemical Defense Equipment Program. BGAD maintains and supports CDE stocks for deploying units and homeland defense forces, and is a training site for reserve component and other deploying units.
******
Chemical Weapons Destruction
Main article: Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant
BGAD stores a small stockpile of chemical agents, comprising 523 tons of nerve agents GB (sarin) and VX, and mustard gas, or about two percent of the United States chemical weapons stockpile.
Beginning in 2003, destruction of the Blue Grass chemical weapons stockpile, in accordance with the Chemical Weapons Treaty, was contracted out using a technology known as neutralization followed by supercritical water oxidation. This is a different method than the incineration that is used at the larger stockpiles.
Groundbreaking for the chemical destruction facility took place on October 28, 2006. Final design of the facilities should be complete in 2010 and actual construction in 2018, after which destruction of the weapons will begin.
http://www.kentucky.com/2013/09/09/2812927/chemicals-allegedly-used-in-syria.html
The alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria thrusts the international spotlight onto the same deadly "nerve agents" stored at Blue Grass Army Depot in Madison County.
Sarin, one of the world's most dangerous chemical warfare agents, has been identified by the United States as the substance loaded onto rockets on Aug. 21 and shot into the suburbs of Damascus. The Obama administration estimates that more than 1,400 people died.
Syrian President Bashar Assad is also thought to have used a network of front companies to import the precursors needed to make VX, the deadliest nerve agent ever created, The New York Times reported Sunday.
Both sarin and VX are internationally banned, both are stored in Madison County and both are scheduled to be destroyed there by a massive plant that is 72 percent complete. The plant is supposed to be finished in 2015, but it will take until 2020 for it to become operational. Then, according to the current timeline, it will take from 2020 to 2023 to destroy the weapons, said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a Berea-based citizens group that monitors the remaining weapons in Kentucky and Pueblo, Colo.
The international discussion over the alleged use of these weapons "highlights the lethality of this stuff that's sitting here," Williams said. "It tells me that we're on the right track of getting rid of this stuff for the safety of the local community, but also as a contribution to the global disposal of this stuff.
"The fact that it was even made is ridiculous, but the fact that we're moving forward is a positive thing," Williams said. "It certainly puts a bright line under the awareness of what it is we've got here and why we need to get rid of it in a safe manner."
President Obama will address the nation Tuesday night in a televised address to make his case to attack Syria in reprisal for using chemical weapons. The Obama administration has argued that the use of chemical weapons anywhere threatens the United States and its personnel everywhere.
Sarin disrupts the nervous system and overstimulates muscles and vital organs. It can be inhaled as a gas or absorbed through the skin. In high doses, sarin suffocates its victims by paralyzing the muscles around their lungs. About one drop of sarin can kill the average person in a few minutes.
What's worse is that sarin has been used by terrorists. In 1995, a Japanese doomsday cult used sarin in an attack on the Tokyo subway system that killed 12 people and sent more than 5,000 to hospitals.
If purer sarin had been released, particularly as an aerosol, the 1995 attack might have been much worse, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank.
VX is even more potent. It's been said that a drop of VX the size of George Washington's eye on a quarter is enough to kill a healthy 180-pound man within seconds. A cocktail of drugs can act as an antidote, but VX acts so quickly that victims "would have to be injected with antidote almost immediately to have a chance of survival," the Council on Foreign Relations says.
Although there is no conclusive evidence, some experts and an Iraqi defector say that Saddam Hussein used VX against Iranian forces in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, and then again in a 1988 attack on Iraqi Kurds. That massacre reportedly killed 5,000 people and created health problems for thousands more.
VX was never used by the American military in combat. Its lethal potential was demonstrated in 1968 when an aerial spraying test of VX at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah went awry, killing thousands of grazing sheep.
Sarin and VX are called "nerve agents" because they break down an enzyme that allows nerves to talk to each other, so victims become overstimulated. Difficulty in breathing, nausea, vomiting, convulsions and respiratory failure can result.
Blue Grass Army Depot was completed in 1942, and the first mustard projectiles arrived there in 1944.
Sarin was developed by a German chemist as a pesticide in 1938, and VX was developed by Great Britain in the 1950s in the course of researching pesticides. The United States began full-scale production of VX in 1961, as the Cold War with the Soviet Union began to heat up.
"It was the arm's race mentality," Williams said. "They were making it. We were making it. They made more, we made more."
The first rockets containing VX arrived at Blue Grass in 1962 and the first sarin rockets arrived in 1963. Sarin and VX projectiles arrived in 1965 and 1966, respectively. President Nixon halted the manufacture of chemical weapons in 1969.
At Blue Grass, the weapons are stored in the Chemical Limited Area, a 250-acre site of the 15,000-acre depot. Fences surrounding the area are topped with coiled razor wire, and signs warn intruders that "Use of Deadly Force is Authorized."
The weapons are cradled in wooden pallets and stacked like bottles of wine in 44 dirt-covered concrete bunkers or "igloos."
Blue Grass is the last site in the United States to continue storing sarin and VX; together, they comprise 433 tons of chemicals weapons stored in Madison County. The remaining 90 tons are mustard or blister agent.
It's commonly reported that Blue Grass has 523 tons of chemical weapons. To be more accurate, that's the tonnage of the sarin, VX and mustard chemicals alone.
"In other words, if you drained all the agent out of all the weapons, and put it in a big container and put it on a scale, that's what it would weigh," minus the explosive components, metal parts, shipping tubes or packaging materials, Williams said.
While the nerve agents are often referred to as "gas," they're actually viscous liquids with the consistency of mineral oil. Only if they were exploded from the air would they become an aerosol or "gas" that disperses.
Blue Grass Army Depot will be the last of nine sites to destroy its chemical weapons. The task is harder there because, unlike other sites, the chemicals are loaded in explosive M55 rockets and corroding projectiles that were meant to be shot out of cannons. The plant under construction will make heavy use of robots and other automated assemblies to separate the explosives and metal from the chemicals. Even with that automation, it will employ about 1,000 people.
The Army plans to heat the VX and sarin in chemical reactors to destroy them. The resulting hydrolysate will contain no detectable toxins. (While no final decision has been made, the mustard agent might be destroyed in a different process.)
Aside from Syria, the other four nations that have neither signed nor acceded to an international treaty banning chemical weapons are Angola, Egypt, North Korea and South Sudan. Israel signed the treaty but its parliament has not ratified it. Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) has also not ratified the treaty.
M55 rockets containing VX nerve agent are stored in a secure bunker at Bluegrass Army Depot in Richmond , KY. Photo taken during a media tour of the facility on September 6, 2001. Photo by Pablo Alcala Staff
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