Does The U.S. Still Have Chemical Weapons?

Veuer

The use of chemical weapons during warfare were made illegal by the Geneva Protocol way back in 1925, shortly following the horrific events of world war one. Now, nearly 100 years later, the US military has finally disposed of its last drop of its reserves of those very weapons. Veuer’s Tony Spitz has the details.

Transcript

00:00The use of chemical weapons during warfare was made illegal by the Geneva Protocol way back

00:04in 1925, shortly following the horrific events of World War I. Now, nearly 100 years later,

00:10the US military has finally disposed of its last drop of its reserves of those very weapons,

00:16some three decades after US and Russian leadership vowed to do just that.

00:20Just a little over a week ago, the US got rid of its last piece of ordinance,

00:24containing a sarin gas payload. After the supply was incinerated, William A. LaPlante,

00:29under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, had this to say about it.

00:33This is the first time an international body has verified destruction of an entire category

00:38of declared weapons of mass destruction, reinforcing the United States' commitment

00:42to creating a world free of chemical weapons. Despite the horrors of World War I and the

00:46countless losses due to battlefield nerve agents, both Russia and the US continued to advance not

00:51only their stockpiles, but also the diversity of their deadly gases, sarin being one of the

00:56most lethal of all nerve agents. Now that the chemical gases are disposed of, the facilities

01:01in which they were destroyed can now begin their clean-up, a process which is expected to take years.

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