Chemical Weapons
Western non-governmental organizations have stated they believe Syria has an active chemical weapons program. Syria is not a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention, though it denied that it had chemical weapons until admitting it possessed such weapons in 2012. Syria is one of six states that have not signed and eight that have not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. Syria reportedly manufactures Sarin, Tabun, VX, and mustard gas types of chemical weapons. Independent assessments indicate that Syrian production could be up to a combined total of a few hundred tons of chemical agent per year. (To provide context for this estimate, 190,000 tons were manufactured by World War I participants.)
Read more about this topic: Syria And Weapons Of Mass Destruction
Famous quotes containing the words chemical and/or weapons:
“We are close to dead. There are faces and bodies like gorged maggots on the dance floor, on the highway, in the city, in the stadium; they are a host of chemical machines who swallow the product of chemical factories, aspirin, preservatives, stimulant, relaxant, and breathe out their chemical wastes into a polluted air. The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91)