The World Helped, Syria Amassed Nerve Gas

WASHINGTON — Syria’s top leaders amassed one of the world’s largest stockpiles of chemical weapons with help from the Soviet Union and Iran, as well as Western European suppliers and even a handful of American companies, according to American diplomatic cables and declassified intelligence records.

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 The diplomatic cables and other intelligence documents show that, over time, the two generations of Assads built up a huge stockpile by creating companies with the appearance of legitimacy, importing chemicals that had many legitimate uses and capitalizing on the chaos that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. A Russian general responsible for dismantling old Soviet chemical weapons, who died a decade ago, was identified by a colleague as the man who helped the Syrian government establish its chemical weapons program.  

As early as 1991, under the first Bush presidency, a now declassified National Intelligence Estimate concluded that “both Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union provided the chemical agents, delivery systems and training that flowed to Syria.” The same report concluded that Syria most likely possessed 500-kilogram aerial bombs containing sarin — larger, it appears, than the warheads mounted atop rockets that killed so many in the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus on Aug. 21....

 The most detailed and highly classified cables in the WikiLeaks trove underscore that, while Syria has the ability to make chemical weapons, it relies heavily on other nations for getting precursor ingredients that can also be used for medicine.  

Crucial chemicals and the missiles to deliver them have come not just from nations long allied with the Assad government, like Iran and Russia, but also from China (sometimes operating through North Korea) and a variety of Western nations, the cables and other documents show. In a few instances, American companies became players in Syria’s efforts to add to the sophistication of its stores.  

One of the best-known cases in the United States involved a Waterville, Me., company once known as Maine Biological Laboratories. The company and several top executives were found guilty of allowing a series of shipments to Syria in 2001, including restricted biological agents....Proliferation-monitoring officials attribute some of this failure to a simple lack of government resources to police the enormous volume of international chemical transactions, the globalization of that industry, and a greater concern about monitoring nuclear weapons.  

“Precursor chemicals have not gotten the same attention as the nuclear trade,” said one Congressional expert, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to talk about investigative findings. “It’s been a known problem for a long time, and yet it happens.” Read more

 All the Syrian people... wonder why they stockpile of chemical weapon for? You only ask yourself... for using it for their rainy day!  So the world is guilty.... you have to solve this mess!