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U.S. Concerned as Syria Moves Chemical Stockpile

(Wall Street Journal) Julian E. Barnes, Jay Solomon and Adam Entous - Syria has begun moving parts of its vast arsenal of chemical weapons out of storage facilities, U.S. officials said. Syria's stockpiles of sarin nerve agent, mustard gas and cyanide have long worried U.S. officials. Some U.S. officials fear Damascus intends to use the weapons against the rebels or civilians, while other officials said Assad may be trying to safeguard the material from his opponents or to complicate Western powers' efforts to track the weapons. "If we believe the Assad regime and their closest allies view this as an existential struggle, we have to assume they could use chemical weapons against their population at some point in the conflict," said Joseph Holliday, a former Army intelligence officer and an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. "This could set the precedent of WMD [weapons of mass destruction] being used under our watch," one U.S. official said. "This is incredibly dangerous to our national security."
2012-07-13 00:00:00
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