History in the News - Essay Example

Army Corps Finds New WWI Chemical Site in DC Yard URL: http www.foxnews.com/us 04/16/army-corps-finds-new-wwi-chemical-dc-yard/ April 16, 2010Comment: As we all know, the United States is one of the main advocates for a bio chemical weapon free world. Such is the advocacy of the country that it declared war on Iraq due to its preceived bio chemical threat. So it comes as a great surprise to me to learn that the United States was once also a purveyor of bio chemical threats. More so, that it experimented with it during World War I and then just completely forgot about it.

That is until the recent discovery of long buried bio-chemical agents in a multi million dollar housing area in Spring Valley. Now it looks like the United States government wants to take short cut in cleaning up the chemical mess and would like to pretend it never existed as well. The reality is that the United States should not be so quick to call a kettle black. The country also has skeletons in its closet and should learn to lead by example. That means no short cuts with this clean up and making sure it does not negatively affect the current residents of the area.

The reason that this problem is so worriesome is because the chemicals that were discovered, almost a hundred years after the war, can still cause harm to the people working in the area and the residents. This discovery teaches us all a valuable lesson, weapons of mass destruction will continue to destroy lives long after the war if it is not disposed of properly and the areas when it is buried must be declared “dead” sites where nothing should ever rise in support of human life.