U.S. unprepared for chemical attack as Islamic State nears Syria’s stockpile

On Jul 2, 2015

The U.S. government is unprepared for a chemical attack against the homeland, a new report shows, even as the Islamic State takes responsibility for more terror attacks around the world and inches closer to gaining access to Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile.

America is ill-equipped to handle the spread of a deadly virus, much less the exposure of U.S. citizens to biochemical weapons, said Ellen Carlin, one of the participants of the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, which will release a final report this fall.

The spread of Ebola from a sick Liberian national to Texas nurses Nina Pham and Amber Vinson last year shows the government needs to reconfigure — and possibly replace — the leadership and management structure surrounding its biodefense enterprise, Ms. Carlin said.

The panel has identified a number of gaps that cause the nation to be underprepared for biological threats, she said, including that it is unclear who is in charge of biodefense, a problem that became obvious during the Ebola crisis.

“Ebola was a wake-up call that we’re not doing enough,” she said. “I mean, the White House brought in an Ebola czar [who] we think wouldn’t have been necessary if the structure had been in place.”

The panelists also are alarmed by the U.S. government’s lack of a comprehensive biodefense strategy, she said. Over the years, government officials have crafted dozens of policies, directives, strategies, plans and statutes that require myriad responsibilities to be carried out by the departments and agencies that make it difficult to form a cohesive strategy, she said.

“Taken together, these documents spell out hundreds, if not thousands, of requirements for federal officials over thousands of programs,” she said. “It shows on the one hand that executive action and statute have been applied in well-intentioned efforts to facilitate progress, yet the staggering number of them leaves the entire enterprise in a state of disarray and confusion, particularly as administrations pass from one to the next, and ownership over documents and the institutional knowledge that goes with them is lost.”

Panelists are now in the process of deciding what the U.S. biological and chemical defense infrastructure should look like and will recommend ways in which the White House and Congress should address the nation’s “unnecessary” preparedness gaps, Ms. Carlin said. Those recommendations will not be made public until this fall, she said.

Lawmakers are already ringing the alarm bells that the U.S. is not prepared for a major biochemical threat.

The Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIL and ISIS, is looking to acquire and use military-grade weapons, and reports indicate the terror group has used chlorine gas in their attacks this year, Rep. Martha McSally, Arizona Republican and chairwoman of the House Homeland Security Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Communications Subcommittee, said in a March hearing.

“We find ourselves at a pivotal time in our fight against terrorists around the world,” Ms. McSally said. “ISIS is better resourced, more brutal and more organized than any terrorist group to date. We must ensure we work to prevent any attacks on U.S. soil, but we must also be prepared should one occur.”

Concern over national security vulnerabilities is spiking just as chemical attacks in Syria are on the rise.

Human rights activists say between March 16 and June 9, Syria’s civil defense teams responded to 23 air raids, which dropped 46 barrel bombs containing chlorine gas on civilians.

There are hundreds of pieces of evidence — including photographs, videos and testimonies — that prove that gas spreads from the aerially dropped barrel bombs, usually delivered by helicopters, MayDay Rescue Program Manager Farouq Habib told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs during a June hearing on chemical weapons attacks inSyria.

“These TNT-filled weapons, which eject nails, metal scrap and other random cheap and harmful shrapnel, take dozens of innocent lives every day, but, for many Syrians, have become merely traditional weapons compared to the more advanced ones the regime developed by adding chlorine gas, which is inexpensive and readily available,” he said.

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

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