Kentucky's senior U.S. Senator has tacked an amendment onto the Emergency
Supplemental Bill which would kick start the stalled chemical weapons disposal
plant project at the Blue Grass Army Depot south of Richmond. Senator
Mitch McConnell, (R) Kentucky), attached the amendment in the full Senate
Appropriations Committee Wednesday night, sending the measure on to the full
Senate for an expected vote next week. If it passes the Senate, it
would go into conference committee with the House. The amendment requires the Pentagon to restore millions of dollars in funding
it froze late last year, money needed to keep design and eventual construction
of the $2 billion chemical weapons facility going. In a satellite interview
from Washington D.C. with Action News 36 today McConnell said of the Pentagon,
"I don't trust them anymore." He says he wrote the amendment in such
a way that the Pentagon doesn't "have any leeway anymore." Chemical Weapons Working Group Director Craig Williams, the leading citizens'
watchdog on the chemical weapons stockpile said McConnell's congressional
maneuver, if passed, "will rejuvenate this program and get things back on
track at a very increased level of activity." The 523 tons of chemical weapons stored in a tightly guarded compound at
the army depot, including nearly 70,000 m-55 rockets, ready to fire, filled
with deadly nerve agent, must be destroyed by 2012 under an international
treaty. However, the Pentagon has confirmed that with the delays it
caused by the funding freeze the date for finishing destruction at Blue Grass
has slipped to 2018.