© Reuters/Hugh Gentry
The potential of strategic US strikes in Syria has sparked fears Damascus' chemical weapons could fall into the wrong hands if the government is toppled. A recent congressional report says 75,000 troops would be needed to safeguard the WMD caches.
The Congressional Research Center (CRS)
report,
issued just one day before the alleged August 21 chemical weapons attack in a Damascus suburb, was compiled with the aim of
"responding to possible scenarios involving the use, change of hands, or loss of control of Syrian chemical weapons."It states that Syria's chemical weapon stockpiles, which a French intelligence report recently estimated at over 1,000 tons, have been secured by Syrian special forces.
"Due to the urgency of preventing access to these weapons by unauthorized groups, including terrorists, the United States government has been preparing for scenarios to secure the weapons in the event of the Assad regime's loss of control," the document reads
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 7, 2012, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned the ouster of Assad would present a scenario "100 times worse than what we dealt with in Libya."
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