Defense Environment Alert -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates is signaling his support -- via a boost in his department's fiscal year 2009 budget request -- for a recently passed congressional mandate that the United States destroy all its stockpiled chemical weapons by 2017, which will require the Pentagon to accelerate its current timeline by six years. Gates' commitment is reflected in a Jan. 11 letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), a long-time critic of the military's management of...
