Is using chemical weapons really that bad?

[ronthenekred]

There's something not right about the whole thing to me. I can't see the Syrian government as being so stupid.

 

You'd have thought it wouldn't you. Sadly like the rebels they have a couple of things in common. Megalomania and God.

[Scabbydog]

I use fly spray and slug pellets.

 

---------- Post added 01-09-2013 at 14:03 ----------

 

They haven't been banned, in 1925 the Geneva Protocol prohibited the use of chemical weapons in warfare, but it didn't prohibit development or use on countries that were out side the Geneva Protocol, nor did it ban the use of chemical weapons in retaliation to chemical weapons being used against you.

 

All in all a useless bit of legislation.

 

Plus Syria isn't actually at war with anyone.

[Obelix]

Plus also there is this..

 

http://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/

[erebus]

THe US does not and never cares what is legal or not, MIGHT is always RIGHT, and who are you or I to question shuch power.

 

THe The United States has deployed its Chemical Biological Weapons arsenal against the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Haitian boat people and Canada, plus exposure of hundreds of thousands of unwitting US citizens to an astonishing array of germ agents and toxic chemicals, killing dozens of people.

 

 

The US experimentation with bio-weapons goes back to the distribution of cholera-infect blankets to American Indian tribes in the 1860s. In 1900, US Army doctors in the Philippines infected five prisoners with a variety of plague and 29 prisoners with Beriberi. At least four of the subjects died. In 1915, a doctor working with government grants exposed 12 prisoners in Mississippi to pellagra, an incapacitating disease that attacks the central nervous system.

 

After World War I, the United States went on a chemical weapons binge, producing millions of barrels of mustard gas and Lewisite. Thousands of US troops were exposed to these chemical agents in order to “test the efficacy of gas masks and protective clothing”. The Veterans Administration refused to honor disability claims from victims of such experiments. The Army also deployed mustard gas against anti-US protesters in Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the 1920s and 1930s.

 

In 1931, Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, then under contract with the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations, initiated his horrific Puerto Rico Cancer Experiments, infecting dozens of unwitting subjects with cancer cells. At least thirteen of his victims died as a result. Rhoads went on to head the US Army Biological Weapons division and to serve on the Atomic Energy Commission, where he oversaw radiation experiments on thousands of US citizens. In memos to the Department of Defense, Rhoads expressed his opinion that Puerto Rican dissidents could be “eradicated” with the judicious use of germ bombs.

 

In 1942, US Army and Navy doctors infected 400 prisoners in Chicago with malaria in experiments designed to get “a profile of the disease and develop a treatment for it.” Most of the inmates were black and none was informed of the risks of the experiment. Nazi doctors on trial at Nuremberg cited the Chicago malaria experiments as part of their defense.

 

At the close of World War II, the US Army put on its payroll, Dr. Shiro Ishii, the head of the Imperial Army of Japan’s bio-warfare unit. Dr. Ishii had deployed a wide range of biological and chemical agents against Chinese and Allied troops. He also operated a large research center in Manchuria, where he conducted bio-weapons experiments on Chinese, Russian and American prisoners of war. Ishii infected prisoners with tetanus; gave them typhoid-laced tomatoes; developed plague-infected fleas; infected women with syphilis; performed dissections on live prisoners; and exploded germ bombs over dozens of men tied to stakes. In a deal hatched by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Ishii turned over more than 10,000 pages of his “research findings” to the US Army, avoided prosecution for war crimes and was invited to lecture at Ft. Detrick, the US Army bio-weapons center in Frederick, Maryland.

 

In 1950 the US Navy sprayed large quantities of serratia marcescens, a bacteriological agent, over San Francisco, promoting an outbreak of pneumonia-like illnesses and causing the death of at least one man, Ed Nevins.

 

A year later, Chinese Premier Chou En-lai charged that the US military and the CIA had used bio-agents against North Korea and China. Chou produced statements from 25 US prisoners of war backing him his claims that the US had dropped anthrax contaminated feathers, mosquitoes and fleas carrying Yellow Fever and propaganda leaflets spiked with cholera over Manchuria and North Korea.

 

From 1950 through 1953, the US Army released chemical clouds over six US and Canadian cities. The tests were designed to test dispersal patterns of chemical weapons. Army records noted that the compounds used over Winnipeg, Canada, where there were numerous reports of respiratory illnesses, involved cadmium, a highly toxic chemical.

 

In 1951 the US Army secretly contaminated the Norfolk Naval Supply Centerin Virginia with infectious bacteria. One type was chosen because blacks were believed to be more susceptible than whites. A similar experiment was undertaken later that year at Washington, DC’s National Airport. The bacteria was later linked to food and blood poisoning and respiratory problems.

 

Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park, Florida were the targets of repeated Army bio-weapons experiments in 1956 and 1957. Army CBW researchers released millions of mosquitoes on the two towns in order to test the ability of insects to carry and deliver yellow fever and dengue fever. Hundreds of residents fell ill, suffering from fevers, respiratory distress, stillbirths, encephalitis and typhoid. Army researchers disguised themselves as public health workers in order to photograph and test the victims. Several deaths were reported.

 

In 1965 the US Army and the Dow Chemical Company injected dioxin into 70 prisoners (most of them black) at the Holmesburg State Prison in Pennsylvania. The prisoners developed severe lesions which went untreated for seven months. A year later, the US Army set about the most ambitious chemical warfare operation in history.

 

From 1966 to 1972, the United States dumped more than 12 million gallons of Agent Orange (a dioxin-powered herbicide) over about 4.5 million acres of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The government of Vietnam estimated the civilian casualties from Agent Orange at more than 500,000. The legacy continues with high levels of birth defects in areas that were saturated with the chemical. Tens of thousands of US soldiers were also the victims of Agent Orange.

 

In a still classified experiment, the US Army sprayed an unknown bacterial agent in the New York Subway system in 1966. It is not known if the test caused any illnesses.

 

A year later, the CIA placed a chemical substance in the drinking water supply of the Food and Drug Administration headquarters in Washington, DC. The test was designed to see if it was possible to poison drinking water with LSD or other incapacitating agents.

 

In 1969, Dr. D.M. McArtor, the deputy director for Research and Technology for the Department of Defense, asked Congress to appropriate $10 million for the development of a synthetic biological agent that would be resistant” to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease”.

 

In 1971 the first documented cases of swine fever in the western hemisphere showed up in Cuba. A CIA agent later admitted that he had been instructed to deliver the virus to Cuban exiles in Panama, who carried the virus into Cuba in March of 1991. This astounding admission received scant attention in the US press.

 

In 1980, hundreds of Haitian men, who had been locked up in detention camps in Miami and Puerto Rico, developed gynecomasia after receiving “hormone” shots from US doctors. Gynecomasia is a condition causing males to develop full-sized female breasts.

 

In 1981, Fidel Castro blamed an outbreak of dengue fever in Cuba on the CIA. The fever killed 188 people, including 88 children. In 1988, a Cuban exile leader named Eduardo Arocena admitted “bringing some germs” into Cuba in 1980.

 

Four years later an epidemic of dengue fever struck Managua, Nicaragua. Nearly 50,000 people came down with the fever and dozens died. This was the first outbreak of the disease in Nicaragua. It occurred at the height of the CIA’s war against the Sandinista government and followed a series of low-level “reconnaissance” flights over the capital city.

 

In 1996, the Cuba government again accused the US of engaging in “biological aggression”. This time it involved an outbreak of thrips palmi, an insect that kills potato crops, palm trees and other vegetation. Thrips first showed up in Cuba on December 12, 1996, following low-level flights over the island by US government spray planes. The US was able to quash a United Nations investigation of the incident.

 

At the close of the Persian Gulf War, the US Army exploded an Iraqi chemical weapons depot at Kamashiya. In 1996, the Department of Defense finally admitted that more than 20,000 US troops were exposed to VX and sarin nerve agents as a result of the US operation at Kamashiya. This may be one cause of Persian Gulf War Illness, another cause is certainly the experimental vaccines unwittingly given to more than 100,000 US troops

 

Anyway who cares about accurate historical record, lets all keep taking the tabloids, it the corporate approach to reality on can trust...innit!!!

[ANGELFIRE1]

Poisoned by gas, a round through the guts or turned to glass by a nuclear bomb - death is the end result. All are a bad way to meet your maker.

 

Angel.

[Waldo]

My point, was, how can the US act on the basis of moral outrage, when they did far far worse themselves? Okay for the US to nuke the hell out of Japan, but Assad regime using Chem. weopans, that's a big red line...

[Vague_Boy]

I am not a historian, but if chemicals weapons had been used at Dresdan; wouldnt it have brought the second world war to an end sooner, and saved lives and buildings?

 

It would certainly have saved the infrastructure, but that was the target of the bombing, not the civilians.

 

The Germans had stockpiles of a nerve agent (see below) that they would not use for fear of the Allies responding in kind. But if the Allies had used nerve agents first, that limitation would no longer be in effect.

 

 

If we were on the losing side against an evil enemy, would it be ok to win the war, by any means?

 

Once you start to fight a war "by any means", don't be too surprised if the other side also starts to do so as well.

 

The Germans were conditioned to see the advancing Soviet troops as sub-human brutes. Yet they didn't use chemical weapons, even though they had stockpiles of the nerve agent Tabun (Ethyl dimethylphosphoramidocyanidate).

 

In May that year, a meeting took place at Hitler's Wolf 's Lair headquarters in East Prussia that would have far-reaching ramifications for the whole of history. The Germans had just been defeated at Stalingrad, and Hitler had summoned both armaments minister Albert Speer and Otto Ambros to discuss the use of chemical weapons.

 

Many senior Nazis had been imploring Hitler to use Tabun against the Russians, but he had refused, partly because he feared the Allies also had access to similar weapons.

 

Hitler asked Ambros whether his fears were justified. Ambros told the Fuhrer the Allies would be able to produce vast quantities of mustard gas, but this didn't bother Hitler.

 

He wanted to know if the British and Americans also had access to much deadlier nerve agents, such as Tabun.

 

'I understand that the countries with petroleum are in a position to make more mustard gas,' Hitler said, 'but Germany has a special gas, Tabun. In this we have a monopoly in Germany.'

 

Hitler then enquired whether the Allies could make Tabun and a similar nerve agent, Sarin.

 

And it was at this point that Ambros made the claim that Professor Dinan believes may well have changed the course of the war.

 

'I have justified reasons to assume that Tabun, too, is known abroad,' he said. 'I know that Tabun was publicised as early as 1902, that Sarin was patented, and that these substances appeared in patents.'

 

It was an extraordinary answer, as it was completely untrue. And he knew it. What's more, Professor Dinan argues that it was when Hitler realised that the Allies might be able to retaliate with Tabun or similar chemicals that he expressed deep disappointment and abandoned the meeting.

 

For the rest of the war, many in Hitler's entourage continued to press him to use nerve agents such as Tabun.

 

In the autumn of 1944, for example, Robert Ley, the head of the German Labour Front, implored Albert Speer to convince Hitler of the merits of nerve gases. 'He must use it!' he pleaded. 'Now he has to do it! When else! This is the last moment!'

 

The appeals fell on stony ground, however, and Hitler never changed his mind.

 

But the fundamental question remains. Why did Ambros mislead Hitler, and did he do so deliberately?

 

LINK

 

The Jews, Russians, Slavs, gypsies, homosexuals and trade union leaders murdered in the death camps could not fight back. Hitler believed (or feared) that the Allies would respond in kind if he used nerve agents.

 

 

I am not sure which party has right on their side in Syria, but an end to the war, by any means would save lives.

 

The end justifies the means eh?

 

How about if one side totally wipes out the other? (You did say "by any means".) That would certainly end the war. Not sure how that would save lives.

 

The Germans were the first ones to use gas however

 

Erm.... not quite.

 

During the first World War, the French army was the first to employ gas, using 26 mm grenades filled with tear gas (ethyl bromoacetate) in August 1914.

 

LINK

 

 

when I was a lad, when I lived at darnall an old man lived up our street who talked funny (not funny literaly), sort if a rasp, can't quite remember now. he said that was from mustard gas during the war

 

Hitler was affected in the same way.

 

Hitler was a gifted orator but had a raspy voice as a consequence of a gas attack he suffered during WWI.

 

LINK

[Harleyman]

My point, was, how can the US act on the basis of moral outrage, when they did far far worse themselves? Okay for the US to nuke the hell out of Japan, but Assad regime using Chem. weopans, that's a big red line...

 

Post displays an abysmal lack of any knowledge pertaining to what the situation was between Japan and the US in July 1945

[catpus]

Post displays an abysmal lack of any knowledge pertaining to what the situation was between Japan and the US in July 1945

 

I don't know how long you have lived over there, but it is obvious from all your posts that you have been systematically programmed by the US propaganda machine. I am posting you a couple of items to help you be better informed.

 

>>Of a long list of deliberate government cover-ups of crimes committed by trusted men and women in seats of governmental power, including Presidents themselves, perhaps none rings more sharply in the American mind today than the deception by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt regarding the attack at Pearl Harbour on December 07, 1941 - the day which he himself declared would “live in infamy”. The “infamy” certainly does live on, but at least now many Americans know that the author of that infamy was Roosevelt himself. And Roosevelt 'had help', as we shall now see.<<

http://jeffersonrivercoalition.com/pearlharborperspective.htm

 

Typical Hegelian Dialectic: which is and always has been the process by which a change has been accomplished in society, especially for the past 60 years. More importantly, it is the tool that the Globalists are utilizing to manipulate the minds of the average American to accept that change...where ordinarily they would refuse it.

 

The Hegelian Dialectic is, in short, the critical process by which the ruling elite create a problem, anticipating in advance the reaction that the population will have to the given crisis, and thus conditioning the people that a change is needed. When the population is properly conditioned (brainwashed) the desired agenda of the ruling elite is presented as the solution.

 

The solution is never intended to solve the problem, but rather to serve as the basis for a new problem or exacerbate the existing one.

 

When the newly inflamed difficulty reaches the boiling point of a crisis, it becomes the foundation upon which arguments may again be made for change. Hence, the process is repeated, over and over, moving society toward whatever goal the planners have in mind.

 

It's also important to understand that as this process is being driven, arguments are created both for and against certain measures of change. All arguments are controlled. The presented solutions are "debated" publicly by the manipulators or their minions.(propaganda campaign) This is done until a perceived compromise has been reached on the best measure to take in the route to solving the crisis. (Until the public believe it) Then, the outcome of the "debate", which purportedly weighs the concerns of the public with the mandate to do something,is enacted as public policy.

 

Such is a summary of the Hegelian Dialectic. Though few in American society have ever heard of it, and still fewer have not been profoundly impacted by its use in the effective neutralization of opposition in the formation of public policy.

 

Read all about it here:

http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/05/dialectic.htm

 

---------- Post added 04-09-2013 at 08:54 ----------

 

Chemical weaponry is despicable.it can be far more widely felt than any other weapon..apart from the atom bomb. Chemicals in the air can be blown anywhere,its indescriminate.Shame on anyone who uses such dirty tactics to gain control. It's akin to the mass gassings that happened in Germany..do we condone that as a means of gaining control ? I don't think any decent minded person could agree that what happened in Syria was "fair".

 

Hello Stannilady,

As you say Chemical Weaponry is despicable, and was akin to the murder in the gas chambers of Germany.

I think we need to ask where did this gas come from, and then come up with the answer: Originally from Germany.

Then look where all the 'scientist' who created this gas went to after the war.......

 

>>

OPERATION PAPERCLIP

After WWII ended in 1945, victorious Russian and American intelligence teams began a treasure hunt throughout occupied Germany for military and scientific booty. They were looking for things like new rocket and aircraft designs, medicines, and electronics. But they were also hunting down the most precious "spoils" of all: the Scientists whose work had nearly won the war for Germany. The engineers and intelligence officers of the Nazi War Machine.

 

The U.S. Military rounded up Nazi scientists and brought them to America. It had originally intended merely to debrief them and send them back to Germany. But when it realized the extent of the scientists knowledge and expertise, the War Department decided it would be a waste to send the scientists home. Following the discovery of flying discs (foo fighters), particle/laser beam weaponry in German military bases, the War Department decided that NASA and the CIA must control this technology, and the Nazi engineers that had worked on this technology.

 

There was only one problem: it was illegal. U.S. law explicitly prohibited Nazi officials from immigrating to America--and as many as three-quarters of the scientists in question had been committed Nazis.<<

 

http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/operationpaperclip.htm

[Waldo]

I don't know how long you have lived over there, but it is obvious from all your posts that you have been systematically programmed by the US propaganda machine. I am posting you a couple of items to help you be better informed.

 

Maybe he works for the Russian secret service and his posts are part of a plot to discredit the perceived intelligence of the average American?