On Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:44:55 -0700, Erik Max Francis
wrote:
>Chemical weapons were hardly used at all in World War II (and
>technically occurred before it if you consider the invasion of Poland
>the official start), and they've already been used intermittently in the
>years since, usually by small actors with something to prove (e.g.,
>Saddam Hussein against the Iranians and his own Kurds). Overall,
>chemical weapons haven't really proven to be all that effective except
>as a scare tactic.
Slightly off-topic but with respect to Saddam Hussein there is
absolutely no question he used chemical weapons (which the United
States considers a 'weapon of mass destruction') against the Kurds and
Iranians. Based on the evidence now available it seems Hussein had the
problem that he got rid of these shortly after the 1991 Gulf War but
his reputation was so bad no one believed him and his stonewalling of
the UN inspectors "removed all doubt".
My personal opinion is that if Bush in 2003 had given the UN 3 or 4
months more time he would have gotten the degree of international
cooperation against Iraq that his father had in 1991.
There is no doubt Hussein had possessed and used chemical weapons -
the only question is whether he still had them in 2003.
Of course the most egregious use of chemical weapons was the system of
camps normally called the Holocaust but since very few of its victims
were military personnel (several thousand Red Army prisoners were
gassed) it tends not to be considered 'chemical warfare'. Some of the
Japanese abuses of military POWs were in the area of testing chemical
weapons but in SHWI we generally consider 'chemical warfare' to mean
deployment of chemical weapons against combatant military personnel
not POWs. |
