Chemical weapons

[robinturner]

"The US is preparing to use the toxic riot-control agents CS gas and pepper spray in Iraq in contravention of the Chemical Weapons Convention, provoking the first split in the Anglo-US alliance. "Calmative" gases, similar to the one that killed 120 hostages in the Moscow theatre siege last year, could also be employed.

The convention bans the use of these toxic agents in battle, not least because they risk causing an escalation to full chemical warfare. This applies even though they can be used in civil disturbances at home: both CS gas and pepper spray are available for use by UK police forces. The US Marine Corps confirmed last week that both had already been shipped to the Gulf."

Thanks to insomnia and The Independent.

The thing that puzzles me, aside from the obvious hypocricy of the US planning to use chemical weapons on a country which it is invading because that country supposedly possesses chemical weapons, is why chemical weapons are so much worse than other weapons. A weapon is, by definition, a tool to kill or incapacitate another person. From that person's point of view, what matters is whether they are dead or not, how badly they are incapacitated if they aren't killed, and how much pain is invlved in the process. He or she is probably not overly concerned about the technology that causes death, injury or pain. It is obviously prefrable to be attacked with CS gas (a chemical weapon) than with a hand grenade (a conventional weapon). If you want to give someone a slow, agonising death, one of the best methods is a simple bullet to the stomach. Your victim can take up to three days to die, and the pain, I'm told, is excruciating. Shrapnel can do the same job just as well. So what's the big deal about chemicals?

Comments

[circumambulate.livejournal.com]

Chemical weapons are a concern, primarily, because they are an economic equalizer. If you want to kill a great many people, with conventional weapons, you have to spend a great deal of money to do so. Not so, with chemical weapons. Hell, I could kill a whole room full of people with 10cents worth of ammonia, and bleach.

[katminnaar.livejournal.com]

I agree with circumambulate. The guy who blew up a federal building years ago here used mostly fertilizer--very easy to come by!

[solri.livejournal.com]

So when you take a chemical and make it go bang, is it still a chemical weapon? I sense one of my cognitive linguistic moods coming on ...

It's hopeless optimism

[ankh156.livejournal.com]

to expect anything resembling 'coherence' in the actions of the Cheney/Bush junta. They've forgotten about ObL. They're forgetting about 9/11. Pretty soon they'll forget about their ambitions to cut-off Russia and China from those trans-himalayan deposits. Pretty soon they may have to. Clandestine actions are no longer clandestine when everybody is watching... Apparently just their presence is keeping the peace in Kabul. Maybe they should get the Taliban back... God knows what they'll do when they've bombed the shit out of Baghdad and installed Haliburton to run the oil fields... Find another dictator ?