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breamfisher
Posts: 14,103 Senior Member
Chemical weapons
breamfisher
Posts: 14,103 Senior Member
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to debate that one form of death is worse than any others. I'm actually asking about history and policy.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but at one time wasn't the US policy (either actual or implied) that if another nation used chemical or biological agents in warfare or against civilians, that the US response be retaliation by the US against the user with unilateral military action and/or sanctions? If that was the case, when did we stop that?
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but at one time wasn't the US policy (either actual or implied) that if another nation used chemical or biological agents in warfare or against civilians, that the US response be retaliation by the US against the user with unilateral military action and/or sanctions? If that was the case, when did we stop that?
Meh.
Replies
What he said. It's still there. I don't know if the U.S. has any stockpile of chemical weapons, and I hope not. Use just ups the ante to biological, and/or finally nuclear exchange if it's a large conflict.
The problem with the Geneva and other accords on weapons like that is that a LARGE bunch of nations have no problem making them and using them against their own populations, and would not hesitate to use them against an enemy. Iran/Iraq war was an example of that. And Saddam's use of them against the Kurds in Iraq. Producing them isn't that hard for a moderately developed nation, and highly concentrated insecticide works just about as well, and some of them, in high enough concentrations can cause death through skin contact, just like Sarin and other chemical weapons.
Now for some background you and some others may not know about the U.S. chemical weapon program. Back in the 1990s our stockpiles of old chemical weapons were starting to eat through the munitions casings and leak. That caused lots of problems. So........way out in the Pacific Ocean on an island the U.S. government set up a high temperature furnace to burn the weapons after removal of the bursting charge. I had a friend in nuclear power that quit his job at the nuke plant after being accepted as a furnace operator at the site. Pay was really high, and I thought about it, HARD. The island was chosen to be far away from any other inhabited island in case of an accident, for obvious reasons. It was West of Hawaii, IIRC.
We did away with all the old stocks of chemical weapons by burning them in that furnace on that isolated island. And I don't know for sure because it's WAY above my pay grade, but I believe that ALL U.S. chemical weapons got incinerated. The thinking back then was that they are easy to make so no need for stockpiling corrosives that will eventually leak. Just make as needed. We haven't needed.
And back during the Cold War, use of chemical weapons against troops would have caused the side gassed to be free to open up with biological and/or nuclear weapons. And back then, every major power had a biological weapons program. Lots cheaper than nuclear, and the effects on the population were worse than chemical or nuclear in that the area was contaminated with biological things that could spread the disease all over the place via refugees. The U.S. and the old USSR had some serious accidents with the biological weapons. And the nuclear weapons. And the chemical weapons. Of the three, storage of the nuclear weapons are much safer long term.
― Douglas Adams
During that period they were also working on "Binary" chemical warfare stuff....easily stored, relatively innocuous chemicals that were deadly when mixed...and the mixing was done in the artillery round after it was fired....
When the decision was made to get rid of this stuff stored in CONUS the destruction by incineration of this stuff was done on site as it was just too hazardous to transport . The had a couple of portable incinerators that made the rounds....
The stuff that was deployed outside CONUS was destroyed on Eniwetok (IIRC)
It used to be an accepted notion that if NBC were deployed, the response would be in kind - and later since we no longer had deployable stocks of "C" that left "N" as the option.
― Douglas Adams
They stored some at the end of the runway at the old Denver airport at one time (80s?)
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer and politician
I worked in the communications center and saw and prepared many "leaker" reports. Seems the VX containers leaked a lot.
While they had chemical detectors all over the place they also had rabbit hutches outside the storage bunkers as an early warning system for the security patrols...
Tooele had been there a long time and there was a time when they simply buried old mustard-filled munitions out in the desert. It was not uncommon to encounter jack rabbits and coyotes with mustard gas blisters while hunting in the high desert around "The South Area"
Jerry
I thought that was an international thing, like the Geneva Convention or something, not just a U.S. policy. If not it should be.
Son that's somebody with nothing to do with his time but keep me in trouble with mom.
at least researched such
My great uncle George was gassed during WW1. Heartbreaking reading those old letters and listening to the family accounts of how it destroyed him, not just physically but mentally as well. Before the war, he was a pretty damn good boxer who went by the handle "The Fighting Indian." and had intended to pursue it after the war. Sadly, and like so many, he was never the same. I still remember him when I was very little. He was always so quiet and my grandmother would patiently explain to me about my quiet questions of, "Grandma, what's wrong with Uncle George?" I still get choked up about it.
Photo of my Uncle George Lamson in his boxing promotional garb just before WWI. He was 1/4 Omaha.
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