Winston Churchill’s shocking use of chemical weapons

[xchrom]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/01/winston-churchills-shocking-use-of-chemical-weapons/



The use of chemical weapons in Syria has outraged the world. But it is easy to forget that Britain has used them – and that Winston Churchill was a powerful advocate for them

Secrecy was paramount. Britain’s imperial general staff knew there would be outrage if it became known that the government was intending to use its secret stockpile of chemical weapons. But Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for war, brushed aside their concerns. As a long-term advocate of chemical warfare, he was determined to use them against the Russian Bolsheviks. In the summer of 1919, 94 years before the devastating strike in Syria, Churchill planned and executed a sustained chemical attack on northern Russia.

The British were no strangers to the use of chemical weapons. During the third battle of Gaza in 1917, General Edmund Allenby had fired 10,000 cans of asphyxiating gas at enemy positions, to limited effect. But in the final months of the first world war, scientists at the governmental laboratories at Porton in Wiltshire developed a far more devastating weapon: the top secret “M Device”, an exploding shell containing a highly toxic gas called diphenylaminechloroarsine. The man in charge of developing it, Major General Charles Foulkes, called it “the most effective chemical weapon ever devised”.

Trials at Porton suggested that it was indeed a terrible new weapon. Uncontrollable vomiting, coughing up blood and instant, crippling fatigue were the most common reactions. The overall head of chemical warfare production, Sir Keith Price, was convinced its use would lead to the rapid collapse of the Bolshevik regime. “If you got home only once with the gas you would find no more Bolshies this side of Vologda.”The cabinet was hostile to the use of such weapons, much to Churchill’s irritation. He also wanted to use M Devices against the rebellious tribes of northern India. “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes,” he declared in one secret memorandum. He criticised his colleagues for their “squeamishness”, declaring that “the objections of the India Office to the use of gas against natives are unreasonable. Gas is a more merciful weapon than [the] high explosive shell, and compels an enemy to accept a decision with less loss of life than any other agency of war.”

[LuvNewcastle]

1. I never cared much for Churchill. Here's just another reason why.

[Whisp]

8. Me neither. Every time I hear what a great man he was I gag.

hate the fucker for many reasons and this is one.

[struggle4progress]

2. Churchill tilted towards the rightwing side of the political spectrum

His constituents knew it, too, and didn't always agree: in the 1922 election, Morel -- who had been the major force in exposing the criminality of Belgian King Leopold's Congo colony and who had spent part of WWI imprisoned as a war objector -- defeated Churchill. Morel considered Churchill evil and described him so

Churchill was, however, decidedly right later about Hitler, which is why he ended up as leader during WWII -- and when the war ended, he promptly lost the post

He was correct about Stalin, too

It's not at all clear to me that he was right about the Bolsheviks in the early years. But there was substantial animosity among the Western Allies towards the Bolsheviks, however, because Russia's withdrawal from the war after the revolution freed German troops for the Western front -- and this was not merely a happy coincidence for the Germans: they had transported Lenin to Russia precisely with hopes of such a result

[HardTimes99]

15. Indisputably a racist, though, with his talk of 'uncivilized tribes' and '(Arab) savages'. That type

of talk in today's UK would see him confined to the National Front or other putative Nazi Party offshoots.

[Nye Bevan]

17. And Washington and Jefferson each owned hundreds of slaves. (nt)

[HardTimes99]

18. Not sure that is germane to a discussion of Churchill but, yes, many of our

founding fathers owned slaves.

[Nye Bevan]

20. Judging respected historical figures by contemporary standards can be tricky.

Should we force black kids to attend schools named after slaveowners?

[HardTimes99]

21. Ah, got you. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of 'presentism' either. (The one that gets me is

the claim that Lincoln was a 'racist'.) I mentioned Churchill's racism only to place in context the poster's claim that Churchill was 'right' on Hitler (and, arguably, on Stalin). But I probably deserved to be hoist with my own petard, as it were

[Shankapotomus]

43. Not tricky to me

We should not. The slave owning founding fathers get a pass we wouldn't grant to anyone else.

[KurtNYC]

3. "All war is terror" - graffiti in Germany 2005

The basic mechanism of warfare is terror. Fear of dying in some horrible way is what makes people ultimately surrender and submit. Radiation, starvation, becoming crippled, shrapnel, land mines, incendiary bombs, phosphorous, torture, napalm, flame throwers, cluster bombs, depleted uranium...

is there really that much difference ?

[devils chaplain]

6. As if firebombing entire cities is somehow morally superior... n/t

[mbperrin]

12. I sure don't see the difference.

Nitpicking about the WAY people are killed just puts the OK stamp on killing people we don't agree with politically.

Hard for me to see the moral there.

I don't believe that the US has been involved in a morally defensible military action in my lifetime, since 1952. It's just for money for the MIC.

[bemildred]

4. Yep, that's Churchill, and that's why I don't think much of him.

A pompous, belligerent bureaucrat.

[xchrom]

5. +1

[sir pball]

32. You forgot drunkard (or raging alcoholic even).

Then again, while he wasn't a terribly nice guy, he was pretty much exactly the kind of leader I imagine I would want if the Nazis were bombing the everloving shit out of me on a daily basis. Sometimes being pompous, belligerent, arrogantly aggressive even...isn't a bad thing.

[bemildred]

34. Simply being the biggest assholes has not been enough to win wars for a long time now.

How is the USA doing since WWII? Not so good. It is a long history of incompetence, over-reaching, and decline, and an almost infantile refusal to deal with the situation by any real political reform, and a similar infantile faith in technical fixes.

I have read some of Churchills works of history, which are most informative, but you will see that he quite correctly focusses on logistics and diplomacy, not teeth-gritting, it gets downright boring. And he was far from omniscient, his record is not one of unvarnished success by any means. Being belligerent at the wrong time can get you in more trouble faster than just about any other strategy. Who can forget Foch and "Toujours l'Audace!" and how well that worked out, and the machines were still primitive back then.

The principle in view is offensive. From Frederick’s cry of “Toujours l’audace!” to Foch’s defiant insistence on attacking at the Battle of the Marne, the offensive has always been hailed as the glorious, decisive, and, well, manly form of warfare. Those who espouse the principle have in view a dynamic commander who has the strength of will to attack against the odds and wrest the initiative from the enemy. But the problem is that as often as the attack leads to such glorious outcomes, it also leads to disaster and death. For every unconditional surrender at Fort Donelson, there’s a Fredericksburg, where 12,000 attackers lay bleeding and moaning on the freezing fields. The record of failed attacks throughout history leaves a bloody indictment of the principle that attaches to the attack some mysterious, powerful virtue. The principle of offensive works about half of the time, and that fact alone invalidates it as a principle of war.

http://www.jhuapl.edu/ourwork/nsa/papers/mythofoffensive.pdf

"About half the time" is what you get by flipping a coin.

[Surya Gayatri]

7. Hypocrisy, thy name is Military Industrial Complex...

[Motown_Johnny]

9. They were common in WWI.

The treaties against them came after this.

[bemildred]

36. Yes. nt

[Turborama]

10. That's been widely known for decades, as has the fact chemical weapons were widely used in WW 1

And for a while afterwards, until the Geneva Protocol in 1925.

By the end of the war, chemical weapons had lost much of their effectiveness against well trained and equipped troops. At that time, chemical weapon agents were used in one quarter of artillery shells fired but caused only 3% of casualties.

Nevertheless, in the following years, chemical weapons were used in several, mainly colonial, wars where one side had an advantage in equipment over the other. The British used adamsite against Russian revolutionary troops in 1919 and allegedly used mustard gas against Iraqi insurgents in the 1920s; Bolshevik troops used poison gas to suppress the Tambov Rebellion in 1920, Spain used chemical weapons in Morocco against Rif tribesmen throughout the 1920s and Italy used mustard gas in Libya in 1930 and again during its invasion of Ethiopia in 1936. In 1925, a Chinese warlord, Zhang Zuolin, contracted a German company to build him a mustard gas plant in Shenyang, which was completed in 1927.

Public opinion had by then turned against the use of such weapons, which led to the Geneva Protocol, a treaty banning the use (but not the stockpiling) of lethal gas and bacteriological weapons, which was signed by most First World War combatants in 1925. Most countries that signed ratified it within around five years, although a few took much longer – Brazil, Japan, Uruguay and the United States did not do so until the 1970s, and Nicaragua ratified it only in 1990. The signatory nations agreed not to use poison gas in the future, stating "the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices, has been justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilised world."

Although chemical weapons have been used in at least a dozen wars since the end of the First World War, they were not used in combat on a large scale until mustard gas and the more deadly nerve agents were used by Iraq during the 8-year Iran-Iraq war. It killed around 20,000 Iranian troops (and injured another 80,000), which is around a quarter of the number of deaths caused by chemical weapons during the First World War.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapons_in_World_War_I

[mountain grammy]

11. And that, children, is why the use of chemical weapons is considered a crime against humanity,

and why the administration is responding the way they are to this action.

[JohnyCanuck]

13. Except we can't be sure this administration is fingering the right culprit for this crime

The Troodos Conundrum

by Craig Murray on August 31, 2013 in Uncategorized

The GCHQ listening post on Mount Troodos in Cyprus is arguably the most valued asset which the UK contributes to UK/US intelligence cooperation. The communications intercept agencies, GCHQ in the UK and NSA in the US, share all their intelligence reports (as do the CIA and MI6). Troodos is valued enormously by the NSA. It monitors all radio, satellite and microwave traffic across the Middle East, ranging from Egypt and Eastern Libya right through to the Caucasus. Even almost all landline telephone communication in this region is routed through microwave links at some stage, picked up on Troodos.

Troodos is highly effective – the jewel in the crown of British intelligence. Its capacity and efficiency, as well as its reach, is staggering. The US do not have their own comparable facility for the Middle East. I should state that I have actually been inside all of this facility and been fully briefed on its operations and capabilities, while I was head of the FCO Cyprus Section in the early 1990s. This is fact, not speculation.

It is therefore very strange, to say the least, that John Kerry claims to have access to communications intercepts of Syrian military and officials organising chemical weapons attacks, which intercepts were not available to the British Joint Intelligence Committee.

snip

Israel has repeatedly been involved in the Syrian civil war, carrying out a number of illegal bombings and missile strikes over many months. This absolutely illegal activity by Israel- which has killed a great many civilians, including children - has brought no condemnation at all from the West. Israel has now provided “intelligence” to the United States designed to allow the United States to join in with Israel’s bombing and missile campaign.

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/08/the-troodos-conundrum/

When I see the war mongers beating the war drums for a new military action against Syria, I recall this piece of wisdom from newspaper columnist Sydney Schanberg: "We Amercians are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth." Fortunately for us, after many examples of lies used to start wars or to justify violence on the part of various US administrations the internet is changing that, and it's about damned time.

[mountain grammy]

23. And that is certainly a legitimate argument that I hope is debated and answered

before we move on. I think the administration is convinced, and they sure see more than I do, but I'm still not convinced.

[HardTimes99]

16. We didn't have much to say, though, when UK companies sold Syria precursor chemicals

for its CBW stockpiles. How could we? We supplied Saddam Hussein with intelligence that allowed him to deploy his own CBW stocks against Iranian troop concentrations in the mid-80s during the Iraq-Iran war. IOW, our hands are hardly clean in this matter.

[mountain grammy]

24. Our hands are hardly clean, I agree.

But I believe the administrations' reaction to the poisoning of innocent people is genuine. It's getting the actual "response" right that we are debating.

[Nye Bevan]

19. The Chemical Weapons Convention took effect in April 1997.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Weapons_Convention

[La Cucaracha]

22. Just saw a show on him.

Eleanor Roosevelt did not like him. She told him so.

[Nye Bevan]

27. He was probably absolutely devastated by that.

Out of all of his concerns, I think the extent to which Eleanor Roosevelt liked him was almost certainly paramount.

[La Cucaracha]

30. Mindless.

[Dreamer Tatum]

25. We need to find this Churchill fellow and march him STRAIGHT to the Hague. nt

[deaniac21]

26. The Hague

[Dreamer Tatum]

28. Why we'd march anyone to a known associate of organized crime

is a mystery to me, even if he is a lawyer.

[gopiscrap]

29. yeah and one of the war crimes trials in Nuremburg

was for the bombing Coventry..well what about Dresden? and Frankfurt?

[AnotherMcIntosh]

31. Churchill's greatness, in knowing that no compromise with Hitler was possible, cannot be negated

by the fact that England was one of several countries that used poisoned gas as a weapon and that Churchill advocated for the use of weapons including that one.

[Demoiselle]

33. Were Lloyd George and the others in the coalition government ok with it?

He couldn't have been alone in the decision. And he certainly didn't outrank the PM. I'm not excusing him, but certainly others must have caved to let it happen.

[Hippo_Tron]

35. Churchill's contributions to humanity were a net positive, but he's not one to idolize

The man was an unabashed supporter of British colonialism and did a lot of horrible things in the process. Adolf Hitler was the kind of threat to humanity that comes along maybe once every millennium and Churchill saw that threat. It's entirely because of Hitler that Churchill is viewed the way he is today.

[bemildred]

37. +1. nt

[pjt7]

38. How about Americas use of Chemical Weapons in Vietnam

AGENT ORANGE? ring any horrible bells..

We killed over 500,000 w/ this & many more cancers/sickness.

[Boudica the Lyoness]

39. My grandpa hated him

My grandpa was a Welsh coal miner from Tonypandy and was there for the riots in 1910. Churchill sent troops in to the Tonypandy streets.

Also my grandpa served in WW1. He was there from the start in 1914 and through to the end in 1918 and never forgave Churchill for the shit he pulled there. My grandpa was in the trenches at Gallipoli. He hated Churchill.

[malaise]

40. All the fugging imperialists used chemical weapons

They all also tortured most of their real or perceived anti-colonial enemies.
That any of them dare to speak as though it has moral authority is mind blowing.

[BootinUp]

41. So taking this absurdity further, I guess we should be close allies with Assad.

[xchrom]

42. well -- we were certainly were with hussein -- until we weren't -- that is. nt