Chemical and Biological warfare is more dangerous than conventional warfare

[Yavin4]

I'm still undecided about intervention, but I just want to speak out against the false equivalency that I'm seeing between conventional warfare and chemical.

ALL war is terrible and we should do everything within our power to avoid war. However, chemical and biological warfare is particularly pernicious. Civilization cannot condone the use of these weapons. What happens if someone uses a chemical or biological weapon that does not dissipate. That hangs in the atmosphere and makes our environment hyper toxic.

Chemical and biological weapons are some particularly nasty stuff, and you don't want to live in a world where that type of warfare is lumped into everything else. If you do, then you can kiss civilization goodbye.

[Schema Thing]

1. agree. it is banned for very good reason, and I want the world to

take it seriously.

[mazzarro]

12. Banned? Then why do some western countries still have stock of CW?

Including the US? Is anyone going to give a 100% guarantee that the US and the other western countries that have stocks of CW will never, ever use them?

Is white phosphorus not a chemical weapon? Yet the US and Israel have used it in recent times and not a whole lot of hoopla was raised when they did and no coalitions of the willing were ever created to take them on either.

The hypocrisy of it is what gets me!

Land mines have been banned yet the US still has stockpiles of it and I am looking forward to the day the US will accuse some non-friendly state of being inhumane and has to be punished for killing civilians with them.

[Bluenorthwest]

2. And yet we maintain a huge nuclear arsenal and also chem weapons of our own. Why?

Is not the owning and nurturing of these items another form of condoning them? Why yes it is. And of course Saddam used gas on the Kurds and Iranians in the 80's and the Reagan administration sent Rumsfeld to shake his hand a couple months later. Condoning that use, and Obama has praised Reagan, thus condoning the reaction to that use. Why have we not heard a word from Obama about that in the past? Why only high praise of Reagan who condoned and even supported the use of chemical weapons by Saddam?
Easy to claim some high ground, harder to prove that you really stand on it righteously.

[Yavin4]

4. I don't ever recall Obama praising Reagan over the use of chemical weapons int Iraq

Please provide a link to that.

[Bluenorthwest]

8. I did not say that, I said he has praised Reagan. If chem weapons use is the Worst of the Worst

why no mention of that use in the past, why no condemnation of the Reagan administration which not only praised Saddam but also provided him with target coordinates in Iran with full knowledge that he was using gas on them. Nary a word of criticism about these actions, instead Reagan was held up as a 'transformative' guy, better than Clinton.
So please read what I write and ask about that, like an honest broker. Pretentious tactics to avoid addressing the point have no place in discussions about such issues.

[hack89]

6. The US committed to the complete destruction of our chemical and biological stockpiles decades ago

we have completely destroyed all of our offensive biological stockpile and 89% of our chemical weapons - destruction of them will be completed in 2017.

We have also drastically cut our nuclear arsenal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Biological_weapons

[Bluenorthwest]

7. So we have chemical weapons right now, we made them and kept them, and we have nukes

galore, 'drastic cuts' aside, we have them, keep them and refuse to rid ourselves of them. 2017 is a few wars away, so let's stick with the present. We created and kept and still have the same weapons.
What I said was correct.

[hack89]

10. Destroying chemical weapons is dangerous, expensive and time consuming

why don't you read the link? We have been steadily destroying our chemical weapons for decades. We have supported every treaty that bans chemical weapons.

[Supersedeas]

3. Rifting off of MHP: Dead is dead. Full stop.

[Yavin4]

5. True. Dead is dead, but a toxic environment is another matter entirely n/t

[MNBrewer]

13. Depleted. Uranium.

[wercal]

9. I understand your point, and this stuff was beat into our heads in the Army...

...it was called 'NBC', or Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical warfare. We had masks, suits, alarms, decon trucks, antidote injectors, etc. It is obviously a very big threat, and we trained for it often.

However I take issue with some of the items in your post. For starters, chemical weapons generally DO dissipate...and whatever doesn't dissipate does not 'hang in the atmosphere', as the wind blows it away. The risk is actually from what might precipitate as dust onto surfaces...not what may remain in the atmosphere - that will be gone in a matter of hours.

Also, Biological weapons are very unreliable, and generally do not have the capability to linger in the atmosphere. Often, they become ineffective, just by being stored too long, because conditions have to be perfect for their survival.

Both chemical and biological are much more dangerous in enclosed spaces (subway tunnel for example), and really are more of a terrorist weapon than a weapon of war.

But lets talk about conventional weaponry. I was a tank platoon leader, and I was ready to go to war and fire our depleted uranium sabot rounds at the enemy. And that is exactly what has happened in Iraq. And also a variety of aircraft are equipped with depleted uranium (DU) tipped 30mm rounds. These seem to be very 'conventional'....but it turns out that the vaporized DU that has polluted cities in Iraq are causing birth defects. I think the DU only takes 15 days to metabolize in your body, but in places like Fallujah, its all over the place, and people are continually being re-exposed. And they will be for a very long time. The extensive use of DU rounds in Fallujah amounts to a 'dirty bomb' attack.

So it brings up a moral question - has the line between conventional and NBC become blurred?

[Deny and Shred]

11. Toxic environment is a slippery slope

Chemical and biological weapons are specifically outlawed, yet other toxic weapons that aren't outlawed have been in use lately. US use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium in Iraq come to mind. Both are responsible for 'pernicious' long-term health issues.

Also, there is a plethora of non-weaponized toxins, industrial and otherwise, that ought to be addressed if the goal is to avoid a toxic environment. The Fukishima disaster was almost 2 1/2 years ago, yet a tepid international response.

[polichick]

14. Check out what the U.S. is doing:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023582867

[FarCenter]

15. Chemical weapons have half-lives of days in the environment

Large organic molecules tend to be hydrolyzed by water in the environment or disrupted by other radicals and ion caused by sunlight, salt water, etc.

Thus, chemical weapons differ from inorganics like depleted uranium, which is an element and does not degrade.

Obviously, you want chemical weapons to degrade fairly quickly so that your own forces can advance later over the ground where they have been used.