Inside America's Dark History of Chemical Warfare

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/world/america-and-chemical-warfare



***SNIP

The 1960s and 1970s

Agent Orange

The US military’s widespread and long-term use of the defoliant Agent Orange to destroy Vietnamese jungles is among the best known and most anguishing chapters in modern chemical warfare. Published articles had demonstrated the health and environmental dangers of the chemical components of Agent Orange (so called for the orange-striped barrels in which it was shipped) for a full decade preceding the war. In 1952, Monsanto (which along with Dow Chemicals was the principal manufacturer) informed the government of the dangerous byproduct resulting from heating the chemical mix—namely dioxin. Yet we proceeded to employ Agent Orange, denying for decades the death and illness inflicted on Vietnamese and Americans alike. As the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by AP photographer Nick Ut documented, we used the incendiaries napalm and white phosphorus in Vietnam.

Project SHAD

Totally unknown till 35 years after the Vietnam War was the DoD’s Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense (SHAD), a highly classified program, which from 1962 to 1971 tested whether US warships and their troops could withstand attacks from chemical and biological weapons. From overhead planes and nearby aircraft carriers, the military aimed lethal gases at ships carrying mostly unsuspecting sailors and marines. In the 1990s, veterans stationed on SHAD boats reported respiratory conditions and cancers only to be told by VA that nothing called Project SHAD had ever existed. Finally, after CBS broke the story in May 2001, the Department of Defense admitted to SHAD’s existence and its almost decade-long program of toxic testing.

Project Tailwind

In 1998, a CNN two-part Sunday night news report revealed that a special commando unit in 1970 used sarin gas in Laos to kill American defectors. The story about “Operation Tailwind” was researched, written and produced by seasoned journalists April Oliver and Jack Smith, with help from Pulitzer Prize-winning Peter Arnett, who narrated the broadcast. Under pressure from Henry Kissinger and others, many claim, CNN retracted the story, and fired Oliver and Smith, and Arnett soon after. ( Newsroom's Aaron Sorkin recently explained on the Daily Show that he used "Operation Tailwind” as the basis of the second season’s centerpiece, Operation Genoa, a secret mission set in Pakistan, in which the US supposedly used sarin against civilians. CNN's reporting, Sorkin told John Oliver, offered an intriguing example of journalism gone awry with compromising research and doctored videos.)

***SNIP

The 1980s and 1990s

Reagan and Bush I's Dual-Use Double Dealing

The 1991 Gulf War followed almost a decade of the Reagan-Bush I administration's active support of Iraq in its war against the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran. The US supplied Iraq with financing, intelligence and supplies for a protracted war with Iran, in which chemical weapons played a significant role. “Iraqgate”—in which we used other countries and their banks to transfer war funds and materials to Iraq—became a considerable though fleeting scandal in 1989-'90. But Reagan’s and then Bush’s use of US government agencies to funnel materials and technology that could be used to create and disperse chemical and biological weapons remains a little known chapter in the history of US warfare. Dual-use materials and technologies—normally used for civilian purposes but with ready military applications—were central to the program. Overseen by the Department of Commerce, the secret program allowed massive export to Iraq items such as agricultural toxin, and “crop duster” equipped helicopters, ostensibly to kill weeds and insects, but used to kill people.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

1. And way before that was the smallpox laced blankets given to native tribes.

[Niceguy1]

2. don't forget to provide

Context......the us wasn't operating outside global norms at the time.......

[eomer]

3. The Geneva Protocol on chemical and biological weapons was signed...

by the US in 1975, by Iran in 1929, and by Iraq in 1931.

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

Not saying you are wrong because all I'm going on is a quick search, but can you substantiate your statement?

[Niceguy1]

5. sarin wasn't used in nam

Napalm and willie pete are incendiary...fire and light.

But I get it, america is evil and should have no voice in world affairs and should be judged by todays norms for what what done 50 years ago.....

[eomer]

8. I was obviously talking post-Vietnam ("signed by the US in 1975").

So for example read what the article says in the section "The 1980s and 1990s - Reagan and Bush I's Dual-Use Double Dealing", including Donald Rumsfeld's involvement with Sadaam in Iraq. Do a ctl-f search for "sarin" if you need to.

[sabrina 1]

19. No America is not evil, did someone say that? Do not put words in peoples mouths, someone will

point out what you are doing.

The use of incendiary (and banned now) weapons, the use of chemical weapons, the use of just plain bombs, the use of Cluster Bombs, the illegal invasions of sovereign nations, those are evil things.

There is no 'nice' way to kill human beings who have done nothing to you.

And citizens speaking out against Governments who do evil things, such as torture eg, or lying the country into war, means the OPPOSITE of what you are claiming. It shows that America is NOT EVIL. It shows that Americans will not tolerate evil being done in their names without trying to stop it.

So long as Americans refuse to support evil acts by their Government, America is anything but evil.

But the day that Americans remain silent about evil acts committed by their Government, and it will happen as our Founding Fathers warned about, then America would be in danger of being evil.

The Government is not the country and it should need to be said that criticizing the wrong doing of elected officials is NOT calling the COUNTRY evil, it is in fact doing the opposite.

Thank the gods Americans have never stopped trying to keep their government from doing evil things even if, as with Bush, they sometimes fail.

[Ash_F]

4. The Geneva Protocols were in 1928. /nt

[JohnyCanuck]

6. 10 Chemical Weapons Attacks Washington Doesn't Want You to Talk About

Washington doesn't merely lack the legal authority for a military intervention in Syria. It lacks the moral authority. We're talking about a government with a history of using chemical weapons against innocent people far more prolific and deadly than the mere accusations Assad faces from a trigger-happy Western military-industrial complex, bent on stifling further investigation before striking.

Here is a list of 10 chemical weapons attacks carried out by the U.S. government or its allies against civilians.

1. The U.S. Military Dumped 20 Million Gallons of Chemicals on Vietnam from 1962 - 1971
snip
2. Israel Attacked Palestinian Civilians with White Phosphorus in 2008 - 2009
snip
3. Washington Attacked Iraqi Civilians with White Phosphorus in 2004
snip
4. The CIA Helped Saddam Hussein Massacre Iranians and Kurds with Chemical Weapons in 1988

http://www.policymic.com/articles/62023/10-chemical-weapons-attacks-washington-doesn-t-want-you-to-talk-about

[joshcryer]

7. Anything after 1995?

Anything after 1997 when the US signed on to the Chemical Weapons Convention?

(1995 was the Sarin gas attack on Tokoyo subway, leading dozens of countries to sign on to the Chemical Weapons Convention.)

[Niceguy1]

11. true chemical?

No. WP and DU aren't chemical weapons. I haven't heard of any true chem weapons on the battlefield in ages.

[joshcryer]

15. Not since 1991.

Not sure what WP is but DU is legal under the conventional weapons convention (I don't think it should be, btw).

[Niceguy1]

16. wp is

An incendiary weapon. For fire and light.

Incendiary weapons are legal.

[joshcryer]

17. Ahh, yeah, but under the Convetional Weapons Convention Protocol III, not in civilian populations.

The US reserves the right to use incendiaries in civilian populations.

[Niceguy1]

18. more precisly

You can't intentionally target a civialian person with wp, but you can target say a house that has a sniper in it, for example.

[joshcryer]

20. Not necessarily.

Under Protocol III using them in civilian populations would be a war crime. They tend to be more useful against tanks than anything though. The US' use of them in Fallujah was arguably a war crime. It was ultimately unnecessary.

Better to hit a sniper with conventional rockets / bombs than WP, in a civilian population, imo.

[Niceguy1]

21. unless u you want to burn him out

Then the question arises if it ceases to be civilian once the military seizes it. Which is why the enemy likes to hide among civilians.

[joshcryer]

22. That's why there's Protocol III of the Conventional Weapons Convention.

It basically says "burning out the enemy" is a big no-no and most countries agree. Other than Fallujah the US hasn't used incendiaries to "burn out the enemy" as far as I am aware, the US reserves the right to use them in civilian populations because they're really effective against tanks and convoys. I think the risk is too high especially with accurate bombs. Incendiaries just aren't useful this day and age.

Why burn out a sniper or even an entire building full of fighters when a bomb will do? The WP / incendiaries would just burn the buildings next to it and get into the air and fuck up civilians nearby. At least then you can claim collateral damage. Under Protocol III civilians are considered innocents and not collateral damage, that's why it's banned.

[Mnemosyne]

9. Fallujah. nt

[bemildred]

10. First off this is poison gas, not "chemical warfare".

Second of all, if it is used in a military fashion, poison gas, like Nukes and biological weapons make war impossible as a rational enterprise, you wind up killing your own, you wind up killing yourself. They are great terror weapons, area interdiction, but that's it, and it is a weak foundation to build a government on, terror is, and fences, just ask the USSR.

[RC]

13. Huh, what?

Poison gas is the every definition of chemical warfare. You know, like the mustard gas of WWI.

[bemildred]

14. Chemical warfare is a much broader term.

Includes things like white phosphorus and non-lethal chemical weapons. Poison gas was used in WWI and the results were so appalling that everybody agreed to outlaw it afterwards. That's what's at issue here.

Edit: and napalm.

[Bluenorthwest]

12. And Obama has always praised Reagan, never offered a word of criticism of those policies

and Reagan's choice at the very least to turn a blind eye toward massive use of chemical weapons on several occasions.

[obxhead]

23. Shhhhh think of the children! nt