From: "Eleanor" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: US plans to use toxic gas in Iraq
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 17:40:36 -0500
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.
Mr Rumsfeld became the first senior figure on either side of the impending conflict to announce his wish to use chemical agents in a little-noticed comment to the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on 5 February.
He specified that they could be used "where there are enemy troops in a cave [and] you know there are women and children in there with them". General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke of using them against human shields.
The revelations leave the Bush administration open to charges of double standards .... Leading experts and Whitehall officials fear that using even pepper spray and CS gas would destroy the credibility of the Chemical Weapons Convention, provoke Iraqi chemical retaliation and set a disastrous legal precedent.
-- Independent UK , March 2, 2003
Forwarded from MAI-NOT listserv:
Date sent: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 09:19:13 -0800 (PST)
From:MichaelP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [MAI-NOT] US PREPARES TO USE TOXIC GASES IN IRAQ
"Calmative gases" -- narcotic materials meant to incapacitate rather than kill -
"Oh dear, I only intended to calm you down to get you do do what I want - killing you was not even at the back of my mind."
MichaelP
Remember, the Sunshine Project has shown that the pentagon is also developing chemical agents for domestic use that would be illegal under international treaties for use in warfare.
In fact, the group has posted a contract on their site that shows the Office of Naval Research agreed to pay Penn State $88,750 to study the "utility of delivering nonlethal effects against personnel." According to Edward Hammond of the project, "The pentagon is actively assessing different types of calmative compounds, "or narcotic materials meant to incapacitate rather than kill.
Science magazine, in August of 2002, reported that the National Institute of Justice, the research division of the Department of Justice, had funded experiments at Pennsylvania State University to determine the effects of inhaling calmative gases and pepper spray as a crowd control device. The resulting papers stated that the research could lead to "weaponized" Valium and other chemical agents for use in crowd control.
There is no doubt that, although these chemical agents are initially meant to be used against any group who protests against the many illegal and inhumane activities of this regime, these same compounds will eventually find their onto the battlefield in direct opposition to the Chemical Weapons Convention and dozens of other international treaties.
http://www.anotherperspective.org/advoc561.htm l
http://www.sunshine-project.org/incapacitants
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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=383006
US plans to use toxic gas in Iraq
INDEPENDENT (London) 02 March 2003 By Geoffrey Lean and Severin Carrell
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.
It is British policy not to allow troops to take part in operations where riot control agents are employed. But the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has asked President Bush to authorise their use. Mr Bush, who has often spoken of "smoking out" the enemy, is understood to have agreed.
Internal Pentagon documents also show that the US is developing a range of calmative gases, also banned for battlefield use. Senior US defence sources predict these could be used in Iraq by elite special forces units to take out command and control bunkers deep underground.
Rear Admiral Stephen Baker, a Navy commander in the last Gulf War who is now senior adviser to the Centre for Defence Information in Washington, told The Independent on Sunday that US special forces had knock-out gases that can "neutralise" people. He added: "I would think that if they get a chance to use them, they will."
The Pentagon said last week that the decision to use riot control agents "is made by the commander in the field".
Mr Rumsfeld became the first senior figure on either side of the impending conflict to announce his wish to use chemical agents in a little-noticed comment to the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on 5 February � the same day as Colin Powell's presentation of intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to the UN.
The Defence Secretary attacked the "straitjacket" imposed by bans in international treaties on using the weapons in warfare. He specified that they could be used "where there are enemy troops in a cave [and] you know there are women and children in there with them". General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke of using them against human shields.
The revelations leave the Bush administration open to charges of double standards at a time when it is making Iraq's suspected arsenal of chemical and biological weapons the casus belli. Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said last ight: "This all adds to the confusion over how the war will be conducted. If the argument with Saddam Hussein is over disarming him of weapons of mass destruction, it is perverse of the US to push the boundaries of international chemical warfare conventions in order to subdue him."
Leading experts and Whitehall officials fear that using even pepper spray and CS gas would destroy the credibility of the Chemical Weapons Convention, provoke Iraqi chemical retaliation and set a disastrous legal precedent. Professor Julian Perry Robinson, one of the world's foremost authorities on the convention, said: "Legally speaking, Iraq would be totally justified in releasing chemical weapons over the UK if the alliance uses them in Baghdad.
"When the war is over and these things have been used they will have been legitimised as a tool of war, and the principle of toxic weapons being banned will have gone. The difference between these weapons and nerve gas is simply one of structural chemistry."
The Ministry of Defence has warned the US that it will not allow British troops to be involved in operations where riot control agents are used, or to transport them to the battlefield, but Britain is even more concerned about the calmatives. This is shown by documents obtained by the Texas-based Sunshine Project under the US Freedom of Information Act. These reveal that the US is developing calmatives � including sedatives such as the benzodiazapines, diazepam, dexmeditomide and new drugs that affect the nervous system � even though it accepts that "the convention would prohibit the development of any chemically based agent that would even temporarily incapacitate a human being".
A special working group of the Federation of American Scientists concluded last month that using even the mildest of these weapons to incapacitate people would kill 9 per cent of them. It added: "Chemical incapacitating weapons are as likely as bullets to cause death."
The use of chemical weapons by US forces was explicitly banned by President Gerald Ford in 1975 after CS gas had been repeatedly used in Vietnam to smoke out enemy soldiers and then kill them as they ran away. Britain would be in a particularly sensitive position if the US used the weapons as it drafted the convention and is still seen internationally as its most important guardian.
The Foreign Office said: "All states parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention have undertaken not to use any toxic chemical or its precursor, including riot-control agents. This applies in any armed conflict."
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