From: Nick Steadman, [EMAIL PROTECTED] As Jerry Howells says, the Americans used CN/CS riot gas in the Vietnam war - it was typically employed in artillery ammo to get the North Vietnamese and/or VC out of their bunkers, whereupon they would be shelled with conventional ammo. This is now an illegal practice under international law (Chemical Weapons Convention), which is why you don't see any novel uses of riot gases being proposed by the US forces under their ongoing and much-hyped non-lethal weapons programme, since this goes beyond peacetime riot control (for which these gases are still legal) to 'combat', where they're not. In the event of actual war, however, as we've seen so often, most countries tend to please themselves, if they think they can get away with it. Dehumanising the enemy always helps - but that doesn't make it any more legal. There were, as you know, various US experiments with other gases, designed to render the enemy confused, stupified or otherwise hors de combat, but it was deliberately never stated whether the aim was merely to facilitate their roundup or to make it easier to mow 'em down. No prizes for guessing the correct answer. This remains an important area of war studies, since the pressure is always on nowadays to find less bloody methods of warfare, not least to minimise the enemy response against friendly troops (yep, the Body Bag Syndrome again). Bradford University's Department of Peace Studies has done a lot of valuable work in this area - go to this URL and follow links: http://www.bradford.ac.uk/ Nick Steadman Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________________________________________ T O P I C A The Email You Want. http://www.topica.com/t/16 Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics
