[SOC] a little something from the Department of Hypocrisy...

[Lloyd Lachow]

Published on Sunday, March 2, 2003 by the
lndependent/UK

US Prepares to Use Toxic Gases in Iraq

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 Defense
Secretary, Donald
Rumsfeld, has asked President Bush to authorize 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 Defense 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 Center for Defense Information
in Washington, told The
Independent on Sunday that US special forces had
knock-out gases that can
"neutralize" 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 Defense 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 night: "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
legitimized 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 Defense 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."

� 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd



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