The U.S., Britain and Israel have Used Chemical Weapons within the Last 10 Years

Those Condemning Syria Have Themselves Recently Used Chemical Weapons

We condemn all use of chemical weapons.

But the U.S. used chemical weapons against civilians in Iraq in 2004 (see links below):

www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/iraq-w...ancer_n_2917701.html

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/ar...attacks-1961475.html

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4440664.stm

www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/10/falluj...cts-ra_n_571119.html

www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/nov/15/usa.iraq

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-...fallujah-514433.html

Israeli also used white phosphorous in 2009 during “Operation Cast Lead” (see link below):

www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/25/is...hite-phosphorus-gaza

(and perhaps subsequently):

www.liveleak.com/view?i=fda_1353192244

Israel ratified Protocol III of Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (“Protocol III”) – which outlaws the use of incendiary devices in war – in 2007

www.geneva-academy.ch/RULAC/internationa...ies.php?id_state=113

So this was a war crime.

Moreover, the 1925 Geneva Protocol (which is different from Protocol III) prohibits “the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases”. The use of White phosphorus (“WP”) may also be a war crime under other international treaties and domestic U.S. laws. For example, the Battle Book, published by the U.S. Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, contains the following sentence: “It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets.”:

www.fas.org/man/dod-101/army/docs/st100-3/c5/5sect3.htm

The U.S. National Safety Council states that “White phosphorus is a poison . . . If its combustion occurs in a confined space, white phosphorus will remove the oxygen from the air and render the air unfit to support life . . . It is considered a dangerous disaster hazard because it emits highly toxic fumes. (the link has been removed for this, quite possibly due to this issue, but you can see an archive of this description here):

web.archive.org/web/20051230173817/http:...chemical/phsphor.htm

The EPA has listed white phosphorus as a Hazardous Air Pollutant:

www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=284&tid=52

Indeed, it is interesting to note that the U.S. previously called white phosphorous a chemical weapon when Saddam used it against the Kurds:

www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/dia/199...01_22431050_91r.html

Interestingly, it has just come out that the U.S. encouraged Saddam’s use of chemical weapons.

www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/2...am_as_he_gassed_iran

Moreover, the U.S. and Britain have been dropping depleted uranium in virtually every country they fight, which causes severe health problems:

www.nytimes.com/2001/01/29/world/doctor-...epleted-uranium.html

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/m...cks-on-deadly-legacy

www.truth-out.org/archive/item/54297:dep...-horror-from-america

www.boston.com/news/education/higher/art..._soldiers/?page=full

University of California at Irvine professor of Middle Eastern history Mark LeVine writes:

www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/0...382710851628525.html

Not only did the US aid the use of chemical weapons by the former Iraqi government, it also used chemical weapons on a large scale during its 1991 and 2003 invasions of Iraq, in the form of depleted-uranium (DU) ammunition.

As Dahr Jamail’s reporting for Al Jazeera has shown:

www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/...012126394859797.html

...the use of DU by the US and UK has very likely been the cause not only of many cases of Gulf War Syndrome suffered by Iraq war veterans, but also of thousands of instances of birth defects, cancer and other diseases – causing a “large-scale public health disaster” and the “highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied”:

www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/...315171951838638.html

... – suffered by Iraqis in areas subjected to frequent and intense attacks by US and allied occupation forces.

And Israel has been accused of using depleted uranium in Syria:

www.jpost.com/Defense/Syria-Israel-used-...-Syria-strike-312189

Two wrongs don’t make a right. But it is hypocritical for the U.S., Britain and Israel to say that we should bomb Syria because the government allegedly used chemical weapons:

www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/08/is-u-s-l...-other-scandals.html

Note: The U.S. sprayed nearly 20,000,000 gallons of material containing chemical herbicides and defoliants mixed with jet fuel in Vietnam, eastern Laos and parts of Cambodia. Vietnam estimates 400,000 people were killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects as a result of its use. The Red Cross of Vietnam estimates that up to 1 million people are disabled or have health problems due to Agent Orange. But that was some 50 years ago.

True.
Many more people are murdered and maimed with conventional weapons though, these deaths are no less of a tragedy.
"Chemical Weapons" is an emotional trigger used on the masses to herd them toward pre defined actions.

I don't understand why myself that chemical or biological weapons are viewed with such disdain when equal numbers can be killed just as easily with conventional weaponry, killing is killing.
The psychos ordering the destruction sure as hell don't give a shit either way IMHO.

Reptired wrote: I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that. But the reason chemical weapons - and more so atomic and nuclear weaponry, which the US has also used - are particularly insidious is that they have long-term consequences which continue a long time after the TV news has stopped reporting. The example given at the end, Agent Orange, would be a classic example.

That's certainly true of Nuclear Weapons and some Chemical Weapons, I really do think the distinction is made in Political/Media circles solely for propaganda purposes though. To say it's ok to murder people for a political ideology but not ok to poison the environment that will cause great suffering to future generations is ridiculous and the people who make that argument do not believe it.

Reptired wrote: I don't disagree with you at all. It is still useful to know, though, that even under the twisted morality that says "we kill people, just not with chemical weapons" the Anglo-American-Israeli triad is phenomenally guilty and hypocritical.