From: ronkean@juno.com
Date: Sun Sep 05 1999 - 10:04:56 MDT
On Sat, 04 Sep 1999 22:40:45 -0700 Mike Linksvayer <ml@justintime.com>
writes:
> GBurch1@aol.com wrote:
Saddam Hussein COULD have used chemical or biological warheads in his
SCUDs, but didn't. Hitler could have, but didn't use biological or
chemical weapons on the > battlefield.> > Why?
>
During WWI, gas ('mustard' and chlorine) was used in the trench warfare
in Europe, and the number of soldiers who died and were injured in that
war was unprecedented. The use of gas was widely condemned as
uncivilized, and after the war a treaty (The Geneva Convention) banned
gas in warfare, and set up other 'rules of war'. This ban was respected
by all parties during WWII. The use of gas by the nazis in their death
camps was not (at least by the nazis) considered a violation of that ban.
At the same time, gas masks were often carried by soldiers during WWII,
because there was sometimes thought to be a risk of encountering gas.
And some countries were prepared, to varying extents, to use gas in
retaliation, if gas were to be used first by the other side.
So there is an analogy between gas in WWII and nuclear weapons in the
years following WWII, up to and including today. In each case, countries
which have the capability to use the weapons do not use them in practice,
except perhaps as an implied threat.
There is another important difference between WWI and WWII. In WWI,
attacks on civilians were rare, but in WWII, massive attacks on civilian
population centers (mostly by bombing) were commonplace. For example,
Germany bombed London and Coventry early in the war, and the Allies
bombed Hamburg, Dresden, and Berlin much later. The fire bombing of
Dresden created a firestorm which was about as destructive as an atomic
bomb would have been, killing 100,000 people in a few hours. Japan used
ground forces against the civilian population of Nanking, and late in the
war the US extensively bombed Tokyo with incendiary bombs. When Truman
announced the use of the atomic bomb against Hiroshima, he was not only
announcing the event, but also the existence of the bomb. In his short
speech, he described Hiroshima as 'a military base', and implied that the
atomic bomb had been intended for use against Germany, as he said 'we
have beaten the Germans in the race to discovery'. He also said 'we will
continue to use the atomic bomb until Japan's ability to make war is
ended'.
As for Saddam Hussein, there have been reports that chemical weapons were
used in the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s, and by Iraq against Kurdish
villages inside Iraq. My guess is that the reason Iraq did not use
chemical weapons in the 1991 Gulf War was that Saddam Hussein was worried
about the response that might bring.
Ron Kean
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