Posted on 11/22/2012 4:54:28 PM PST by lbryce
The latest estimates say that the Assad regime has hundreds of tons of mustard gas, a blister agent, and large stockpiles of sarin and possibly VX, both of which are nerve agents -- all of which can be launched by Scud missiles, artillery, or aircraft, according to Charles Blair, a specialist in chemical and biological weapons at the Federation of American Scientists. "I've heard that Syria has 100 to 200 missiles with nerve agents loaded and ready to go, but that seems extreme," said Blair, noting that the nerve agents are usually stored separately from the weapons and that exact estimates about the size of the regime's stockpile are almost impossible to come by.
Although the U.S. government has released only vague estimates as to the size of Syria's chemical and biological weapons stockpile, Dempsey told lawmakers in March that the arsenal was "100 times the magnitude we experienced in Libya." Libya acceded to the international Chemical Weapons Convention in 2004 and had largely destroyed its useful stockpile of such weapons by the time Qaddafi's regime fell in 2011, according to Blair.
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
No; Syria has had a massive indigenous chemical weapons production capacity and stockpile since the 1970s.
Their stockpile has been widely known and commented on publicly for decades. Nobody did anything about it.
I think not. The emotion generated by a seemingly diabolical weapon no doubt prompted it’s outlawing but the use of gas on the battlefields of the First World War ultimately proved impractical. If they were so worked up over it’s use perhaps they should have taken the step to outlaw war altogether but such a thing is wishful thinking at best. Had they had more of a devastating use they most certainly would have been used in WW2. The use of gas in a sealed chamber proved to be the more effective , as the Germans demonstrated in the concentration camps. Ironically outside of Auschwitz, where Zyclon-B, a prussic acid compound was used , the gas of choice in all the others was carbon monoxide, generated by using the diesel motors of captured Russian submarines. As to the European experience, I don’t know of gas being used against civilians in WW1 as it was in WW2. Two generations of men in my family fought for Europe’s freedom and both barely survived doing so. Thank you but I don’t need to be reminded of wars cost.
‘’Or in a Japanese subway’’.<, Yup. Grand Dad always used to say that in a city in a large building or subway was where gas would be most lethal. He’d say “You don’t need an army. Just one person with a canister’’.
And yet with far less education and money the London and Madrid subway and train attacks killed far more people with plain old explosives, to say nothing of killing even more people with even less money and some box cutters.
Chemical weapons have no business being included in the same category as nuclear and biological weapons as "WMDs"
Italy used mustard gas against Ethiopia at the start of WW2. Those stores of mustard gas were mined when Rommel pulled out of Africa after the second battle of el Alamein.
After WW2, the Germans were brought back to the Qattara Depression to fence it off. Today, armed U.S. drones still monitor 24/7 those stockpiles near Benghazi.
It is quite likely that Ambassador Stevens was attempting to give that Libyan mustard gas to the Syrian rebels so that Assad would instead get blamed for using it inside Syria.
One thing I never see discussed is what will happen when the muzzies gain control of the chem weapons if the Assad regime collapses.
+Step One: Hamas engages Israel, partially depletes IRONDOME defenses.
Step Two: Hezbollah in Lebanon, with 15X the number of Al-Fajers, depletes Irondome completely.
Srep 3: Syria launches gas weapons.
...and then....
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A real problem with all of these scenarios is why the hell Syria has to launch a thing against Israel?
Current Syrian government is as pro-Israel as possible in that part of the world.
I don’t remember any shouts form Assad about how bad joos are, no big or little satan quotes etc.
+Step One: Hamas engages Israel, partially depletes IRONDOME defenses.
Step Two: Hezbollah in Lebanon, with 15X the number of Al-Fajers, depletes Irondome completely.
Srep 3: Syria launches gas weapons.
...and then....
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A real problem with all of these scenarios is why the hell Syria has to launch a thing against Israel?
Current Syrian government is as pro-Israel as possible in that part of the world.
I don’t remember any shouts form Assad about how bad joos are, no big or little satan quotes etc.
We need to get out of the silly mindet that these groups cannot work together against what they see as their ultimate common enemy.
Documentation, please?
Been estimated that it will take about 30,000 NATO troops to control Assad's WMD after the fall of the regime.
Turkey wants missile defense from the US real bad right now.
Syria first acquired Chemical WMD from Egypt. They have used highly intense political skills over the decades to skirt international sanctions. The Muslim brotherhood in Egypt also controls a large chemical WMD stockpile. As do the Saud's and the Iranians.
Well, we know this report is just a lie.
The liberals told us, repeatedly, and often violently, that there are no WMDs in that area, that W concocted the scheme just to invade a swell country so that he could get lots of oil for his oil buddies.
Gas is only another parameter in the combined armed approach to warfare. It basically slows the enemy troops which now have to don costly and expensive protective equipment... or die in greater number, whichever the calculation dictates.
By itself it is not very effective, just don a mask and cursory protection, in the gas attack is pretty much ineffective. However, as a terror weapon, as a Sarin Tokyo style surprize attack, or combined with a conventional attack, it can level the playing field and add to the confusion and flanking of the enemy.
Much as Napoleon combined infantry, cavalry and artillery into an effective mean, add gas to that combination to complicate things and it works.
On a brighter note, Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving to you too. What still makes large areas of France and Belgium unsafe isn’t ‘’small clouds’’ of gas but unexploded artillery shells. WW1 was a war where artillery dominated the battlefield. Indeed, the machine gun and artillery fire accounted for more casualties than gas in WW1. War is many things, all of them horrible but it remains a dynamic of the human condition. Consider what Heraclitus said”War is the father of all things’’. Or British historian J.F.C. Fuller: “Either war is obsolete or men are’’ pax.
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