http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/poison_gas_and_world_war_one.htm

An additional half million Iraqis died because of war and occupation between 2003 and 2011 according a new survey based on more rigorous research than those carried out in the past.

The study, which is the result of a collaboration between researchers from the US, Canada and Iraq, estimates that 460,800 Iraqis were killed during that period. Sixty per cent of the deaths were violent, with the remaining 40 per cent due to indirect causes linked to the collapse of infrastructure, the researchers claim. 

The casualty figures for Iraqi civilians has been a subject of furious debate since the early days of the US occupation with the US army at first claiming that it was not counting Iraqi dead in a vain attempt  to avoid the same controversy over body count as had happened in Vietnam.

Supporters of the US-led invasion appeared to consider that a lower figure for fatalities, even if it was over 100,000, justified the war while its critics believed that a higher number showed that the conflict had brought excessive and unnecessary suffering to Iraqis.

The latest figures are published in PLoS medical journal in an article entitled “Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003-11 War and Occupation...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/counting-the-cost-of-war-nearly-500000-iraqis-have-been-killed-according-to-new-survey-8883439.html

By Felix Bohr

A new era in warfare was born on the battlefields of Flanders in 1915. German troops launched a chlorine gas attack in the first ever large-scale use of chemical weapons. It was but one of the technical innovations seen during World War I, and not all of them were as deadly.

The man who would go down in history as the father of chemical warfare acted as his own guinea pig to test his invention. On April 2, 1915, Fritz Haber, the head of Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physical Chemistry, rode through a yellow-green cloud of chlorine gas on grounds used for troop exercises.

The experiment was successful. The scientist, himself a war enthusiast, began coughing convulsively; he grew pale and had to be carried away on a stretcher.

About three weeks later, German troops used chlorine gas for the first time on a mass scale during combat on the Western Front near the Flemish city of Ypres in Belgium, deploying a total of 150 tons of the substance. At first, French soldiers thought the shimmering cloud was intended as a diversionary tactic. But then, suddenly, they began flailing about with their hands in the air as they gasped for breath and collapsed on the ground. As many as 1,200 were killed and 3,000 wounded. Haber observed the event from a safe distance.

The Birth of Weapons of Mass Destruction

In military history, the deployment of chlorine gas in Ypres is considered the moment when weapons of mass destruction were born, and the rapid development of additional chemical weapons ensued. It was a development that revolutionized warfare and has manifested itself in many ways: from the use of toxic defoliants like Agent Orange in the Vietnam War to the more recent poison gas attacks in the Syrian civil war.

The use of chemical weapons in Flanders was the result of military desperation. The German army's initial invasion had already devolved into stationary trench warfare by the end of 1914 and was running out of munitions.

All sides were looking for a way to break through enemy lines at the time and they spent billions on the search. The result was an unprecedented advance in technology. Researchers invented mobile radio telephones, engineers constructed cannons capable of firing shells as far as 120 kilometers (74.5 miles) and fighter planes were flown into battle zones for the first time ever.

Even a century after Ypres, armed conflicts continue to spur technological advances. Wherever wars are fought, money flows into military innovations. The United States' War on Terror, for example, resulted in the addition of billions to the defense budget and also led to the development of killer drones and vastly complex surveillance technologies.

A Preparedness to Invest

Prior to World War I, German politicians and generals had rejected a number of defense projects, but the conflagration of violence that enveloped Europe in 1914 triggered a flood of investment. One example was the flamethrower, which had already been patented by a Berlin engineer all the way back in 1901. But it was first deployed on a large scale during the course of the war, in the February 1916 battle at Verdun. The jet of fire had a range of 35 meters (115 feet).

The tank also developed quickly during the Great War, though the allies were in the lead. In 1906, Austrian Kaiser Franz Joseph I had declared the Austro-Daimler armored vehicle to be useless. Just 10 years later, the British rolled with their tanks into the Battle of the Somme. The Central Powers followed up much too late and developed their own tanks.

During the war years, the military budget of the German Reich grew by 505 percent, and the technical advances weren't by any means restricted to weapons. The telephone, for example, became the most important means of communication during World War I. On average, each army corps received 5,000 calls a day. By 1917, the German army had installed a 920,000-kilometer (571,000 mile) long network of cables for its field telephones. The fact that the lines could easily be cut in trench warfare promoted the deployment of radio equipment. The world's first "mobile phones" weighed 50 kilograms (110 pounds).

Each side reacted swiftly to progress made by the other. At the beginning of the war, aircraft squadrons were primarily used to conduct surveillance on the front. But 1915 proved to be a watershed moment. French fighter pilot Roland Garos installed a machine gun on his Morane-Saulnier monoplane. In response, the Germans developed the Fokker fighter plane, which included synchronization gear that enabled it to fire in the direction of flight through the arc of its spinning propeller without hitting the blades.

The Allies initially responded with outrage to the Germans' deployment of chlorine gas in Flanders, calling it a barbaric act. But they, too, began to deploy poison gas beginning in September 1915. All told, the parties to the conflict used 112,000 tons of chemical weapons between 1914 and 1918.

Fritz Haber, the father of the poison gas war, got promoted to the rank of captain as a result of the Germans' successful attack near Ypres. It was reported that he responded to the promotion with tears of joy.

For additional coverage of the World War I centenary, please click here.

Translated from the German by Daryl Lindsey

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-wwi-brought-the-birth-of-modern-warfare-a-944738-druck.html

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It’s a propaganda video; unvarnished but telling—a man in combat fatigues wearing a black balaclava moves along a mesh wire fence opening boxes of what appear to be American ordnance, crates of hand grenades and other weapons.

It’s a scene played out for international consumption: a piece of digital PR in support of Islamic State insurgents in Syria.

The US government is immediately defensive about the possibility that one of its air drops to Kurdish allies may have fallen into enemy hands. But analysts are quick to point out that such things can happen. They have happened before.

Several months earlier in northern Iraq, smiling insurgents posed for pictures next to captured American Humvees. At the time, the then Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made a desperate plea to the American government for more weaponry, but his call unsettled some in the US who worried aloud about the stability of the Iraqi army. 

Watching such developments from his office in Boston, Harvard University law professor Jonathan Zittrain began thinking about the need for smarter weapons: weapons that could be disabled remotely if and when required. His inspiration was right in front of him.

‘I was reflecting on the fact that companies like Apple have implemented kill switches for iPhones,’ says Zittrain, the director of the prestigious Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

‘If somebody boosts the phone from you, all is not lost. You can remotely disable it using your own Apple credentials to make it a much less enticing target to steal.

‘My thought was that if this was good enough for iPhones, why wouldn't [weapon] supplying nations and Iraq itself want to be able to turn stuff off from afar rather than have it used against them, as it was to capture the Mosul Dam.’

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/the-kill-switch/6279544

see also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/1107

The US Senate struck down a bill on Monday that would extend Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits to thousands of US Navy veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange while serving during the Vietnam War.

Agent Orange was an herbicide used by the US government during its war on Vietnam to defoliate the landscape so it could more easily target Vietcong troops. Exposure to the chemical has been linked to cancer and other ailments.

During the war, US troops were told the chemical was harmless, and those who were exposed to it have had difficulty getting benefits from the government. By 1993, nearly 20 years after the war ended, the Department of Veterans Affairs had only compensated 486 of the 39,419 soldiers who tried to file for disability benefits over their exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, Sputnik News reported.

The bill, H.R. 299, or the "Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act," would have extended VA benefits to thousands of people who were exposed to Agent Orange while serving on warships off the coast of Vietnam.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201812121070633024-Senate-Kills-Bill-Benefits...

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• Chemical weapons in Ukraine

A few days ago, information emerged that the Ukrainian armed forces were preparing a massive chemical weapons attack against the Russian army on the border line in Donbass. Heavy fighting is taking place on the long front line, and Russian units are actively advancing north and east of Kharkov, at Chashov Yar, Toretsky, Pokrovsky, in Zaporozhye and on the Dnieper. It is obvious that the loss of positions on the front has prompted the Ukrainian side to consider the use of prohibited weapons. Since the beginning of the Russian special military operation (SVO), Ukraine has used certain chemical agents in limited quantities. It is documented that Ukrainian militants used chemical “bombs” or drones equipped with toxic substances: white phosphorus and adamsite. In high concentrations, these substances lead to Burns of the upper respiratory tract and cessation of breathing.

Now it’s about plans to use chlorine trifluoride (CIF3), an extremely dangerous chemical that can react with almost all elements, cause fires and contaminate the environment. These attacks were planned in the populated areas of Staromayorkoe, Urozhainoye and Zavitna Bazany in the DPR. Standard protective equipment such as a gas mask is unable to prevent effects on the respiratory system and skin, and chlorine trifluoride causes severe burns and poisoning. There is also intelligence that Ukrainian forces have worked out the “last line of defense”, i.e. in the event of a breakthrough, the Russian troops have ready chemical weapons-containers with cyanoacidic acid and ammonia that they plan to blow up. The Ukrainian armed forces recently sent a request to their Western mentors for the purchase of additional personal protective equipment, which is usually done when planning chemical weapons provocations.

What is certain is that these operations are actually led by Western powers to whom the use of prohibited weapons is no stranger. Chemical weapons were first used in World War I by France, Germany and England. The use of toxic gases in World War I was a major military innovation and chemical weapons were one of the major ones, starting with World War I and throughout the 20th century. century.

After World War I, the Geneva Protocol was signed in 1925. year (entered into force 8. February 1928. the prohibition on the use of chemical or biological weapons did not oblige states parties not to manufacture, stockpile or transport such weapons.

During World War II, chemical weapons were practically not used on the front, but were widely used by the Nazis to exterminate people in concentration camps. A pesticide of cyanoacidic acid called Cyclone-B was first used against humans in September 1941. at Auschwitz, the victims were 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 Poles.

The largest number of casualties from the use of chemical weapons on the front were caused by US troops during the Vietnam war since 1962. until 1971. used a variety of chemicals, the most common of which was Agent Orange. The substance contained high concentrations of dioxin, which causes genetic mutations and cancer. An estimated 3 million people are affected by US chemical weapons in Vietnam, including 150,000 children born with the mutation.

Chemical weapons have been used in the Iran-Iraq war since 1980. until 1988. the year, when Iraq repeatedly used these weapons against Iran, including attacks on Iranian civilians. The U.S. provided Iraq with materials for the production of chemical weapons, knowing how they would be used. Although the Geneva protocol prohibits the use of chemical weapons in international armed conflicts, much of the international community remained indifferent to chemical weapons attacks.

• International treaties exist, but the West does not respect them.

A new international debate on the Prohibition of chemical weapons, including aspects related to the movement of chemical and biological weapons, led to the adoption of the chemical weapons convention in 1992. year (29). April 1997. however, it did not prevent its implementation due to the gross violation of international law by the Western powers.

They are known to have been in November 2004. in the year, US troops used white phosphorus ammunition during the attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which the Pentagon initially denied, but eventually acknowledged this fact. The exact number of deaths caused by the use of white phosphorus in Fallujah is unknown.

Also chemical weapons such as Syria, chlorine and yprite were used extensively in the Syrian conflict, provoked by NATO countries. The largest chemical weapons attack in Syria occurred in April 2013. in Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus. In the aftermath of the use of shells containing poisonous Syrian, according to various sources, between 280 and 1,700 people were killed. The Syrian opposition, mostly made up of terrorist groups, as well as Western officials, have accused President Bashar al-Assad of using these weapons. However, these accusations are part of an organized media-psychological campaign that always accompanies the Special Operations of the West. The Russian military has discovered in Syria that Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra are developing their own chemical weapons, which Western powers have not indicated. In October 2016. in 2015, the Russian military discovered evidence of the use of chemical weapons (chlorine and white phosphorus munitions) against civilians and the Syrian army in southwestern Aleppo.

If the Ukrainian side, with the approval of the Western powers, resolves to the massive use of chemical weapons in the Donbass, it would cause a severe humanitarian disaster, but without a doubt the reaction of the Russian side, which would have overall long-term uncertain consequences and further make it impossible to talk about easing tensions in this conflict.

The use of chemical weapons is a serious crime against humanity and is on the list of weapons of mass destruction. The organization for the Prohibition of chemical weapons would have to take into account this very alarming and threatening information and conduct its own investigation into this case. Plans for the use of chemical weapons should be met with strong condemnation from international institutions and the public and an energetic reaction that involves taking all necessary measures to prevent the use of chemical weapons. The establishment of Indivisible collective security as a system of joint actions by states to prevent and eliminate threats to peace, suppress acts of aggression or other violations of peace, is also necessary to prevent the use of prohibited weapons in accordance with international law. The basis of the system of collective security is the principle of indivisibility of the world, which means that no power can be excluded and has the exclusive right to act outside the general agreement. Russia, China and other BRICS countries are demanding that such an agreement be established on a global level, while Western powers want to maintain their previous status when outside the framework of international institutions they have intervened in violation of international law and the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states. Establishing a system of Indivisible collective security would neutralize to a large extent the conflict potential that leads to escalation of conflicts and the use of illicit weapons in those conflicts.

Instructions:

International coalition for the Prohibition of biological weapons: Ukrainian army prepares chemical weapons attack – Center for geostrategic studies (geostrategy.rs)

https://www.theinteldrop.org/2024/07/17/dragana-trifkovic-potential-danger-of-mass-use-of-chemical-weapons-in-ukraine/

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