Chemical
Hypocrites
By George Monbiot
When Saddam Hussein so pig-headedly failed to shower US troops with
chemical weapons as they entered Iraq, thus depriving them of a retrospective
justification for this war, the American generals explained that he
would do so as soon as they crossed the "red line" around
Baghdad. Beyond that point, the desperate dictator would lash out with
every weapon he possessed.
Well, the line has been crossed
and recrossed, and not a whiff of mustard gas or VX has so far been
detected. This could mean one of three things: Saddam's command system
may have broken down (he may be dead, or his troops might have failed
to receive or respond to his orders); he is refraining, so far, from
using chemical weapons; or he does not possess them.
The special forces sent to
seize Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have yet to find hard evidence
at any of the 12 sites (identified by the Pentagon as the most likely
places) they have examined so far. As Newsweek revealed in February,
there may be a reason for this: in 1995, General Hussein Kamel, the
defector whose evidence George Bush, Tony Blair and Colin Powell have
cited as justification for their invasion, told the UN that the Iraqi
armed forces, acting on his instructions, had destroyed the last of
their banned munitions. But, whether Saddam is able to use such weapons
or not, their deployment in Iraq appears to be imminent, for the Americans
seem determined on it.
Chemicals can turn corners,
seep beneath doors, inexorably fill a building or a battlefield. They
can kill or disable biological matter while leaving the infrastructure
intact. They are the weapons that reach the parts other weapons can't.
They are also among the most terrifying instruments of war: this is
why Saddam used them to such hideous effect, both in Iran and against
the Kurds of Halabja. And, for an occupying army trying not to alienate
local people or world opinion, those chemicals misleadingly labeled"non-lethal"
appear to provide a possibility of capturing combatants without killing
civilians.
This, to judge by a presidential
order and a series of recent statements, now seems to be the US government's
chosen method for dealing with Iraqi soldiers sheltering behind human
shields, when its conventional means of completing the capture of Baghdad
have been exhausted. It makes a certain kind of sense, until two inconvenient
issues are taken into account. The deployment of these substances would
break the conventions designed to contain them; and the point of this
war, or so we have endlessly been told, is to prevent the use of chemical
weapons.
Last week Bush authorized
US troops to use teargas in Iraq. He is permitted to do so by an executive
order published in 1975 by Gerald Ford, which overrides, within the
US, the 1925 Geneva protocol on chemical weapons. While this may prevent
Bush's impeachment in America, it has no standing in international law.
The chemical weapons convention,
promoted by George W's father and ratified by the US in 1997, insists
that "each state party undertakes not to use riot control agents
as a method of warfare". Teargas, pepper spray and other incapacitants
may be legally used on your own territory for the purposes of policing.
They may not be used in another country to control or defeat the enemy.
For the past two months,
US officials have been seeking to wriggle free from this constraint.
In February, the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, told Congress's
armed services committee that "there are times when the use of
non-lethal riot agents is perfectly appropriate". He revealed that
he and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Richard Myers, had
been "trying to fashion rules of engagement" for the use of
chemical weapons in Iraq.
Rumsfeld, formerly the chief
executive of GD Searle, one of the biggest drugs firms in the US, has
never been an enthusiast for the chemical weapons convention. In 1997,
as the Senate was preparing to ratify the treaty, he told its committee
on foreign relations that the convention "will impose a costly
and complex regulatory burden on US industry". Enlisting the kind
of self-fulfilling prophecy with which we have since become familiar,
he maintained that it was not "realistic", as global disarmament
"is not a likely prospect". Dick Cheney, now vice-president,
asked the committee to record his "strong opposition" to ratification.
Last month Victoria Clarke,
an assistant secretary in Chemical Donald's department, wrote to the
Independent on Sunday, confirming the decision to use riot control agents
in Iraq, and claiming, without supporting evidence, that their deployment
would be legal. Last week the US Marine Corps told the Asia Times that
CS gas and pepper spray had already been shipped to the Gulf. The government
of the US appears to be on the verge of committing a war crime in Iraq.
Given that the entire war
contravenes international law, does it matter? It does, for three reasons.
The most immediate is that there is no such thing as a non-lethal chemical
weapon. Gases that merely incapacitate at low doses, in well-ventilated
places, kill when injected into rooms, as the Russian special forces
found in October when they slaughtered 128 of the 700 hostages they
were supposed to be liberating from a Moscow theatre. It is impossible
to deliver a sufficient dose to knock out combatants without also delivering
a sufficient dose to kill some of their captives.
The second reason is that,
if they still possess them, it may induce the Iraqi fighters to retaliate
with chemical weapons of their own. At the same time, it encourages
the other nations now threatened with attack by Bush to start building
up their chemical arsenals: if the US is not prepared to play by the
rules, why should they?
The third reason is that
the use of gas in Iraq may serve, in the eyes of US citizens, to help
legitimize America's illegal chemical weapons development program. As
the US weapons research group Sunshine Project has documented, the defense
department and the army are experimenting with chemicals which cause
pain, fear, convulsions, hallucinations and unconsciousness, and developing
the hollow mortar rounds required to deliver them.
Among the weapons they are
testing is fentanyl, the drug which turned the Moscow theatre into a
gas chamber. Since March 2002, the government's "non-lethal weapons
directorate" has been training the Marine Corps in the use of chemical
weapons. All these activities break the convention.
The deployment of chemicals
in Baghdad could be the event which finally destroys the treaties designed
to contain them, and this, in turn, would be another step towards the
demolition of international law and the inception of a bloody and brutal
era, in which might is unconstrained by universal notions of right.
You cannot use chemical weapons
to wage war against chemical weapons. They are, as the convention makes
clear, the instruments of terrorists. By deploying them, the US government
would liquidate one of the remaining moral distinctions between its
own behavior and that of the man it asks us to abominate.
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