RNA - Lest we forget, the trigger-happy US has a long history of using chemical weapons against innocent people - far more prolific and deadly than the baseless accusations its Ambassador to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Kenneth Ward made against Iran on Thursday, November 22.
The US, which sprayed more than 20 million gallons of various herbicides over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos from 1961 to 1971 under its program codenamed Operation Ranch Hand, also dropped during the Second World War two atomic bombs on the people of Japan in violation of International Law and International Humanitarian Law. In the course of its fake concerns about Iran, the US still maintains several programs to produce and obtain banned toxic munitions, chemical weapons, cluster bombs, white phosphorus bombs, and nuclear weapons.
More so, the US has had a worldwide experience with chemical and nuclear weapons, including using the germ warfare agents they had developed in 1947 and during the Korean War, 1950-53. That’s according to a report issued in 1952 by the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China, set up by the Helsinki-based World Peace Council. The Commission’s damning report was compiled by experts from Sweden, France, Italy, Brazil and Russia.
The US also has both direct and indirect responsibility for the use of chemical weapons in Iraq over generations and must be held accountable for it. The chemical gas attack on Halabja by Saddam in 1988, which killed at least 5,000 Kurdish civilians, was carried out by the Saddam regime in the dying months of the Iran-Iraq war, during which both the UK’s Thatcher government and the Reagan White House were providing military support to the Saddam regime. The US also encouraged Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against Iran, which was the largest use of chemical weapons in history. In addition to the Kurds, at least 20,000 Iranians were killed by Saddam’s chemical weapons attacks with full US support and backing.
And then the US used white phosphorus, which burns at extremely high temperatures and can burn through skin and bone if it lands on a person, on Iraq in 2004! The number of deaths and injuries due to the use of white phosphorus in Iraq is not known. Indeed, the above list is not even a full history, but some of the most notable uses. That’s because the US has consistently flouted international conventions on the use of internationally-banned weapons:
-America not only helped South Vietnam to rain down chemical weapons on civilians and combatants alike but dumped 20m gallons of chemicals itself. Weapons used included napalm and the defoliant Agent Orange which according to the Red Cross has left 1m people - and many American veterans - severely ill with chromosomal defects, birth deformities, high rates of leukemia and cancers.
-US-made white phosphorus is a horrific incendiary chemical weapon that melts human flesh right down to the bone. In 2009, multiple human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and International Red Cross reported that the Israeli government was attacking civilians in their own country with chemical weapons and white phosphorus munitions.
-In 2004, journalists embedded with the US military in Iraq began reporting the use of white phosphorus in Fallujah against Iraqi insurgents. First the military lied and said that it was only using white phosphorus to create smokescreens or illuminate targets. Then it admitted to using the volatile chemical as an incendiary weapon.
-CIA records now prove that Washington knew Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons (including sarin, nerve gas, and mustard gas) in the Iran-Iraq War, yet continued to pour intelligence into the hands of the Iraqi military, informing Saddam of Iranian troop movements while knowing that he would be using the information to launch chemical attacks.
-In Iraq, the US military has already littered the environment with thousands of tons of munitions made from depleted uranium, a toxic and radioactive nuclear waste product. As a result, more than half of babies born in Fallujah from 2007 - 2010 were born with birth defects. Cancer and infant mortality have also seen a dramatic rise in Iraq ever since.
-Napalm has been used as a weapon of terror by the US military as well. In 1980, the UN declared the use of napalm on swaths of civilian population a war crime. That's exactly what the US military did in World War II, dropping enough napalm in one bombing raid on Tokyo to burn 100,000 people to death, injure a million more, and leave a million without homes in the single deadliest air raid of World War II. Then the US dropped to atomic bombs to wipe out two Japanese cities full of civilians.
It is unlikely that the US will ever admit liability for the horrors its chemical and nuclear weapons have unleashed. To do so would set an unwelcome precedent: Despite official denials, the US and its allies, including Israel, have been using chemical weapons in conflicts in Gaza, Iraq and Syria. As a result, nobody is officially accountable for the suffering of millions of victims.
The November 22 meeting of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons could have finally raised this uncomfortable truth. Sadly enough, the participants missed their chance by listening to the boring and baseless anti-Iran accusations made by the US Ambassador Kenneth Ward.
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