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Proponent of chemical weapons (gassing people) Britain's Winston Churchill |
Eugene Weekly’s Ted Taylor’s “Experts on chemical weapons”
Editing, bracketed comment, ending commentary by
Carolyn
Bennett
The first country that was alleged to have “used chemical
weapons in the Middle East,” Taylor writes, “was Great Britain in 1920, as part
of its efforts to put down a rebellion by Iraqi tribesmen when British forces
seized the country following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.” Britain’s Secretary
of State for War and Air Winston Churchill is reported to have said:
‘I do not understand this
squeamishness about the use of gas.
‘I am strongly in favor of using poisonous
gas against uncivilized tribes.’
[A fair question is: Who is/was actually uncivilized, Iraqis or
Churchill?]
Syria blocked by United States
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Iraq |
In 2007, when Syria had a non-permanent seat on the United
Nations Security Council, Taylor continues his experts’ reporting, its leaders introduced
a draft resolution to create a weapons of mass destruction zone for the entire
Middle East (the measure would have included addressing Egypt’s chemical
weapons and Israel’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons). The United
States blocked this move.
Treaty nations fail treaty promise
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Syria |
Nations who are parties to the
Organization for the Prohibition
of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) agreed but failed to destroy all their chemical
weapons by May 2012. Most of these nations ─ including the United States of
America ─ failed to meet either the initial 2007 deadline or the 2012 extension
deadline, which means that the United States and other nations are not in
compliance with their responsibility and promise to destroy all their chemical
weapons. There is also uncertainty as to whether all nations have declared
their possession of chemical weapons and thus the accuracy or inaccuracy of the number of existing stocks in the world.
“Had the 189 nations who are members of the OPCW complied
with the terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention’s required destruction of chemical
weapons,” Taylor writes, “there would be far fewer of these weapons available for
transfer and use.
So when U.S. President Barack Obama says his government “knows”
Syrian President Bashar al- Assad has chemical weapons, “Assad could be saying
the same thing” about the United States.
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U.S. war on Iraqis |
Breaking law on pretext of lawbreaking
It is hard to see how [the United States’] breaking solemn
undertakings to most of the countries of the world by neglecting treaties and
principles of international law” agreed to by the United States “will either
bolster U.S. ‘credibility’ or enhance respect for international law,” Taylor
quotes a paper by the Western States Legal Foundation.
“International
law provides no exception for the ad hoc use of force by states in cases
involving actual or possible use of prohibited weapons by states with which
they are not at war.
Standing alone, allegations of chemical weapons use by the
Syrian government do not provide a legal basis for military action by any
non-party to the conflict.
“Unilateral
punitive strikes justified as a defense of the global norm against
chemical weapons are unlikely to protect Syrians or others against use of
chemical weapons and other attacks. …” Such strikes, however, “could lead to a
significant increase in the level of violence throughout the region.”
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U.S. war on Vietnamese |
n my view, a view which is not only mine, the United States of
America plays out the same predictably deadly pattern, over and
over again.
Through entrenched and, by definition, corrupt government
officials and their paymasters, their profit and nonprofit co-conspirators,
they execute the same historic pattern: create a problem (conflict, war, factionalism,
misery); then, on some dire-sounding trumped-up charge or pretext, propose to solve
that problem by more violence.
Real problems of relations among people and within regions, conflict,
disease, hunger, human rights, and the basics of living are of course never
solved. This is a deliberate consequence, as the co-conspirators, government officials and their “partners” and
paymasters, continue to enrich themselves, propagandizing their “solutions” on
the backs of the world’s peoples. Global misery, endless misery ─ as with circular arguments
and self-fulfilling prophesies ─ is created and sustained by dark(sinister) knights of the realm.
Sources and notes
“Experts speak out on chem weapons,” Ted Taylor’s blog, September
4, 2013, http://www.eugeneweekly.com/blog/experts-speak-out-chem-weapons
EXPERTS quoted by Taylor
From the Institute for Public Accuracy, Eryl Nassruns the
Anthrax Vaccine blog
Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and chair of Middle
Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco
Jacqueline Cabasso, executive director of the Western States
Legal Foundation
Journalist Ted Taylor is editor-in-chief at Eugene Weekly
“The Rush to Bomb Syria: Undermining International Law and
Risking Wider War,” by Western States Legal Foundation, Executive Director Jacqueline
Cabasso
Jacqueline Cabasso appeared last night on The Pacifica
Evening News, Weekdays, for September 4, 2013 - 6:00 p.m., http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/94985
See also: Western States Foundation at http://www.wslfweb.org/aboutwslf.htm#brd
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