One reason to limit the point to the last 20 years is that WMD have been used for millenia, but international law banning their use is fairly recent. The Romans spread salt over the fields of Carthage to make sure it could not be repopulate -- certainly in that context salt was a WMD. Arab tribes woudl drop dead animals down the wells in enemy terriory to poison their water supplies. Crusaders used to hurl dead and diseased animals over the walls of cities to try to impose plague and disease on the populations. In more modern times, mustard gas was widely used in WWI. There are many, many other instances of chemicals, diseases, etc. being used in warfare throughout human history. But international law in the past several decades has outlawed such practices.
So if the question had been open ended and without restriction, obviously the answer would have been that there have been many such uses in the past. It would become a silly question; also, if one is going to use historical uses of WMD to justify their current usage, they could never be eliminated.
And, if you look at the context of the post I was responding to Message 19760277
you will see that the issue was the difference between the invansion of Iraq and other US invasions of "undesirable dictatorial republics" in the past 20 years or so. So within that context of that discussion, it make perfect sense to limit the question. (Context does matter in these discussions, you know.)
Now, do you know of any uses which fit the conditions I laid out in my post? There may be -- I don't know all of what went on in Cambodia under Pol Pot, in the Tutsi/Hutu troubles, etc. Which is why I posed it as a question. Which you are still free to answer under its terms and with an understanding of the context of the discussion. |
