BIOCHEMICAL WARFARE IN RECENT YEARS
this is a student project that was completed in the spring of 2000 by a student at Davison High School in Davison, MI
Since the initial modern use of chemical warfare agents during the First World War, military planners have been acutely aware of their effects and the need to both protect personnel from them and to effectively prevent the enemy from using them. Over the succeeding years, military researchers developed agents that were increasingly powerful and deadly. These developments have enabled battlefield commanders to use fewer, more stable munitions with maximum effect. This enhanced lethality creates a difficult problem for today's military planners. How do you target and destroy the facilities producing and storing these vast quantities of chemical warfare agents, denying the enemy their use, and at the same time prevent the deadly poisons stored at these locations from killing, injuring, or sickening nearby civilian population centers and your own forces? As the stockpiling of these agents becomes more common throughout the world, this problem should be of increasing concern. Perhaps, even a world primary focus.
The history of chemical warfare is long and detailed. It goes back as far as 400 B.C. when the Greeks used sulfur fumes to knock out enemy soldiers. However, for the purposes of this report more recent data from the last two decades are what we will be looking at.
The most recent and politically tense situation was several years after the Vietnam war. In the early eighties the U.S. government closed its open air biochemical weapons experiments in hopes that other countries would fallow our lead. The U.S. was looking for a way to spread peace and restore its image in the years after the Vietnam War. Then, the United States accused Vietnam of using mycotoxins in Cambodia and Laos. Later, inthe mid-eighties, Iraq was confirmed using nerve and mustard gas on Iranians. Seeing the need to be able to retaliate in a dire circumstance, or perhaps as a show that the U.S. isn’t out of the chemical weapons game, our nation reopened outdoor testing of biological agents. Then in 1987, the U.S. also began resuming production of biochemical weapons, which it had previously terminated in 1974. In 1989, the United States also attended the Paris conference and signed a treaty to condemn chemical weapons. Later, that year they revealed plans for poison gas production. In 1991 the U.S. and a coalition of countries began bombing Iraqi chemical weapon storage areas. This lead into nearly a decade of similar assaults on the Iraqi biochemical weapon facilities. Other major world events were in 1995 when Japan used sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo subway system, and in 1997 when Cuba accused the U.S. of spraying their crops with biochemical agents creating some tension there. The history of this topic is extensive and traumatic, showing a long trail of excruciating deaths and no one is willing to give any leeway, but it’s easy to see why. For a more extensive timeline, visit
uvm.edu
.
Here are two suspected Iraqi biochemical weapon storage facilities. The first was taken during a UN inspection, and the second during the Gulf War.
It is unknown just how many countries have biochemical stockpiles because of the politics involved and the political sensitivity of the subject. At the Paris conference 149 nations signed the treaty condemning the use of chemical weapons. However, it is known that at least one third of the countries that signed the charter still posses chemical weapons either in storage or in production. These weapons are very hard to detect because they can be placed in anything from a missile head to a soda can. At the present time it is also very difficult to detect what is in the substance without hazardous exposure, or the use of a chemical laboratory. Thus, this very potent “poor man’s atomic bomb” isn’t all that hard to keep out of sight. For more information on this aspect of chemical warfare, check into
projects.sipri.se
Any country could also produce these weapons with minimal difficulty. They are extemely cost effective and easy to manufacture. A web page at Arizona State University stated that the cost per casualty for a nuclear bomb was about $2000, convential weapons is about $800, $600 for powerful nerve gas, and as low as one dollar for other biological weapons. Any competent chemist could create such a weapon, and a knowlegeable chemist could possibly mutate bacteria with the right tools. These types of weapons are also very efficient because if they are not lethal, then they are at least incapacitating. Coughing, headaches, sneeezing, nausea, problems breathing, lesions, paralysis, and other nasty symptoms associated with biochemical weapons also tend to be very demoralizing. Other advantages and disadvantages are listed at this web site:
calpoly.edu
What this picture is trying to demonstrate is how nerve gas stops the correct breakdown of Acetyicholine in the muscle. Which ultimately, in high doses will completely incapacitate muscle tissue and damage nerve cells.
The biggest and most recent problem we’ve had in the world today was the Persian Gulf
War and how it affected both U.S., allied countries, and in Iraq. After years of dismissing
the claims of veterans of the Persian Gulf War, Pentagon officials have finally conceded
that some veterans suffering from mysterious ailments were probably exposed to
chemical weapons while in Iraq. A new Pentagon report acknowledges that nerve and
mustard gases were detected as many as seven times during the first week of the air war
in northern Saudi Arabia near bases housing tens of thousands of American
troops. These findings fly in the face of previous statements by the military and the
Defense Department. The Pentagon had already subjected itself to charges of a cover-up
or at least bureaucratic negligence in June when it admitted that members of the Army's
37th Engineer Battalion blew up a bunker containing chemical weapons in the southern
Iraqi village of Kamisiyah. They then stood around without protective clothing as a
cloud, likely containing sarin and mustard gas, drifted over them. There is a vast amount
of other information pertaining to the Gulf War and the side effects on humans, see
the Tuite reports at chronicillnet.org . These reports also provide a great deal of other information, including details of the bombing campaign in Iraq.
Thus you can see why the issue of chemical weapons has become a huge political issue.
It concerns human health and is an extremely effective military weapon. It is easy to see
why the U.S. would not easily give up it’s production or storage itself. Especially when
there are so many other countries who also refuse to refute it’s usage. However, there is a
need for all nations and people to agree that it shouldn’t be such a huge problem. There
are many other issues that should be dealt with above war and its weapons and these hostile
tactics. |
