OT - mustard gas (was RE: SC - Re: kraut brands)

[Decker, Terry D.]

The US and Japan were not signatory to the Geneva Accords on chemical
weapons in WWII.  The Japanese used mustard gas in China between 1933 and
1944.  The US considered using a nerve gas on Iwo Jima, but decided not to,
apparently because of potential retaliation.  

A German air attack on US ships at Bari, Italy, December 2, 1943 sank the
S.S. John Harvey carrying 2000 M47A1 bombs each containing 60-70 pounds of
mustard gas.  Official military casualties from the mustard gas were 83
dead, 534 wounded.  The local civilian population is reported to have had
over 1,000 deaths related to the mustard gas.  Just to add insult to injury,
from October 1945 to April 1946 the US dumped an unknown quantity of
phosgene, hydrogen cyanide, cyanogen chloride, and mustard and/or Lewisite
bombs in the Adriatic near Bari.  Between 1946 and 1997 there have been over
230 reported cases of exposure to mustard gas in the region, mostly among
fishermen.

Mustard gas was also used in Ethiopia (1935) and Morocco (1925), by
signatory nations.

Iraq used several chemical and biological weapons during its war with Iran,
but during the Gulf War only one US soldier was diagnosed with symptoms of
mustard gas.  He was a tunnel rat who entered a bunker where a leaking
canister had probably been stored.  That was the only positive diagnosis,
but some of the cases of Gulf War Syndrome may actually be undiagnosed gas
cases.   

The US still has its stockpiles, because many of the CBR weapons are
difficult to dispose of safely.  The military has been in the process of
building sealed furnaces in isolated areas for a decade to destroy the
weapons.  They are still trying to figure out how to safely transport the
weapons to the furnaces from heavily populated areas.

Bear

> I thought the holding, using or manufacture of Chemical 
> weapons was banned
> after WW1. Wasn't one the Geneva conventions the source of 
> this outlaw?  I
> know it was one of the sanctions against Iraq, and one of 
> contention still.
> Strange how the US Armed Forces don't want these weapons in 
> the hands of
> Kooks but is willing to hold on to them themselves.
> 
> Thorbjorn
>