Dozens died in Syria-Iran missile test

It's the past too. Saddam used them in the Iran/Iraq war in the 80s. He also gassed the Kurds.
Germany used mustard gas in WW1.

 

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The Americans tested them on their own troops.:shrug:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/01/1056825376086.html

And in Fallujah

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/chem-n11.shtml

 

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Chemical and biological warfare are two legs of the NBC triad (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical).
If you can't have nukes then you go for chemical and/ or biological.
In many cases you go for all three.
But a number of countries have now given up the C and B aspects while retaining the N.

Personally I would have been far, FAR more surprised to find out they didn't.

 

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Which countries?

 

Got rid of C and B?
UK (officially), US (officially), Russia (officially), at least.

In the UK Porton Down (biological warfare centre) was closed (as far its main function was concerned) about a decade (two?) ago.
The chemical weapons industry never really got much limelight (okay, oxymoronic sentence, but you know what I mean) any way, but that's faded to obscurity also.
(By which I mean not out of sight to the public but gone from the radar more or less altogether as a weapon system).
Biological warfare is supposedly a no-no these days because it's, um, not sporting or something.
Chemical isn't far behind in its "bad cess old boy, just not on, what?" image either.
Nukes though... different kettle of fish somehow. :shrug:

Except for general incapacitating agents of course, tear gas, a number of non-lethal systems (whose non-lethality depends upon concentration - indoors you could be dead, outdoors you get a bad cough and throw up).

http://www.britishembassy.gov.uk/se...t/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1064571438673

http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/bwc/text/joint.htm

 

I don't believe it.

 

Hypocrisy?
Call for and sign the conventions but then ignore them?
Possible.

I do know that the UK's biological warfare capability is virtually nil now and that the chemical ability is (last time I was in a position to check) a "shadow" of its former self.
Countermeasures are one reason some capacity is still extant - you have to have some of the gasses to find antidotes for example.

 

Oli, meet Sam!

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Baron Max

 

We don't believe the vast majority of the crap you post on here either. So I guess that makes us all even?

 

You need to look into the "biodefence" programs.

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Surely you jest.
S.A.M. and I go waaay back.
Pfft, I remember her when she was just a sprog.

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Er,

Saiyyadati??
I did put the condition (officially) in with those nations.
I do know that effort and funding has been drastically reduced. (I think SIPRI published something a couple, maybe 10 years back on reduced biowarfare budgets).
And:
http://www.fas.org/bwc/usbiodefense.htm

Oooh, a black project! Must be nefarious...
(At least one of them had very good reasons to be kept relatively quiet).

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E1D71639F937A3575AC0A9679C8B63

 

when JPost reported it i was skeptical (not because JPost is unreliable. just because it was a lone source). but now that Jane's reported on the same, i'm nervous.

they're planning an attack ("retaliatory" or not) with Sarin???

they better prepare for hell if they actually do that. if these unconventional weapons are used, you better believe that all bets are off.

 

Depends on the target: military personnel have countermeasures, um, atropine ( Deadly Nightshade, in itself not nice) self-injected into the heart, IIRC, given enough warning.

 

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http://www.biodefensestocks.com/BDS/SN/UK_Biodefense_Companies.asp

 

I don't think designing a weapon is automatic assumption for attack; more like deterrence. Imagine how nervous a nuclear Israel must make them, considering the tendency of Israel to indulge in secret raids and ground troop invasions.

 

Vomit, yes S.A.M. returns to the Vomit, I wonder, WMD's?, Syria?, Iraq? Sadam?

Created less angry people in the world? Yes it would seem so, killing them removes them from the equation doesn't it? and what about all the angry people in the world before Iraq and Afghanistan? those angry people have been killing innocent people since 1948, and what have they accomplished? what has it got them or their children? more death, and more destruction, have they made any progress beyond killing themselves and their children and the Innocent Children, men, and women, of the world?

FOXNews.com - Sarin, Mustard Gas Discovered Separately in Iraq ...
Saddam, when he was in power, had declared that he did in fact possess mustard-gas filled artilleries but none that included sarin. ...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120137,00.html
FOXNews.com - Tests Confirm Sarin in Iraqi Artillery Shell - U.S. ...
The mustard gas shell may have been one of 550 projectiles that Saddam failed to ... Saddam's regime used sarin in mass amounts during an air attack on the ...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120268,00.html
Sarin - Council on Foreign Relations
Saddam Hussein used sarin on the Kurds in northern Iraq during a 1987-88 ... A year earlier, the cult killed seven people in a sarin gas attack in the ...
http://www.cfr.org/publication/9553/

 

Buffalo,

Considering you have a great point there, expect Sam to try to discredit your post by saying your sources are from Fox news or something like that.

 

US "biodefense" :

http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/topics/BiodefenseRelated/default.htm

http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/cbw/biodefense.pdf

NBACC is to contain four separate centers, buildings for each of which are being built
adjacent to the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). One
of the four centers, the Biothreat Characterization Center, according to Dr. Korch’s slides, will
carry out studies in some sixteen different subject areas, among which will be these:
• genetic engineering;
• susceptibility to current therapeutics;
• host-range studies;
• environmental stability;
• aerosol animal-model development;
• aerosol dynamics;
• novel packaging;
• novel delivery of threat;
• bioregulators and immunomodulators; and
• “Red Teaming,” which is to say duplication of threat scenarios.

Task areas for biothreat-agent (BTA) analysis and technical-threat assessment were
summarized as “Acquire, Grow, Modify, Store, Stabilize, Package, Disperse.” Classical,
emerging, and genetically engineered pathogens are to be characterized for their BTA potential.
Aerobiology, aerosol physics, and environmental stability will be studied in wet-laboratory and
computer-laboratory settings. “Computational modeling of feasibility, methods, and scale of
production” will be undertaken, and “Red Team” operational scenarios and capabilities will be
assessed. BTA use and countermeasure effectiveness will be studied “across the spectrum of
potential attack scenarios” through “[h]igh-fidelity modeling and simulation.” And so forth.3
The rapidity of elaboration of American biodefense programs, their ambition and
administrative aggressiveness, and the degree to which they push against the prohibitions of the
Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), are startling.

On April 28, 2004, at the conclusion of a year’s review, the Bush administration
disclosed details of the new National Biodefense Directive.5 Among them, reportedly, was that
“the US intelligence community is under orders to carry out studies examining the types of
genetically engineered ‘bugs’ terrorists could be working on to mount an attack.”6

 

What point are you trying to make with this post? Why wouldn't the U.S. want to have a biodefense agency established? We aren't the ones who use chemical or biological weapons, and never have.

 

Hallelujah!

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http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/cbw/cw.htm

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