(September 10, 2013 at 1:25 pm)The Germans are coming Wrote:(September 10, 2013 at 1:19 pm)Minimalist Wrote: A distinction utterly lost on the victims. Of course, the same can be said of an artillery shell or rifle bullet.
The mere fact that a weapon inflicts pain does not have an impact on the weapon being outlawed or not. Gunshot wounds dont kill most of their victims but leave them physicaly disabled. Napalm burns you even slower than white phosphorus. Depleted Uranium causes radioactive dust to ramain on the battlefield and to harm civilians after combat has ended.
The destinction made here is that Sarin gas, which may not be as painfull or as gorey or as spectacular as everything listed above, has the capablility to kill 1400 people with a single strike.
We killed far more Japanese civilians with the fire bombing raids than with our so-called weapons of mass destruction - the atomic bomb. The Japanese military did not absorb the lesson. One plane, one bomb. or, a thousand planes and a million bombs, it didn't matter. They could not stop either threat by that point in time.
We also used Agent Orange to defoliate Vietnam and that depleted uranium you mention. So for us to be whining about chemical weapons seems decidedly hypocritical.
