Professor Ghazanfar wrote in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News that the US had used chemical weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq. As I showed, that’s “fake news” from the left. You can read up on the US’s Chemical Weapons Program. The US’s chemical weapons stockpile is located in the US and is being eliminated. In fact, not too far up the road from us, is the Umatilla Chemical Weapons Destruction Facility.
A brief history of the US’s chemical weapons program:
In late 1969, President Richard Nixon unilaterally renounced the first use of chemical weapons (as well as all methods of biological warfare).[27] He issued a unilateral decree halting production and transport of chemical weapons which remains in effect. From 1967 to 1970 in Operation CHASE, the U.S. disposed of chemical weapons by sinking ships laden with the weapons in the deep Atlantic. The U.S. began to research safer disposal methods for chemical weapons in the 1970s, destroying several thousand tons of mustard gas by incineration and nearly 4,200 tons of nerve agent by chemical neutralization.
The U.S. entered the Geneva Protocol in 1975 (the same time it ratified the Biological Weapons Convention). This was the first operative international treaty on chemical weapons to which the U.S. was party. Stockpile reductions began in the 1980s, with the removal of some outdated munitions and destruction of the entire stock of BZ beginning in 1988. In 1990, destruction of chemical agents stored on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific began, seven years before the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) came into effect. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan began removal of the U.S. stockpile of chemical weapons from Germany (see Operation Steel Box). In 1991, President George H.W. Bush unilaterally committed the U.S. to destroying all chemical weapons and renounced the right to chemical weapon retaliation.
Maybe what’s sticking in Ghazi’s craw is that it was Nixon, Reagan, and Bush who were instrumental in trying to eliminate chemical weapons?
But then Prof. Ghazanfar changes the subject:
Obviously, Dale’s “right-mind” is made up, despite concrete evidence to the contrary; it is simply a matter of faith! “USA has not been using chemical weapons”–not even napalm/agent orange in Vietnam in the 1960s-70s; no “napalm girl” story!!
Maybe Ghazi is upset because Agent Orange was first used under JFK’s administration? And wasn’t eliminated until Nixon did so?
My older brother fought in Vietnam as a US Marine Radioman and was exposed to Agent Orange. He suffers from those effects to this date. I’m no fan of the Vietnam Conflict. I don’t think we ever belonged there.
That said, the Professor needs to educate himself on what is and what is not a chemical weapon. A chemical weapon is not simply a weapon made of chemicals. And a chemical weapon is not defined as a weapon Ghazi doesn’t like. Words have meanings and definitions. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals case in 18 June 2007 ruled that Agent Orange and Napalm were not chemical weapons, and the whole panel of the Court of Appeals upheld that finding. He may not like that result, but the definition of what is a chemical weapon is not up to his personal prerogative.
In conclusion: did the US use Agent Orange and napalm during Vietnam? Yes. Was it awful? Yes. Were those chemical weapons? No, not by the definition of what a chemical weapon is.