Chemical Weapons? What Chemical Weapons?

I was clear­ing out my in-​​box when I noticed this note: EDITORS ALERT: The American Forces Press Service recalls the arti­cle titled DoD Officials Urge Use of Non-​​lethal Weapons in Terror War by Jim Garamone, pub­lished Sept. 27, 2006. The arti­cle con­tains inac­cu­rate infor­ma­tion and should not be used.
Usually, news ser­vices cor­rect innacu­rate infor­ma­tion. The Armed Forces Press Service didnt do this, how­ever, they just with­drew the entire arti­cle from their site. The great thing about the Internet, how­ever, is that the arti­cle lives on through other web­sites. Ive attached the full arti­cle below.
Among other inter­est­ing tid­bits, the arti­cle quotes a senior Pentagon offi­cial not­ing that the Chemical Weapons Convention con­strains mil­i­tary per­son­nel from offen­sive use of riot-​​control agents (like tear gas). This fol­lows up on ear­lier debate, described in this arti­cle from 2003 in the New York Times, on President Bush autho­riz­ing tear gas for defen­sive oper­a­tions (some­thing pre­sum­ably not in vio­la­tion with the con­ven­tion).
The sticky issue is when you use riot con­trol agents for offen­sive oper­a­tions and judg­ing from this Armed Forces Press Service arti­cle, thats the road theyre going down.

DoD Officials Urge Use of Non-​​lethal Weapons in Terror War
By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Sept. 27, 2006 DoD offi­cials today urged a change in pol­icy that would allow U.S. ser­vice­mem­bers to use tear gas and other non-​​lethal weapons in the global war on ter­ror. Joseph A. Benkert, prin­ci­pal deputy assis­tant defense sec­re­tary for inter­na­tional secu­rity pol­icy, and Air Force Brig. Gen. Otis G. Mannon, deputy direc­tor for spe­cial oper­a­tions on the Joint Staff, spoke to the Senate Armed Service Committees sub­com­mit­tee on readi­ness and man­age­ment.
At issue is an Executive Order issued in 1975 that for­bids American ser­vice­mem­bers first use of riot con­trol agents in war, except in defen­sive mil­i­tary modes to save lives. The pol­icy fur­ther states that all use of riot con­trol agents in war is pro­hib­ited unless such use has pres­i­den­tial approval in advance.
An amend­ment in the fis­cal 2006 National Defense Authorization Act the Ensign Amendment after sub­com­mit­tee chair­man Nevada Sen. John Ensign takes non-​​lethal weapons for riot con­trol out of this pro­hi­bi­tion.
Benkert said offi­cials want to assure that our men and women in uni­form have the full range of options avail­able to them to carry out their mis­sions.
Benkert stressed that the riot con­trol agents he was talk­ing about are not listed in a Chemical Weapons Convention sched­ule. He is refer­ring to such non-​​lethal weapons as tear gas and pep­per spray. He also said his tes­ti­mony did not address other non-​​chemical, non-​​lethal weapons such as foams, water canons, bean­bags or rub­ber bul­lets.
It may be dif­fi­cult for many Americans to under­stand why their armed forces can use riot con­trol agents only in defined cir­cum­stances when they see their local law enforce­ment agents using them effec­tively every day, Benkert said. The United States mil­i­tary must oper­ate within the para­me­ters of the Chemical Weapons Convention and Executive Order 11850, which con­strain the abil­ity of our armed forces to use riot con­trol agents in offen­sive oper­a­tions in wartime and obvi­ously do not apply to our col­leagues in law enforce­ment.
Benkert and Mannon stressed that even when allowed to carry these weapons, DoD per­son­nel go through exhaus­tive and com­pre­hen­sive train­ing on their use. He said they also receive train­ing in the law of war and applic­a­ble Geneva Conventions impli­ca­tions. The Department of Defense has issued reg­u­la­tions, doc­trine and train­ing mate­ri­als pro­vid­ing guid­ance as to when riot con­trol agents may be used, he said.
Before U.S. mil­i­tary per­son­nel may use riot con­trol agents, they must have proper autho­riza­tion. The pres­i­dent must approve any use in war in a defen­sive mil­i­tary mode to save lives.
Under var­i­ous cir­cum­stances, in light of the chang­ing envi­ron­ment in which armed con­flicts are tak­ing place, in such a dynamic envi­ron­ment the peace­keep­ing, law enforce­ment and tra­di­tional bat­tle­field roles of deployed units may be present at dif­fer­ent times within the same the­ater of oper­a­tions, Benkert said. The use of riot con­trol agents will be eval­u­ated based on the par­tic­u­lar unit or mis­sion involved and the par­tic­u­lar facts and cir­cum­stances of the mis­sion at the requested time. 

– Sharon Weinberger (cross-​​posted at Imaginary Weapons)

UPDATE 4:35 PM: Noah here. In his tesit­mony, Benkert noted that “It may be dif­fi­cult for many Americans to under­stand why their Armed Forces can use riot con­trol agents in only defined cir­cum­stances when they see their local law enforce­ment agen­cies using them effec­tively every day.” I’m one of those Americans. So I asked Edward Hammond, who heads up nonlethal-​​weapon-​​watching Sunshine Project for his thoughts. Check out his answers after the jump.

1) “Non-​​lethal” chem­i­cals his­tor­i­cally used by mil­i­taries to as
mul­ti­pli­ers of lethal force, not to save lives. Examples: WW1,
Vietnam.
2) It’s a “gas attack”. Perception, jus­ti­fied or not, on the part of
the recip­i­ent that s/​he has been attacked with chem­i­cal weapons. PR
lia­bil­ity and pos­si­bil­ity of retal­i­a­tion “in kind” thus result­ing in
RCA [riot con­trol agent] use prompt­ing (or serv­ing as the excuse for) use of CW [chem­i­cal weapons].
3) Escalation of vio­lence. RCAs are pretty indis­crim­i­nate and, when
not used to help kill, are fre­quently used to impede peo­ple from
express­ing their opin­ion, air­ing their griev­ances. I’m cer­tainly not
a field com­man­der in Iraq, but I can­not help but think that any sane
US offi­cer deal­ing with civil­ian unrest in Baghdad or else­where would
not want to have CNN and Al Jazeera air­ing footage of US sol­diers (or
Iraqi sol­diers effec­tively under US com­mand) lob­bing gas at crowds of
Iraqis…
4) Much the same mil­i­tary hard­ware might have a far dif­fer­ent
chem­i­cal pay­load. I sub­mit that it’s a good idea to keep mil­i­taries
as far away from (bio)chemical deliv­ery devices as pos­si­ble. If we
start back down this road…
5) The CIA listed an Iraqi facil­ity exper­i­ment­ing with CS [2-​​chlorobenzalmalononitrile, a riot con­trol agent] bombs (see
item #1) on its list of Iraqi WMD sites prior to the inva­sion.
Hmmm… How is it that an Iraqi mil­i­tary CS bomb is WMD; but the US
says its mil­i­tary CS is exempt from the CWC? Is it that CS is legal
in US mil­tary hands but not oth­ers? I don’t think so .… Help me
out here, Secretary Rumsfeld, why do we have two standards?

September 29th, 2006 | Less-lethal | 211715 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/09/29/chemical-weapons-what-chemical-weapons/Chemical+Weapons%3F+What+Chemical+Weapons%3F2006-09-29+16%3A15%3A53hambling You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.