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US, Russia Agree On Plan To Dispose of Syria's Chemical Weapons

Posted by Soulskill on from the now-back-to-killing-people-with-regular-weapons dept.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has announced an agreement between the U.S. and Russia on a plan for removing and destroying Syria's chemical weapons. "Damascus will be given one week from now to give an inventory of its chemical arsenal and will have to allow international inspectors into Syria 'no later than November,' Kerry said after a third day of intense negotiations with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva." The weapons must all be eliminated by mid-2014. "If Syrian President Bashar Assad fails to meet the demands, then a resolution to enforce compliance would be sought at the U.N. Security Council, Kerry said. The action could include sanctions, and Kerry said that the U.S. would reserve the right to use military force, but Russia remains opposed to any armed intervention." President Obama said, "The use of chemical weapons anywhere in the world is an affront to human dignity and a threat to the security of people everywhere. We have a duty to preserve a world free from the fear of chemical weapons for our children."

27 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. I still want... by sjbe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...someone to explain to me why killing people with chemical weapons is somehow worse than killing them with bullets.

    1. Re:I still want... by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That is what the father of chemical warfare, Fritz Haber, thought as well.

      After the effects of chemical warfare became apparent during WWI, his wife and son committed suicide over the shame of their husband and father's work on poison gasses.

      One thing is certain, that poison gas is much harder to deliver in a controlled fashion than are bombs. Perhaps just on that basis it should be banned.

    2. Re:I still want... by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 3, Informative

      Bombs left over from WWII are still killing people.

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1283273/WW2-bomb-kills-G-ttingen-experts-attempt-defuse-it.html

    3. Re:I still want... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It might technically be an appeal to tradition but here goes:

      The people who survived WWI; the ones who saw close range trench warfare with stabbing of the enemy, shelling of trenches, pointless charges over no-man's-land to get cut down by machine guns, gangrene, and hearing the screams of people dying slowing in no-man's-land - those are the people who said that chemical weapons cross the line.

    4. Re:I still want... by tysonedwards · · Score: 3, Informative

      There is a huge difference between an overconfident bomb disposal technician making a mistake when handling decades old abandoned munitions and active use of chemical weapons.

      For starters, when you are actively screwing around with something the fact that it was assembled decades before is irrelevant to it's current threat. Current attempts to thwart a triggering mechanism generates risk of detonation whether said explosive was assembled days before or decades before. Both can explode in an instant killing whomever happens to be within the blast radius.

      In the case of chemical weapons, months after an attack someone a few villages away can drink the water from their local well, contract a horrible disease and die.

      --
      Thirty four characters live here.
    5. Re:I still want... by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Chemical weapons still kill weeks or more after they have been deployed.

      Depends on the particular chemicals.

      VX can kill years after it's used if someone touches something that was exposed to VX and hasn't since had the residue washed away.

      Sarin, not so much.

      Mustard gas is just fertilizer after a few hours.

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    6. Re:I still want... by GarethIwanFairclough · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I used to teach NBC (Now known as CBRN) warfare and survival when I was in the army.

      As bad as any unreasonable killing can be, seeing someone or something suffer and die from exposure to chemical weapons is far more horrific imo. I'm sure there are videos floating around of animals being hit with these things. Watch some, then picture the same thing but with a human being. Chemical and biological weaponry simply has no place in any reasonable arsenal. A being shot or stabbed often kills within seconds and leaving the victim unaware of what has happened.

      Being caught in a chemical weapons strike? Well, just watch those vids. I'm talking almost total agony for the last few minutes of your life, post exposure to any one of the various chemical agents used in chemical warfare. Ever had lockjaw or one of your muscles start contracting painfully and uncontrollably? Just imagine having that happen to every single muscle fiber in your body, leaving you writhing in the street covered in your own bodily fluids as you've lost control of bowel function and gasping for air as your lungs have stopped working due to the brain and nerve cells going haywire due to the nerve agent you just got hit with.

      That's just a nerve agent. There's a variety of different substances out there, each one designed to have different effects on the human body. Blister agents (which cause just that, extreme blistering on every organic surface it comes accross, including the insides of your lungs), blood agents (destroys or otherwise disables the haemoglobin in your blood), the various nerve agents (G nerve, H nerve, which cause random junk signals to be passed down your nerves, sending muscles crazy and destroying and sort of control either concious or subconcious).

      I hate that stuff. It's unpleasent just to even think of it. It's even more unpleasant to realise that these agents can linger in the environment and remain deadly for far longer than any land mine or shell or bomb. "Think of the children?" is quite appropriate here. I wouldn't want my kids to grow up, knowing that that shit was still around.

    7. Re:I still want... by khasim · · Score: 4, Informative

      In the case of chemical weapons, months after an attack someone a few villages away can drink the water from their local well, contract a horrible disease and die.

      I think you're talking about bio weapons.

      Most chemical weapons degrade quickly. Even the "persistent" ones.

    8. Re:I still want... by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not acting would be pretty inconsistent with the idea of not allowing their use.

      Whether Obama looks good or bad is irrelevant bullshit. In the end trying a diplomatic approach first is a win for Obama, Putin, and the human race as a whole.

      That's what really counts.

    9. Re:I still want... by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But the question that still hasn't been properly answered (at least in my opinion) is why the use of these weapons on a small number of victims relative to the total number killed in the conflict should suddenly lead the international community to "need to act".

      The bullets are being fired at (presumably) chosen targets who are fighting back. The chemical weapons aren't so precise (at least one hopes they weren't fired to deliberately kill massive numbers of non-combatants).

      To de-politicize it, it's the distinction between two people trying to kill each other by firing guns at each other, and maybe a civilian gets hit in the crossfire. Versus someone spraying his gun indiscriminately into a crowd of civilians in hopes of hitting the one guy he wants to kill in the crowd. I'm not saying this is sufficient to justify international intervention, but it should be clear the latter is higher up on the "wrongness" scale.

      If two people (or two groups of people) want to kill each other, there is generally not much the international community can do about it. They can try to broker a peace, but whether or not the conflict persists is ultimately up to the two parties at each others' throats. If they really want to kill each other, they're going to figure out a way to do it regardless of what the international community says or does. The best we can do is try to reduce the possibility of people who are not part of those groups being caught in the crossfire. Due to the indiscriminate and uncontrollable nature, chemical weapons represent a huge increase in the amount and scope of the crossfire.

    10. Re:I still want... by clarkkent09 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The difference is that chemical weapons are by nature indiscriminate. With a bullet you aim at a particular person, with gas who dies depends literally on which way the wind blows.

      --
      Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
    11. Re:I still want... by nbauman · · Score: 3, Informative

      If napalm burns half the skin on your body, you'll die one of the most agonizing deaths known to medicine over the next week.

      (A lot of explosives produce burns and have the same results.)

    12. Re:I still want... by mellon · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You've hit the nail on the head here. What matters is not the experience of the person you are killing—it will be over quickly, whether it is agonizing or not. What matters is how you feel about it after they are dead. With a fatal GSW, you can feel like it was a "good death," because they didn't suffer a lot, whereas with chemical weapons, you would feel like it's a "bad death," because they suffered horribly. So chemical weapons are bad not because they cause the victim to suffer, but because they cause the witnesses to suffer.

      I was making a different point: killing is wrong. The main affect that a death that is imposed upon you by another human being has is that you don't get to live the rest of your life. Your family is deprived of your company, and your productivity. You do not have any further opportunity to make something out of your life, to atone for those things you regret, to express your love to the people you care about.

      In reality, you can die at any time, of any cause. You can be hit by a car, and die an agonizing death by the side of the road. You can get tetanus, and die as you described, in terrible pain. You can die of old age which, although it is often considered the best possible outcome, is certainly not pleasant, and not something anyone would seek out unless there were no alternative.

      Death is the enemy. For a human being to visit death upon another human being is to give aid and comfort to the enemy.

    13. Re:I still want... by nbauman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sarin kills in about 1 minute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin It has the same effect as some of the paralytic drugs used for execution by lethal injection in the U.S.

      I've read papers in the medical journals, including *.mil, about injuries from conventional weapons of the kind we used in Afghanistan and Iraq.

      Napalm-type weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_77_bomb can cause burns over 50% of your body that will kill you painfully over a week. Sarin is more horrific than that? I don't get it.

      Sometimes bullets or bombs will kill immediately, but often they don't. People without access to advanced medical care, especially civilians in a war zone, will die slowly and painfully. Bombs produce burn injuries, with results similar to napalm. People have arms and legs blown off and die from blood loss and shock. Penetrating wounds get infected, and they die over a week. When buildings are destroyed, the people in them are crushed, and with compartment syndrome they die in a few days. War is horrific. Sarin is more horrific than the rest of it? I don't get it.

      And Fritz Haber didn't get it either.

    14. Re:I still want... by gd2shoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's a win for Putin, but it's not a win for Obama... It's just the softest possible way to lose. (There is no winning move available, not after his red-line blunder.)

      --
      I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
    15. Re:I still want... by TapeCutter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I grew up in the 60's cold war era, on face value this deal is a win for humanity.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    16. Re:I still want... by Xest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, you're right but the post started by the GP are missing the actual problem with chemical weapons, none of this is the real reason chemical weapons are so bad. Especially the likes of Sarin.

      You use different chemical weapons with different aims, quite rightly as you say VX is persistent so you use it if you want to deny access to an area whilst others like Sarin and Mustard gas aren't.

      The reason Sarin for example is particularly bad is because it kills en-masse very quickly and leaves infrastructure intact. It reduces the cost of war, particularly this sort of civil war and it makes ethnic cleansing a dangerously cheap thing to do. Thus far the war has been expensive for Assad - he's had to literally destroy his most economically productive cities literally into nothing but rubble, and that's expensive. It means even if he wins there'll still have been a massive cost to his actions which act as a deterrent for further action, and for other dictators to do the same when they realise he may have won the war, but his country is now 3rd world which means even he personally will be poorer with no national wealth to sponge from.

      Sarin does indeed degrade to be pretty harmless relatively quickly, which is why there were pictures of people stood by the delivery rockets of this particular attack only a short time afterwards, and why there were concerns that Assad's 5 day delay in letting the chemical weapons inspectors there could cause the loss of much evidence. The problem with a weapon like this that can kill a thousand people and leave nothing but a bunch of dead bodies and a small crater in the ground is that it leaves all the infrastructure intact. It makes war and ethnic cleansing relatively free of penalty for someone who does it.

      Decided you don't like those of a particular religious sect sat in that corner of your city? Use Sarin! Within a day they'll all be dead and all you have to do is burn the bodies then your preferred religious sect can move in in their place and that section of the city remains productive because everything works like it did a day before the entire population was wiped out.

      The drastically more indiscriminate nature is certainly a problem also as others have pointed out, the fact that even people hidden in basements and so forth will die to it. In the attack being discussed at the moment it seems around 200 people at minimum died from one single munition using even the low end figures (the high end would probably suggest maybe as many as 750 - 800 from a single munition). Judging from where the munition landed from pictures, even if it was built up rush hour I'd take a guess that at most an equivalently sized conventional purely explosive rocket would've only killed 50 at most.

  2. Resorting to Nonviolence by Bob9113 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has announced an agreement between the U.S. and Russia on a plan for removing and destroying Syria's chemical weapons.

    I don't understand why we have to resort to reasonable non-violent solutions when we had a perfectly good rash hotheaded answer in bombing the bejeezus out of them. When will we stop the sanity?!?

    --
    Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
    1. Re:Resorting to Nonviolence by sumdumass · · Score: 3, Funny

      We weren't planning on bombing the bejeezus out of them. We were planning on something unbelievably small.

      Yes, you heard me right. This isn't just echos from your first real date, Kerry said our bombing was going to be unbelievably small.

    2. Re:Resorting to Nonviolence by aliquis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nuke, napalm, depleted uranium, drones = ok.

      Chemical = not ok.

      Torture = Depends on who's doing it.

  3. Syria CW Elimination Modalities by auric_dude · · Score: 3, Informative

    Jeffrey Lewis over at Arms Control Wonk give some thoughts about the nuts and bolts of eliminating Syria's chemical weapons, the link is a few days old but I expect us still valid http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/6807/syria-cw-elimination-modalities

  4. Re:Unrealistic expectations by sumdumass · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This agreement seems to be set up to fail. I realize some sort of numbers and deadlines had to be put out there, but I guarantee they won't be meeting this schedule.

    Eliminated likely doesn't mean destroyed or disposed of, but eliminated from Syria and Assad's control.

    I suspect that Russia will place troops at the chemical weapon's sites to protect them and the UN inspectors and monitors. This will free up a small but significant amounts of Assad's forces to combat the rebels. It is as if Russia created a way for it to intervene on Assad's side at the request of the west.

  5. Re:How many *years* will this take? by mellon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When someone points a gun at you and threatens to kill you, and someone else points a gun at them and says "look, you can kill that guy, but I'll kill you," that's not getting rolled. That's getting stopped. Getting rolled is when they take something from you while you're sleeping. Here, nothing was taken other than the opportunity to buy some new tomahawk missiles. Effectively, Putin saved the American taxpayers from getting rolled.

  6. Re:Unrealistic expectations by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While you have a good point, you have to understand that this whole project is the ultimate kludge. We do what we must because we can.

    1 - If / When it doesn't work, you now have a reason to go beat up Assad in whatever form you think you can get away with. It's almost as good as a UN resolution, perhaps better because Russia is behind it.

    2 - It puts foreign, armed boots on the ground. And not little pansy assed blue helmets. Nasty troops with the appropriate backup. Now, this can backfire (as can anything else here) by having lots of Russian boots that act as a deterrent to the rebels but if you have both US and Russian inspectors on the ground, you will likely have both countries represented. The implied command and control needed for that can really stabilize the situation since neither country wants things to accelerate.

    3 - You have the chance of getting the vast majority of the stocks out off the underground arms bazaar. This is the problem with Assad's chemical weapons. When he loses control over them (and apparently he has) you have all the nasties trying to get some. Sarin is a wonderful terrorist device. In some ways better than a nuc.

    The world has apparently dodged a bullet with the USSR nuclear stockpile - it didn't get handed out to everyone with an agenda and a budget. We need to do the same for idiot Assad's chemical weapons. Unfortunately, the parallels between Irag and Syria are way too close for comfort. While Assad might not be as batshit insane as Hussein was, he's not all that far off. We don't have all that much freedom of movement in the Middle East and Russia has a bit more. For once, our interests are aligned a bit.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  7. Re:What was the goal again? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Russia's view is that the chemical weapons were used by one of the rebel factions. By putting Assad's chemical weapons beyond use it doesn't matter if he used them or not, in either case neither side can use them again and blame the other.

    Since there is no proof who did it that seems like the best compromise.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  8. Re:Still dangerous after a generation in storage by khasim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The US has had a lot of trouble figuring out how to detoxify its stockpile safely.

    The problem is that the chemical weapons breakdown into hazardous chemicals. And those hazardous chemicals have to be safely disposed of.

    So instead of killing you because it is a nerve agent it will give you cancer and birth defects.

  9. Re:Still dangerous after a generation in storage by kermidge · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Last I knew they incinerated most of the stockpile. If memory serves, one such incinerator was on Johnston Island, another in Idaho. By incinerate I don't mean burn, like what you do on the outdoor grill, but burn the living shit out of, like at 3,500-5000F or so.