🚀 go-pugleaf

On 16 Apr 2003 23:05:29 -0700, Russell Senior <seniorr@aracnet.com>
wrote:

>>>>>> "Don" == Don Homuth <dhomuth1@attbi.com> writes:
>
>Don> In the case of biological attack, the Term of Art I've heard used
>Don> is "blowback."  It's also the case for chemical weapons attacks
>Don> -- which are often tactically useless for the same reason.
>
>But chemical weapons aren't necessarily as persistent (I understand
>sarin, or maybe it was VX, decays in the environment in about a day),
>and it doesn't replicate.  It is possible to put a chemical agent on a
>target and have it more or less stay there.

If you examine the two sentences above, they seem mutually
inconsistent.  Would you agree that's true?

>I'd just note here as an aside that concluding our war with Iraq
>without their use of chemical weapons pretty much proves that it was
>unnecessary.  Either: a) Iraq doesn't have any; or b) deterence was
>effective.

Go with (a) at the moment.  There was no evidence that Iraq had CWs
before we went to war, and it's been a month, and there's still none.
Had there been any in weaponized form, some 30k-50k of tactical air
strikes would have hit at least one.

But the most striking Fact to note wrt the existence of CWs in the
Iraq TAO is simple enough:  If you followed the invasion closely, as
we got closer to Baghdad, and even within that <gasp!> Dread Red Ring,
the commanders on the ground were telling their troops to doff their
NBC gear and keep it within an 8 minute accessibility range.

Competent commanders do not do that sort of thing if they believe
there is a plausible CW danger in the area.  Since my preference in
dealing with tactical matters inevitably prefers commanders on the
scene rather than spokesdroids in DeeCee, I conclude that those
actually there were aware that there was no plausible danger for their
troops to face.

But the folks on the Dohar-DeeCee Continuum kept happily prattling
away about how CW's and WMDs were just gonna be used Real Soon Now.
It was, however, mostly nonsense.

>Russell> Paradoxically, the ones who launch mass immunizations
>Russell> (e.g. for smallpox) are the most likely to be the ones who
>Russell> use it as a weapon because they are in a position to limit
>Russell> their own casualties.
>
>Don> But that does not suggest that those who immunize are necessarily
>Don> planning an attack either.  Clearly that cannot be the case.
>
>Necessarily?  No.  But let us not allow sentimentality to impair our
>judgement.

No.  But let us not allow mere jitters to impair out judgement either.
A mass innoculation for flu every year does not presage a BW attack
via a flu virus.  That being the case, there must be some other more
useful indicators.  Otherwise, we'd be On Guard every time there was a
vaccination regiment going on anywhere in the world.