"...The Chemical Weapons Treaty makes none of these distinctions, all it requires is using a chemical as a weapon against people. That is all it takes. And when people are hurt and killed in these substantial numbers we are addressing, they obviously have been targeted with chemical weapons."
Was Agent Orange classified as a Chemical Weapon, in violation of Treaty, at the time of its use (1961-1971)?
After all, it was developed in the 1940s, and there was a good 18-28 years between the time of its development and early (and publicly-known) domestic usages and its first use as a foliage and crop-destroying agent, so the International Community had plenty of time in which to classify it as a Chemical Weapon...
Is Agent Orange classified as a Chemical Weapon today, officially, in the context of the Treaty?
And, as to 'targeting people', you are incorrect...
It can be proven that the US utilized the agent to clear-away jungle canopies and undergrowth that had been providing cover for enemy troop movements...
It can be proven that the US utilized the agent to damage or destroy enemy crops, as a strategic initiative...
Given that a great many of our own military personnel (veterans) were afflicted by illness attributable to that agent, and that the government, after some initial resistance in the 1970s and 1980s, is providing for the care of such afflicted individuals, at great expense, in order to set things right...
Given that the Vietnamese had initially claimed highly unrealistic figures for the number of people who died or were made ill, and, given that once those numbers had been brought down out of the clouds and verification procedures put into place that satisfied both sides, and given that the US government has been generous in its compensation for such victims, in order to set things right...
Something tells me that the use of Agent Orange - a herbicide that had been in use on a smaller scale since the middle 1940s - was not intended as a Chemical Attack upon People, rather, it was simply a mistake to use so potent a herbicide, because it might end-up harming people, as well...
I wonder if the same thing can be said about the Assad Regime, and sarin gas, and their motives, or, for that matter, their intention to compensate their victims and to provide for their care?
Yer beatin' a dead horse with this one, Sherri...
Trying to draw substantive equivalencies between US utilization of Agent Orange and the Assad Regime's use of sarin gas?
And, if your perspective is so doggone operative in the Real World, why have we not been serious and substantive charges of Treaty Violations by the United States, in the UN, etc., in connection with Agent Orange usage?
I'll tell you why...
Because those banging the drum loudest against the US in this matter are Russians and European and American Leftists...
And because formal charges would never get past first base in either the UN or the Hague...
The US might be able to squash proceedings or get a verdict overturned...
But the US cannot stop such charges being filed and publicized...
And I haven't seen any of THAT, either, although I could certainly have missed something over the years.
Why have such charges not been filed at that level?
Because those charges (
that the US intentionally used Chemical Weapons against people) in the Vietnam-Agent Orange context are patently false...
The same (
unintentional, because they did not understand all its after-effects) cannot be said of the Assad Regime, in its barbaric use of sarin nerve-gas against its own people...
No sale...
you might learn a thing or two!
