Show Government consultant speaks on war casualties and the use of chemical warfare by Lanny Desmond Dr Matthew who has served as a consultant on chemical and biological warfare in the US U.S. Government since 1963 lectured to a University University sity of Utah audience on the history and possibilities of f gas warfare showed charts of casualties casual ties orld WarI The war to end endall endall all wars tallied British expeditionary casualties of them a direct result of chemical warfare didn't seem seem to think think the ratio was very high considering that over shell were reported a lower ratio Cooperative studies wi with h the US U.S. Army and Johns Hopkins University showed that mask protection reduced the effect of gas to only minor discomfort discomfort discomfort fort according to World War II showed howe a considerable drop in chemical use se mostly because of world wide political pressure stated Both Roosevelt and Hitler were very opposed to gas with only Chancellor Churchill in favor of its use he said Western W stern Europe the US U.S. and the Soviets have huge stockpiles at this time added If prepared properly mustard gas discomfort was minor Nerve agents were more effective even more so than artillery But added full protective equipment nullifies the effectiveness of agents in military use He said that experiments and data were mostly vague because the only accurate way ay to study the effects of gas was to test it during actual battlefield use The decision to use agentS ag in n war e based on on whether the enemy 1 has them r r not i buttO Ss t th enemy does s-i s d dai ai them The only decision left at that point is how many targets to use them on according to Of the antidotes used for chemical contact none were known to be very effective One antidote used was of content and the result proved to tobe tobe tobe be toxic making it as bad as the agent itself stated that an civilian could be harmed greatly by the use of gas because the masks used are not household items He said that a certain amount of gas used in military strategy was not a bad idea because it had a slowing-down slowing affect on unsuspecting troops This is according to the advantage of chemical warfare The detection of gas is usually not quick enough to be effective He added that unlike conventional and nuclear weapons chemical weapons weapons weapons wea wea- pons talks have proved fruitful with some disarmament because of felt that this is very different success than the world has experienced with other more destructive weapons Although the unprotected population could be severely affected by a gas attack feels that limited use and stockpiles of gas weapons is a deterrent against its use by other people but added there is danger that terrorists could gain access to gas or an accident t could occur which would be disastrous The official US U.S. policy is against the use of chemical weapons During question answer minutes stated that the Yellow Rain that the Hmong refugees reported in the Southeast Asian camps was nothing more than bee feces He disclaimed reports that accused the Soviets of adding toxins to the yellow rain said that the current method of storage chemical of-chemical of cylinders at Tooele was safe No major accidents or were reported due to the storage of chemical weapons adding that the safety tests he knew about gave the steel covers around the gas a safe report card The safety of chemical storage is a strong political debate with the government and western states leaders responded to a question about the use use of napalm and agent orange in Southeast Asia during the by stating that napalm and like agent orange were considered by the world as flame and warfare not to be included with chemical weapons He did say that the US U.S. buildup of herbicides and flame weapons in Viet VietNam VietNam Nam N am was a stupid idea He added that top military personnel he talked to said that the chain of military command kept passing the buck and the final stop came with the decision that no one wanted to shut off the flow of gas to Saigon He said that was not a very smart thing to do He closed in response to Joseph Rosen's report on the yellow rain incident by calling the ABC News sample atrociously selected and the findings ludicrous He added that by being a professor of war science that the more he knew about war the nastier it seemed Maybe we all should learn more about war he finished |