From: proberts@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Paul Roberts)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Churchill's approval of use of poison gas (was: Gulf trivia)
Date: 15 Feb 91 07:13:14 GMT
Organization: Stanford Univ., home of Hoover Institute for Aging Fascists

Francis Muir writes:
>Paul Roberts writes:
>
>	  [...] and the request of the RAF Middle East command for
>	authorization to use chemical weapons "against recalcitrant
>	Arabs as experiment."  The request was granted by the Secretary
>	of State at the War office, who stated that he was "strongly in
>	favour" of "using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes,"
>	arguing that gas should "spread a lively terror" and condemning 
>	the "squeamishness" of those who objected to "the application 
>	of Western science to modern warfare" (Winston Churchill).
>
>		- From an article by Noam Chomsky that appeared 
>		  in the Jewish Quarterly of London in January 1991.
>
>Are you putting this forward as a serious reference?

Yes, I am. If you want more specifics, here they are:

[The following is excerpted from "Chemical and Biological Warfare," 
 a two-part article by Thomas Whiteside in the New Yorker, Feb. 11-18.  
 The article gives a good history of the development, proliferation
 and use of chemical and biological weapons, from the First World War 
 till the present. Quite a bit on the work of Mathew Meselson, who 
 investigted yellow-rain in Laos and anthrax in Sverdlovsk.]
 
Germany was not alone in its willingness to make first use of
chemical weapons.  In April of 1917, British forces employed gas
against the Turks in Palestine, during the Second Battle of Gaza.
Interest by the British military in first use of poison gas carried
over into the immediate postwar period.  In mid-May, 1919, the
British War Office sanctioned the offensive use of gas in Egypt,
after being notified by the Royal Air Force commander in the Middle
East that "gas bomb[s] are required by 31st Wing for use against
recalcitrant Arabs as experiment."  In a memorandum dated May 12th,
Winston Churchill, then the Secretary of State at the War Office,
noted, "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned [sic] gas against
uncivilised tribes.  The moral effect should be so good that the loss
of life should be reduced to a minimum."  He added, "It is not
necessary to use only the most deadly gasses; gasses can be used
which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror."
As it happened, gas bombs for use against "recalcitrant" Arabs were
not supplied, according to a subsequent War Office cable to the
R.A.F. Middle East Command, "owing to difficulties in supply and in
the provision of specially trained personnel."  However, the British
military did employ poison-gas weapons in northern Russia, as part of
their military intervention against Bolshevik forces.  In August and
September of 1919, hundreds of gas bombs were dropped, ...
 
Churchill's interest in using gas to subdue Arab tribespeople
persisted into 1920.  A secret memorandum from his office, dated
February 19th, informed Sir Hugh Trenchard, the chief of the Air
Staff, that the British General Staff "profess themselves unable" to
garrison Mesopotamia (now Iraq).  The original plans for British
occupation had provided some 21 million pounds sterling for the
purpose, "which is considered to be more than the country is worth."
The memo disclosed that the General Staff was now proposing a
complete evacuation of British ground forces, and asked whether
Trenchard, as air chief, was "prepared to take on Mesopotamia" - a
task that, it was suggested, "would ...  entail the provision of some
kind of asphyxiating bombs calculated to cause disablement of some
kind but not death ... for use in preliminary operations against
turbulent tribes."  According to "The Secret Lives of Lawrence of
Arabia," by Phillip Knightley and Colin Simpson, which was published
in 1970, and in which the text of this memorandum appears, Lieutenant
Colonel T.E. Lawrence got wind of Churchill's proposal, went to see
Trenchard, and urged on him a settlement that would allow Mesopotamia
to exist as "a native state with English advisers only."

[Thanks to Sekhar Ramakrishnan of Columbia University, who posted this 
 extract to soc.culture.arabic - PR] 
 



-- 
===Jeremy Henderson===jeremy@castle.ed.ac.uk=          

This message cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
Bloody good value if you ask me.