__________________________________________________________________ Senate Restates U.S. Policy on Using Tear Gas in Combat NTI Global Security Newswire ^ | 11/12/2005 | David Ruppe
Posted on 11/13/2005 9:58:20 AM PST by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly approved legislation Wednesday that restates U.S. policy on the military use of riot control agents, prompting disagreement about whether tear gas could be used for offensive military operations in Iraq (see GSN, July 27).
The amendment to the Senate's fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill would not allow such use, said Alan Pearson, director of the biological and chemical weapons control program at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation.
Others observers are not so sure, and the author of the measure, Senator John Ensign (R-Nev.), said it clarifies that combat use of riot control agents in battlefield operations is allowed.
The amendment, which passed in a 98-1 vote, says that riot control agents "are not chemical weapons" and "are legitimate, legal, and nonlethal alternatives to the use of lethal force." Therefore, they "may be employed by members of the Armed Forces in defensive military modes to save lives" the language says.
The measure, Ensign wrote in a press release following the vote, should allow for military use during urban hunts of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"American and allied troops are going through terrorist-infested neighborhoods in Iraq and Afghanistan neighborhood by neighborhood and door-to-door, encountering innocent civilians as well as heavily armed insurgents," he said.
"Tear gas is an effective alternative to bullets — an alternative that will protect our troops and the people they encounter on their mission to track down terrorists," he said.
Edward Hammond, co-director of the U.S. and German-based Sunshine Project, in a widely distributed e-mail wrote that, "Those kinds of uses are plainly not 'defensive military modes' and so do not fall under the scope of permitted uses in [Executive Order] 11850, and are thus not permitted."
Executive Order 11850, signed by President Gerald Ford in 1975, says such agents could be used in war only in "defensive military modes to save lives," and listed four examples: for riot control situations; for reducing civilian casualties where civilians are used to mask attacks; for rescuing personnel or prisoners, and for noncombat convoy protection.
Pearson said yesterday he does not believe the Senate amendment permits using riot control agents in such "offensive" uses as door-to-door operations.
"I don't think that the Senate agreed to that interpretation yesterday," he said.
"The entire point of the [Executive Order] was to prohibit the offensive use of RCAs, because experience had shown that they were far too easily used as force enhancers to improve killing efficiency, and not really used to protect noncombatant lives," he said.
Ensign's amendment also would require Defense Department reporting on riot control policies, legal interpretations, and use in Iraq. 'In Combat' Removed
An earlier version of the bill introduced by Ensign last week said riot control agents could be used "in combat" as well as "other situations for defensive purposes to save lives."
Passage of the amendment Wednesday without that mention of combat satisfied Pearson that it would not change or contradict U.S. riot control policy required by the executive order and the Chemical Weapons Convention, which entered into force in 1997.
"The amendment no longer promotes a policy that would directly violate U.S. obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention — a treaty that our allies highly value and that is of great benefit to the United States and the members of the U.S. Armed Forces," he said in the press release.
The United States was an early signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which explicitly bans riot control agent use "as a method of warfare."
Executive Order 11850 articulated U.S. policy before joining the Geneva Protocol on chemical weapons, which banned the use "in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices." Author Says Combat Use Nevertheless Permissible
After Ensign's initial amendment was introduced, Pearson's organization sent a letter to U.S. senators arguing that authorizing riot control use in "combat" is not allowed by the convention or the executive order. The version that passed addressed that concern, Pearson said.
"The Senate has established that current U.S. policy will not be expanded to include the broad use of tear gas and other riot control agents in war-fighting. That's good — we don't want to reintroduce the use of toxic chemicals for fighting wars," he said.
Pearson's interpretation of the amendment, however, appears at odds with that of its author. In the press release after passage yesterday, Ensign said the amendment would allow American troops to use tear gas "in certain combat situations."
When Ensign introduced the second version of the amendment on Tuesday, he argued on the Senate floor that battlefield use of tear gas should be acceptable.
"It is shocking and unacceptable that under current policy our military is banned from using tear gas on the battlefield. Let me restate that. Under current policy, our military is banned from using tear gas on the battlefield," he said.
"This restriction on the use of tear gas is the direct result of the bureaucracy's faulty interpretation of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, an interpretation made by arms control advocates in Brussels and The Hague and regrettably at our own State Department," he said.
Ensign's press release said the amendment "corrects an interpretation" of the Chemical Weapons Convention that holds riot control agents are chemical weapons and that he said has hindered military tear gas use in combat.
The 1997 Senate resolution of ratification of the convention, he maintained in a floor speech on Nov. 8, "included a condition in the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention that preserved our right to use tear gas in conflict."
Ensign's argument appeared to be supported by Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.), who in a floor debate yesterday said that riot control agents are not chemical weapons and that Executive Order 11850 does permit their use in "defensive" combat situations.
Biden said two of the examples the executive order lists are combat situations where civilians are used to screen attacks and civilian casualties can be reduced, and in rescue and prisoner recovery missions.
The two examples Biden listed are themselves controversial, believed by some to be at adds with the Chemical Weapons Convention's ban on using riot control agents as a "method of warfare," because they say the treaty bans using those agents in any combat situation. Supporters Say Bill Changes Nothing
Biden also said, however, that he does not believe that Ensign's amendment alters U.S. policy.
"As far as I can tell, Senator Ensign does not intend that anything in Executive Order 11850 be changed, nor that there be any change in the United States policy and obligation to fully obey the Chemical Weapons Convention, which binds each state party 'not to use riot control agents as a method of warfare,'" he said.
Pearson also said he does not believe the amendment approved yesterday changes U.S. policy. He said in an e-mail that Ensign's interpretation of the amendment overstates what the Senate signed up for.
"Whatever Senator Ensign says, the Senate voted on his amendment with the understanding that U.S. policy remains EO 11850, and that the EO will remain unchanged. This understanding was clearly established, for the record by Senator Ensign himself, in yesterday's debate. Thus, the amendment doesn't 'correct' anything," Pearson wrote.
That view also appeared to be the view of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.). In a floor discussion of the bill Wednesday, Lugar said he supports the law "because I believe that it in no way modifies, changes, reinterprets, or otherwise revises the laws of the United States regarding the use of RCAs in war to save lives, nor in any way affects U.S. compliance with our international obligations. This amendment creates no new law, and changes no U.S. policy."
Despite the amendment's intention to clarify U.S. military riot control policy, there appears continued difference of opinion about what sorts of operations it and U.S. international treaty requirements allow.
"There certainly are differences of opinion both between the United States and other countries, and within the United States," said Elisa Harris, a research associate at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy who once served as National Security Council director for nonproliferation and export controls in the Clinton White House. 'Morally correct' and 'slippery slope'
Ensign's amendment appears intended to address a complaint raised by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in February 2003 testimony before the House Armed Services Committee.
Rumsfeld called Chemical Weapons Convention riot control restrictions a "straightjacket" and said "We are trying to find ways that nonlethal agents could be used within the law" (see GSN, Feb. 6, 2003).
Ensign on Nov. 8 argued riot control agents are a "morally correct" option that could save civilian lives in Iraq, recounting a reported incident in which a mother and two children held hostage by insurgents were killed as U.S. Marines battled the insurgents.
"Perhaps the use of tear gas would have saved their lives; perhaps not. We will never know that. What we do know is that those Marines were not provided every tool with which to carry out this global war on terrorism," he said.
Experts have said the use of all gasses in war was banned in 1925 in part because using less harmful agents could lead to use of more deadly ones in warfare. They have noted that during World War I, forces began with tear gas use and then moved toward lethal chlorine and other gasses.
"We need to be very careful here. It's not in our security interests to be broadening the scope of circumstances under which U.S. military forces can use riot control agents because of the very risk that that will lead to the use of similar substances, and perhaps more lethal agents against U.S. forces," Harris said.
"Most of the rest of the world has a different interpretation of the question of whether riot control agents meet the definition of a chemical weapon under the CWC, most countries think they do," Harris said.
Citing the Chemical Weapons Convention, then British Defense Minister Geoffrey Hoon in 2003 said the United Kingdom would not use riot control agents "in any military operations or on any battlefield" in Iraq.
On 11/16/05, Leigh Meyers <leighcmeyers at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 16, 2005 1:06 PM [PDT],
> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
>
> > "We don't target any civilians with any of our weapons. And to
> > suggest that U.S. forces were targeting civilians with these weapons
> > would simply be wrong," Whitman said.
>
>
> That's right... The area is the Iraqi equivalent of a free fire zone and
> everyone within it is an enemy combatant... No civilians killed because
> there are no civilians... even the males, aged 15-45 that attempted to
> leave and weren't allowed to go. They die first, I'm sure.
>
> FWIW, the last time I checked, the median age of an Iraqi Male was around 15.
>
> The extermination of generations of Iraqi males is in full swing, but it's OK,
> there are plenty of westernized Iraqis to replace them as soon as we stabilize
> the area... build a few apartheid walls, and socially control, through brutality,
> coercion, or other means, the remaining indigenous population of the country.
>
> Just... like... Israel.
>
> Leigh
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>