Winston Churchill's shocking use of chemical weapons

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The Guardian - Giles Milton, 9/01/13

The use of chemical weapons in Syria has outraged the world. But it is easy to forget that Britain has used them – and that Winston Churchill was a powerful advocate for them

Winston Churchill speaking at a munitions factory in Ponders End, 1916.

Winston Churchill speaking at a munitions factory in Ponders End, 1916. Photograph: Hulton Archive

Secrecy was paramount. Britain's imperial general staff knew there would be outrage if it became known that the government was intending to use its secret stockpile of chemical weapons. But Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for war, brushed aside their concerns. As a long-term advocate of chemical warfare, he was determined to use them against the Russian Bolsheviks. In the summer of 1919, 94 years before the devastating strike in Syria, Churchill planned and executed a sustained chemical attack on northern Russia.

The British were no strangers to the use of chemical weapons. During the third battle of Gaza in 1917, General Edmund Allenby had fired 10,000 cans of asphyxiating gas at enemy positions, to limited effect. But in the final months of the first world war, scientists at the governmental laboratories at Porton in Wiltshire developed a far more devastating weapon: the top secret "M Device", an exploding shell containing a highly toxic gas called diphenylaminechloroarsine. The man in charge of developing it, Major General Charles Foulkes, called it "the most effective chemical weapon ever devised".

More: TheGuardian.com

 

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Such a contrary name

dreamer's picture

Winston cigarette-butt Church? hill. War monger, power seeker, killer of millions. Seems ironic that his most famous statement was, "All we have to fear is fear itself." His was a religion onto leaders past and present. Small minded folk who are to ignorant to come to agreement to disagree. Rather kill all those lessor beings of an uneducated nature who follow an ism other than theirs. Little has changed for the dis eased mind of a power monger. That would be false power. One who believes GOD is outside and well away from all things simply due to the lack of ability to understand that falsehood. It is hard to fathom WWI was called the war to end all wars. Yet, here we are nearly a century later and the goofy little snits are still at it. Some folks never grow out of diapers for the entire  course of their life span. I am not amused by these things. The mongers do not scare me. I find it very sad they continue to do things over and over expecting different results. It is not to say these people did not have an effect upon most everyone. Me included. But, there did come a time when I was at a point of making a decsison to make up mine own mind as to what is true or to listen to and bow to those power dogs of war. They shall continue these ways until they do not. Those who seek the higher vibrations grow ever further from these childish ways. We see and hear of their antics and are able to go about our day uneffected. Compassionate disassociation is the term.