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15
Apr
2018
There hasn’t been this much news about chemical weapons since Saddam Hussein didn’t have them after all.
First it was the Skripals, father and daughter, apparently poisoned by some kind of nerve agent in Britain. More recently, it has been Syrian civilians, hundreds of them, including children and elderly.
In both cases, the perpetrator hasn’t been conclusively proven. The U.K. holds Russia responsible for the attack on the Skripals, possibly as revenge for his having betrayed his own government by providing secret information to British Intelligence.
Similarly, the western nations blame Syria’s ruler, Bashar Al Assad, for the poison gas attacks on civilians in a suburb of Damascus, one of the last stands of Syrian rebels.
In all this finger-pointing, I see very few media commentators examining the nature of the weapons themselves.
So here’s a brief history -- Chemical Weapons 101, perhaps.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Skripal, Novichok, VX, nerve gas, chemical weapons, Bashar al Assad, Russia, Sarin, atropine