By: George Kurzom
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Part of the huge US chemical weapons arsenal in Kentucky, United States
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The irony is that those who possess terrifying arsenals of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, those who have enough ammunition to destroy the entire planet dozens of times, are the ones who set themselves up as the judges and persecutors of those who are oppressed. The American weapon stockpile alone has the world's largest collection of chemical and nuclear weapons.
The US government deliberately poisons its citizens
The American Government, which issues arrogant judgments against governments and states globally on committing war crimes, is itself the owner of an extensive documented record of committing scandalous chemical, biological, and nuclear war crimes. These crimes have been committed against many of the world's peoples in East Asia, Japan, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America, and even against the American people.
Recently, a horrific bacteriological crime in the United States, committed by the US government in the 1950s against its own people, was revealed. A series of experiments conducted simulated a bacteriological war against thousands of peaceful Americans. This crime has is now considered one of the largest microbial warfare crimes committed against humans.
Many Americans will not be surprised to hear that their government has conducted one of the largest anti-human trials in history by simulating a chemical attack on thousands of safe individuals. But the shock of the American public opinion will lie in the fact that this attack took place in San Francisco, California, where American people were killed and seriously injured as a result of poisoning by their own government. In 1950, the US government carried out the attack by spraying San Francisco with the Serratia Marcescens germ, targeting thousands of innocent civilians. The US scientific journal “Discovery” reported that the experiment was conducted as a "test of susceptibility to this microbial, and to identify vulnerable areas in the case of a biological terrorist attack" (Discover: goo.gl/SZhQq9).
The chemical attack is known as the "sea spray," and San Francisco was chosen as a target because it’s close to the ocean, has a unique geography, high-rise buildings, and a high population density. For six days in September 1950, the US Navy used giant hoses to spray large amounts of the Serratia Marcescens germ along the San Francisco coast, causing the city's 800,000 inhabitants to be infected by large doses of bacteria. The germ was not contained; it also effected the neighboring populations, specifically Albany, Berkeley, Dali City, Colma, Auckland, San Leandro, and Socalito. Among the most common diseases suffered by the victims: severe urinary tract infections that were resistant to the limited antibiotics available in that era, and serious heart complications as the Serratia Marcescens germ traveled to their heart valves.
Although this attack was one of the biggest to date, it was not the only time the US government poisoned its citizens deliberately. In October 2017, three members of the US Congress called for the government to be held accountable for conducting secret experiments in the 1950s that included tests of radioactive materials on vulnerable and poor citizens. Writer and Professor Lisa Martino Taylor recently revealed many intricate facts regarding this attack in her book, Behind the Fog: How the US Cold War Radiological Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans.
Martino Taylor discovered that a small group of researchers worked on the development of radiological weapons by testing the effects of radioactive material exposure on vulnerable populations of American citizens. Later, these same researchers developed weapons using radioactive materials as well as chemical or biological weapons. Martino Taylor said "In most cases, they targeted the most vulnerable groups of the society…They targeted children and pregnant women, minorities and patients in hospitals. Some of the victims were poor pregnant women in the cities of Nashville, Chicago, and San Francisco.” Taylor reported that these women were given a chemical mixture containing irradiated iron without their knowledge during their first pregnancy visit to the doctor. Additionally, thousands of students were also exposed to radiation via radioactive fields that they created in some high schools and universities in California.
Evidence shows that the US federal government has deliberately poisoned its citizens on numerous occasions. The criminals responsible for carrying out these acts against their people have not been held accountable for attacks that have caused serious health problems for thousands of Americans throughout their lives.
Fabrication of lies
The American government does not hesitate to use chemical, biological, or radiological weapons against its own people, so therefore it should be no surprise when the same political regime uses weapons of genocide against populations globally, utilizing even worse methods. This explains the outburst of the US ruling military regime, always hiding behind the thick smoke of fabricated lies against the people and governments that refuse to submit to its policies and projects. Policies and projects that the US government forces on other governments in an attempt to bury the reality of its own shameful chemical-bacterial-radiation record and to drop the ready-made charges against others.
Weren’t the US occupation of Iraq and the looting of its wealth built on the false pretense of weapons of mass destruction? American tanks invaded the country and set up a corrupt sectarian political regime that stole hundreds of billions of dollars. As a result, the US occupation of Iraq in 2003 (which occurred without any UN Security Council resolution), lead to a brutal 13 year blockade, more than 2 million Iraqis martyred, and hundreds of thousands of citizens developing cancer because of the US weapons used that contained depleted uranium.
Scott Ritter, Iraq's chief inspector of weapons of mass destruction, senior CIA operative, and author of Iraq Confidential, 2010, revealed that the United States’ claim to destroy weapons of mass destruction as their reason for occupying Iraq in 2003 was false, and they used radioactive nuclear weapons during this period, killing thousands of people. Prior to 2003, the United States imposed a long starvation siege on the Iraqi people, under the pretext of working to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The United States itself used organic phosphorus insecticides (such as Durspan, Divepan, Dizectol, Malathion and Linden) as nervous gas against the Iraqi people in the war of 1991, causing the spread of neurological and cancerous diseases (Kurzom, George, Chemical Pesticides and Dirty War, 1999).
The list of US chemical crimes is long; millions of Vietnamese still suffer from cancer and distorted births because of American chemical weapons. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the American government extensively used the herbicide 2.4-D as a major ingredient in the chemical weapons used extensively against the Vietnamese. These weapons are commonly known as the poisonous, carcinogenic, “Agent Orange” (herbicide 2.4-D forms about 50% of the Agent Orange). Agent Orange destroyed jungles, forests, and entire villages as the U.S. Military pursued the rebels. Before that, in the 1950s, the British used the same pesticide (the main component of the weapon) against rebel fighters in Malaysia.
The United States, throughout the 1960s and until its defeat in Vietnam in 1975, committed genocide and human massacres against the Vietnamese. Additionally, U.S. forces committed countless war crimes, including spraying the Vietnamese people with more than 11 million gallons of Agent Orange, which exterminated villages, farms and innocent civilians, in addition to the forests in where the Vietnamese rebels were hiding. America bombed Vietnam with more than six million tons of bombs and about half a million tons of incendiary bombs (Napalm). About five million Vietnamese (out of the 88 million people in Vietnam) still suffer from cancer and birth defects (born without hands or fingers or congenital malformations) because of the chemical weapons used by the United States against the Vietnamese people, especially Agent Orange and dioxin.
France, another world power who hypocritically persecutes the oppressed, has committed the some of the worst chemical war crimes to date during its occupation of Algeria, where thousands of Algerians were killed. France’s government was one of the first to use chemical weapons in the 20th century, specifically during the First World War, during which more than one million people were killed by poison gas used by France and Britain.
As for the Israeli occupation, it has witnessed the worst forms of political and ideological hypocrisy. The government claims that it is concerned about the Syrian people, whose government is bombarding them with poisonous gas. In a military parade, Israel has launched bombs into Syria (T4). In fact, Israel is one of the few countries in the world that refuses to sign the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use of Chemical Weapons, which came into force in 1997.
More seriously, Israel, which has refused and continues to refuse to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is the only country in the Middle East that possesses a terrifying arsenal of nuclear weapons (as many foreign experts confirm). This not only poses an existential threat to the physical existence of the Arab and Islamic people in the region, but also all forms of wildlife, including plant, animal, and marine life.
It is ironic that Israeli figures are wanted for justice in a number of European countries on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity (during their military service) against Palestinians and Arabs. These crimes include those committed by the Israeli Housing Minister and Israeli Army General, Yu’av Galant, who falsely claim and market themselves as messengers of humanity that are keen on the lives of the people who must be "protected from the crimes of chemical extermination."
There is no need to recall the collective human holocaust committed by the Israeli occupation in its wars against the people living in the Gaza Strip, especially in the July-August 2014 aggression, when Israeli war criminals committed barbaric massacres against unarmed, besieged, and hungry people. They systematically exterminated more than 70 Palestinian families, and the number of Palestinian martyrs was more than 2,300, about half of which were children, women, and elderly. Additionally more than 10,000 wounded Palestinian citizens, a majority of which, again, included children, women and the elderly. The human massacres committed by the Israeli occupation have always been characterized by mass killings, such as the massacre of Shajaiya neighborhood in which more than 80 martyrs were killed and the massacre of Rafah that killed about 200 martyrs. Entire villages have been leveled to the ground as the town of Beit Hanoun and the village of Khuza'a.
“The most moral army in the world" as Israeli leaders like to call their army, used some of the world’s deadliest weapons in its wars on Gaza. They used weapons that are internationally banned, such as chemical weapons and incendiary missiles (phosphorus and others), against unarmed citizens. This explains the large number of martyrs who arrived during the aggression of 2014, to the Hospitals of Gaza Strip in charred bodies, or torn pieces.
In addition to the cluster bombs that are universally classified as weapons of mass destruction, Israel has used the specially developed version of the US-made cluster bombs known as DIME intensively in its aggression against Palestinian citizens. They have used vacuum and concussion bombs, through the destruction of a large number of buildings and homes on the ground. Israel is the last to praise itself for humanitarian or moral values, because these values do not equate with those who kill children as the hunter kills the birds (the return marches in Gaza). It does not equate with those who have cold blood on their hands from the slaughtering children and bombing of hospitals and safe houses. It does not equate to those who besiege people, starving and humiliating more than 2 million people in a small, densely populated geographical area, bombarding them intensively and turning them into an internationally banned weapons’ laboratory test.
Translated by: Ghadeer Kamal Zaineh
