Chemistry and life: What Trump's press secretary lied about
In the early 90s, watching heated discussions on Usenet, American lawyer and journalist Mike Godwin noticed that as the discussion grew, one of the disputants would inevitably slide into comparing his opponent to Hitler. This demagogic trick has since been called Godwin's Law.
A demagogic trick in the style of Reductio ad Hitlerum, even in everyday disputes, is a sign of lameness, since the arguer resorts to it out of impotence and lack of arguments. But when a high-ranking official with the rank of head of the White House press service begins to utter such heresy, this is a sure sign that the person is clearly in the wrong place.
As you can understand, in this case we are talking about President Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer, who not so long ago, in his ridiculous speech, unsubstantiatedly compared Syrian President Assad to Hitler and even indirectly praised the possessed Adik that he supposedly “did not use chemical weapons” .
A stupid performance could cost Spicer his job, since now numerous opponents of Trump from the Democratic Party want his removal, unwilling to forgive even the slightest mistakes of the newly elected president.
Let's start with the fact that sclerosis changes Spicer: the Hitler regime massively used chemical weapons. The infamous “Cyclone-B” gas, produced at the enterprises of the chemical concern “I.G. Farbenindustry,” hundreds of thousands of people were exterminated in Nazi concentration camps, forcibly expelled from all over Europe.
As for the combat use of explosive agents, it was not remorse that prevented Hitler from using it on the battlefield. The Fuhrer understood perfectly well that in response to an attack with unconventional chemical weapons on any part of the front, Germany would be flooded with mustard gas by Allied aircraft. The pre-war branch of chemical warfare agents in our country was in its infancy, while Great Britain and the United States had long had arsenals of chemical weapons with reserves of mustard gas, lewisite and other poisons.
While World War II was going on, the Nazis were developing new chemical warfare agents, testing their effect on concentration camp prisoners. After the war, it became known about a new type of nerve agent created by the Nazis - sarin, soman, tabun gases.
The first country to suffer from the massive use of chemical and biological weapons was Korea. The Americans widely used napalm, white phosphorus and plague fleas against the North Korean army and civilians.
But nowhere have chemical weapons been used as widely as in Vietnam, either before or since. Perhaps the most famous was the American use of the defoliant Agent orange, so named for the color of the distinctive stripes on the barrels in which it was stored. The Americans sprayed the tropical forests of South Vietnam with “orange reagent” in order to identify Viet Cong guerrillas and weapons delivery routes.
Agent orange defoliant is a mixture of chemicals, the most toxic of which is dioxin TCDD. American invaders sprayed defoliants over Vietnam for 10 years, from 1961 to 1971.
According to the US Department of Defense, during the war, the Americans sprayed 10 million liters of Agent Orange on 72% of the territory of South Vietnam, including 44 million liters containing dioxin. 10% was sprayed on the ground and from watercraft, the remaining 90% from airplanes and helicopters.
Due to carpet bombing, the Vietnamese (both partisans and civilians) were forced to hide in underground shelters for weeks. When they went outside, a hellish sight was revealed to their eyes - a leafless forest for many kilometers around. Chemicals and dioxin entered the ground and water, accumulating in people's bodies and leading to skin damage and outbreaks of cancer.
After the Vietnam War, there were almost five million people affected in one way or another by defoliants, of which three million were directly affected by “orange rain.”
In modern Vietnam, there are even more registered people who have become disabled as a result of the fact that their parents and grandparents were once exposed to dioxin. After the war, tens of thousands of Vietnamese died from the effects of chemical poisoning, and hundreds of thousands more still suffer from diseases and deformities caused by the “orange reagent.”
In 2004, Vietnamese victims of orange dioxin first attempted to sue the American chemical companies (most notably Monsanto and Dow Chemical) that produced the defoliants. In 2005, a federal judge in Brooklyn cynically dismissed the lawsuit "due to the lack of direct witnesses."
So far, American veterans of the Vietnam War who suffered from the “orange reagent” have managed to obtain payments from manufacturers of pesticides. Monsanto and Dow Chemical donated $1984 million to a dioxin relief fund in 180, but refused to admit their guilt.
Invaders from Australia and New Zealand who suffered from Orange Rain also received compensation from their governments, and in 2006, a South Korean appeals court ordered American chemical companies to pay $62 million to XNUMX of their injured veterans of the occupation forces during the Vietnam War.
The famous phrase “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” from the cult film “Bring the Apocalypse” can also serve as a distinctive feature of the Vietnam War. The Americans used napalm (jelly-like gasoline) frequently and heavily in the Vietnam War, including against civilians. Photos of people, villages and forests burned by napalm circulated in newspapers around the world and shocked humanity. An international convention adopted in 1980 explicitly prohibits the use of napalm near populated areas.
True, the Americans do not admit their guilt here either, scapegoating the Air Force pilots of the puppet regime of South Vietnam.
However, after the Vietnam War, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. The Americans got their ass kicked in this war, and today various charitable organizations from around the world are engaged in the reclamation of lands affected by the “orange reagent” and are building hospitals in Vietnam for victims of dioxin.
Let's move on to times not so distant. For example, the case of former American soldier Bradley Manning. A curious story about a boy who was facing a hundred years in prison, who has now become Chelsea Manning. And why? Bradley-Chelsea Manning handed over to WikiLeaks a package of documents from which it emerged that during
During the war in Iraq, the Americans not only imported chemical weapons into the occupied country, but also used them against the Iraqi army and civilians.
In particular, it became known about the use of white phosphorus during the assault on Fallujah and the frequent use of M33A1 gas in combat situations.
It would seem, who cares? Well, white phosphorus, well, police gas M33A1 - it’s business... The tear runner, it seems, is non-lethal, loses its damaging effect outside the spray zone. In fact, a convention was adopted in 1997 banning the use of tear gas in combat. It can be used exclusively for police operations.
Well, anyone who underwent a gas mask test in a tent with chloropicrin in the Soviet Army will understand. Chloropicrin is very capable of burning your eyes and lungs. And even lead to death. During hostilities, not only military personnel, but also civilians take refuge in basements, sewers and other similar places from bullets, mines and shells. When smoking them out of their shelters with a teardrop gun, the choice is small: either die from rifle and artillery fire, or die in agony from the M33A1 in the basement. And the first to suffer from gas will be children, old people, the sick and wounded.
But no conventions or humanitarian considerations stopped American troops from using various chemical crap during the Iraq war.
As for white phosphorus, this substance is extremely dangerous and carries several damaging factors at once. First, burning white phosphorus has a high combustion temperature and is very difficult to extinguish. It is useless to extinguish burning phosphorus that gets on living tissues in water - it takes oxygen directly from a living organism, often leading to horrific burns.
Secondly, the combustion product of phosphorus is phosphoric anhydride, which, when combined with water, forms phosphoric acid, which in its action is not much different from sulfuric acid. For example, phosphoric acid is used to treat car bodies to create an anti-corrosion coating. Thus, in addition to thermal damage, chemical damage is also added.
“Willie-Peter” (the code designation for mines with white phosphorus during the Vietnam War) is the favorite weapon of the American (and now Bandera) troops, including against civilians and populated areas, which is strictly prohibited by the convention on the use of weapons.
And now, for the umpteenth time, either with a test tube or with unsubstantiated chatter, some irresponsible high-ranking American mug comes out and begins to lecture other countries and justify his criminal actions. Referring to terrorist data on the use of chemical weapons by the government of a country declared guilty of all mortal sins. Who are the judges? Are cherubs wingless?
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