Gas, Gas

In 2013, after Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad had unquestionably engaged in chemical warfare against his own citizens, President Obama delivered this warning:

“If we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons. As the ban against these weapons erodes, other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas and using them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical warfare on the battlefield. And it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons, and to use them to attack civilians.”

The chemical weapon in that case was chlorine gas. Which was, incidentally, the first chemical agent employed as a weapon of modern war.

Yesterday, as Jim Michaels of USA Today writes,

The top U.S. military officer confirmed Thursday that Islamic State militants targeted a military base in Iraq where U.S. troops were stationed with a potentially deadly chemical weapon this week.

“We assess it to be a sulfur-mustard blister agent,” Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Mustard, a blistering agent, was a refinement in chemical warfare, along the way to nerve gas which is, more or less, its perfection.

But not to worry, according to the wise young things at Vox, where this headline appears, “No, ISIS isn’t gassing US troops in Iraq.”

In the body of the story, we learn that

Back in World War I, when [mustard gas] was first used in large quantities, warring parties would spray it out from big water tanks. They would also put it in shells fired from artillery pieces, which would then explode and send gobs of the liquid onto the exposed skin of enemy troops. Think of it like a really dangerous water balloon.

Here is the way British officer and poet, Wilfred Owen, who actually spent time on the Western Front and was killed there, experienced a mustard gas attack:

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And floundering like a man in fire or lime. – Dim through the misty panes and thick green light As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

Gas, Gas

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