Blackwater gassing US troops
photo: Kincy Clark
The recent revelation that the trigger-happy mercenaries of Blackwater Security dropped CS gas on our own troops in 2005 further raises Blackwater’s potential threat to America as well as Iraq.
CS, whose chemical name is 0-chlorobenzalmalononitrile, is a particularly potent form of tear gas used for riot control. According to a handbook called the “Police Chemical Agents Manual,” during exposure to CS a person is:
Incapable of effective concerted action.
The long term effects of CS are still undetermined. A 1989 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association found:
Published and recent unpublished in vitro tests have shown o-chlorobenzylidenemalononitrile to be both clastogenic and mutagenic. Sadly, the nature of its use renders analytic epidemiologic investigation of exposed persons difficult.
A 2004 British study concluded:
These findings suggest that the formulation of CS (o-chlorobenzylidine malononitrile) with MiBK (methyl iso-butyl ketone) used by the police is more harmful that has been previously assumed.
In other words, Blackwater’s use of CS not only threatened the security of our troops by incapacitating them, but also may have long term health consequences.
Because of these concerns, the use of riot control agents such as CS is the subject of much international controversy. According to the Chemical Weapons Convention signed by the United States, Article I, Section 5 states:
5. Each State Party undertakes not to use riot control agents as a method of warfare.
Unfortunately, in yet another unilateral move by the United States, none other than Bill Clinton (here’s another one to chalk up for those of you nostalgic for the1990s) stated that the United States reserved the right to use riot control agents in two circumstances:
Conflicts to which the United States is not a party but is playing a peacekeeping role, or locations where U.S. troops are stationed with the approval of the host State.)
George W. Bush essentially reaffirmed this policy. According to a New York Times article on the Blackwater incident, the current policy concerning the use of CS:
Allows their use by the United States military in war zones under limited defensive circumstances and only with the approval of the president or a senior officer designated by the president.
Blackwater met neither of these criteria, which did not make our troops on the scene very happy. In a personal journal posted online the day of the incident, Captain Kincy Clark provided a detailed description of what happened and included photos. As quoted by the Times, Clark reported he was on the radio with one of the guard towers in the area trying to determine what the Blackwater helicopter had dropped causing white smoke to rise:
Before he could say anything, I got my answer. My eyes started watering, my nose started burning and my face started to heat up. CS! I heard the lieutenant say, “Sir that’s not smoke, it’s CS gas.”
Clark went on to state in no uncertain terms that dropping CS on the US troops patrolling the intersection was:
Incredibly stupid.
But what is incredibly stupid is what a private military contractor was doing with CS gas in the first place. A military officer in Iraq told the Times:
We didn’t even possess any kind of riot control agents, and we couldn’t employ them if we wanted to.
The story about how Blackwater obtained the CS still appears murky as I write this, although the Bush Administration now claims no security contractors are permitted to use CS. What it did not say was whether they POSSESSED it or whether the government had ordered Blackwater to turn over its stocks of CS.
As the police manual quote above indicates, CS has been used in the United States for riot control, most notably in the notorious Waco, Texas siege of the Branch Davidian compound.
Much to my surprise, I found that while troops in Iraq may have had trouble locating CS, CS is widely available in the United States where it is sold in various devices for “crime protection.” I even found a canister of CN gas (another riot control agent) on EBay. Buy one and send it to our troops.
An article in University of Dayton Law Review states:
Federal and state law treat possession and use of personal chemical weapons similarly to the possession and use of firearms.
Even more startling was what the article found concerning state laws:
The most surprising conclusion revealed by such a review is that, if anything, the regulation of personal tear gas weapons is more stringent than the regulation of firearms.
It is nice to know that at least a few states in this country abide by the Chemical Weapons Convention. In addition to these various laws, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has stated:
If then the tear gas is used in dangerous quantities, we agree with the district court that its use is justified only in those grave circumstances which would justify the use of severe and potentially lethal force.
Yet small CS pens and aerosol canisters are far from the device used by Blackwater and the possession and use of CS by police and law enforcement personnel is not the same as its use and possession by private citizens.
The possibility that our government has provided Blackwater and other contractors with CS and possibly other weapons that cannot be obtained by private citizens raises a serious issue.
Blackwater’s newsletter has published anti-Hillary Clinton ads, assorted right wing propaganda and published articles critical of members of Congress. Blackwater has also been linked to fundamentalist Christian groups. We’ll start with the family of Blackwater founder Erik Prince. Prince’s father, Edgar Prince started the family Family Research Council with Gary Bauer. He is also a heavy contributor to James Dobson’s Focus on the Family and Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association. Wildmon is the one who accused Mighty Mouse of “promoting heroin” when he sniffed a flower in a cartoon. Prince’s mother Betsy DeVos is a major Bush campaign contributor and served as a Michigan committee woman on the Republican National Committee. Erik Prince is listed along with is father as one of the founders of the Family Research Council.
In short, Blackwater supports a far right political agenda along with its so-called security activities. Blackwater’s newsletter recently announced the formation of a Blackwater “alumni” group. These former and present Blackwater employees constitute a private militia operating in the United States, a militia whose members have close ties to various fundamentalist Christian groups.
If this militia possesses CS and other chemical weapons, it makes them a formidable force. Yet as far as I know no one in the press or Congress has asked if Blackwater still has supplies of CS. The Chemical Weapons Convention is designed to limit the use of chemical weapons and ultimately to destroy them, yet here our government is providing them to the equivalent of a domestic militia.
While everyone is rushing to make sure Blackwater is kept on a short leash in Iraq, nothing is being done to police their activities in THIS country. As Blackwater and other firms like it essentially create private armies beholden only to their clients, it may well be that in future years we will regard the most nefarious act of the pro-business Republican Counterrevolution as being to encourage the formation of these corporate militias with an ideological agenda.
At what point do those militias become a security threat to this nation? The CS gas incident would argue that they already have.
Print Posted by: liberalamerican
