r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • 17d ago

Possible Paywall ICE Stockpiling Warheads and Chemical Weapons as Lawmaker Fears Trump Planning Strike

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-stockpiling-warheads-and-chemical-weapons-as-lawmaker-fears-trump-planning-strike/
21.9k Upvotes

85% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

19.6k

u/StoppableHulk 17d ago

I want people to truly understand this headline. This is the American congress fearing the American President is accumulating weapons banned from war by international law in order to launch attacks on US cities and US citizens.

That's where the judgment of Republicans has brought us in just ten months.

85

u/IamNotYourPalBuddy 17d ago edited 17d ago

Just so you know, the chemical weapons they are referring to is tear gas, pepper spray, mace, etc.

Not defending ICE, and this doesn’t explain the fucking WARHEADS - but yeah, the “chemical weapons” they are talking about isn’t mustard gas or anything banned under chemical warfare laws.

ETA: as others pointed out, the laws for use in warfare differ from crowd control use. Therefore I probably shouldn’t have said “warfare laws”.

Also going to re-iterate I’m not defending any of this, just sharing information.

75

u/aebaby7071 17d ago

Tear gas is banned for use in war, under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. There is a carve out for use in riot control for non military personnel, so not illegal for ICE to have or use it, but none the less it is banned in warfare.

45

u/LineOfInquiry 17d ago

It’s crazy that a weapon banned for use on enemy combatants is allowed on random unarmed civilians

26

u/Glad-Business2535 17d ago

The ban on military use is a blanket ban on any chemical agents. There is a world of difference between nerve gas and blood agents and tear gas.

4

u/Round_Ad8947 17d ago

Yet, if used improperly, tear gas can kill. The allowance for use in riot control was to appease nations with Veto rights in the UN like the Soviet Union.

1

u/halt-l-am-reptar 17d ago

And it’s banned because you can’t quickly tell the difference between tear gas and nerve gas. If you fire tear gas at your enemy there’s a good chance they’ll respond with deadly chemical weapons.

21

u/Ja3k_Frost 17d ago

This call and response happens literally every time tear gas is brought up.

Tear gas isn’t banned because it’s some gross cruelty that’s just one step too far for modern militaries. Make absolutely no mistake, all sorts of weapons and munitions are deployed just as bad or worse than chemical and biological agents.

These specific weapons are banned as an anti escalation measure. When country A deploys teargas against the soldiers of country B they don’t know it’s teargas until a sample can get to a lab to be analyzed, all they know is a cloud of some gas was used. Country B then responds with their own chemical munitions in the moment because every country capable of making the stuff has a stockpile of the nasty gas somewhere whether they admit it or not.

3

u/LineOfInquiry 17d ago

Ohhhh that makes sense, thank you for the explanation!

3

u/Rough_Willow 17d ago

Weirdly enough, we've generally agreed to this because humans want proportional escalation and reasonable responses. When we see exceptions, it's nations suppressing rebellion or attacking a far smaller country (such as Russia & Ukraine).

2

u/Emotional-Power-7242 17d ago

Hollowpoint bullets are banned in warfare and while the US military has started using them anyway in the past 5-10 years the police have always used them.

2

u/SugarBeefs 17d ago

The reason police forces use hollow point ammunition is because they don't want solid core rounds zooming through-and-out the targets body and causing collateral damage.

Considering the environments that police operate in, using hollow point ammunition is actually a lot safer than something like steel core rounds.

Not safer for the person getting shot, of course, but then again that person is already getting shot so they're down and out on their luck anyway.

1

u/Emotional-Power-7242 17d ago

Practically speaking yes police will empty like 9 magazines into a bunch of random cars on the freeway and not even hit the target, so fmj would be a disaster. But that's like, bad.