''I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes''
Winston Churchill, Iraq: From Sumer to Sudan, by Geoff Simons
Winston Churchill, as colonial secretary, was sensitive to the cost of policing the Empire; and was in consequence keen to exploit the potential of modern technology. This strategy had particular relevance to operations in Iraq. On 19 February, 1920, before the start of the Arab uprising, Churchill (then Secretary for War and Air) wrote to Sir Hugh Trenchard, the pioneer of air warfare. Would it be possible for Trenchard to take control of Iraq? This would entail the provision of some kind of asphyxiating bombs calculated to cause disablement of some kind but not death...for use in preliminary operations against turbulent tribes.
Churchill was in no doubt that gas could be profitably employed against the Kurds and Iraqis (as well as against other peoples in the Empire): *I do not understand this sqeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHU407A.html
By the 1940s, Churchill was equal opportunity in his zeal to use poison gas as he was ready WMD Germany.
http://www.informationwar.org/state%20terrorism/Britain_using_chemical_weapons.htm
Sometime earlier, I read a little rundown on terror bombing. It didn't start with Guernica. It started thirty years earlier - in North Africa, done by all colonial powers, and even the USA as 'subcontractor' (US pilots flying for the colonial powers). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
1 November 1911: first recorded bomb drop from an airplane in history, by Italian Lt. Giulio Cavotti, against rebelling Arabs near Tripoli.
1915-1920: first British aerial bombings in colonies, but then already at grand scale: in India, Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan, Somaliland.
1925: first total destruction of anentire town by aerial bombing, by US pilots hired out to France, against the Moroccan town of Chechaouen: holy site of the Jibala tribe, 6000 inhabitants, none armed.
Then came the bombings in Iraq - and their architect was none other than Arthur "Bomber" Harris. The terrorist total-war mindset behind firebombings (which specifically targeted civilians) weren't without precedent, without a prehistory.
The article also tracks back the ideology of total war (i.e. a war fought between 'nations' at all costs, without making difference between civilians and combattants):
I suspect that the US first also predates WWI, and was most probably in the Philippines. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
