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Md. Rep. Chris Van Hollen speaks from 1988 Iraq gas experience in backing Syrian strike - The Washington Post
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-rep-chris-van-hollen-speaks-from-1988-iraq-gas-experience-in-backing-syrian-strike/2013/09/07/1544cb92-174c-11e3-804b-d3a1a3a18f2c_story.html?hpid=z2
“I have always found it cruelly ironic that the United States and the world did nothing when Saddam Hussein actually used chemical weapons against his people, and then wrongly went to war more than 15 years later when Saddam Hussein did not even have any chemical weapons,” Van Hollen said.
Today, Van Hollen wants to make sure Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad doesn’t escape punishment as Saddam did in 1988. He is helping to lead the effort to round up congressional support to authorize President Obama to carry out air and missile strikes to deter Syria — and others — from using poison gas again.
(...)
Even Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler refrained from using chemical weapons on the battlefield.
“I’m well aware of the argument that this was a bloody civil war in which over 100,000 people have already been killed. Some people ask, ‘What’s the difference?’ ” Van Hollen said.
“But there is a reason that the international community for almost 90 years has banned the use of poison gas. That’s because it’s a weapon of mass destruction that kills indiscriminately,” he said.
He noted that last month’s gas attack killed more people at one time than any other assaults during the Syrian fighting.
(...)
“I strongly believe that if the United States and the international community had taken some action [in 1988], then it would have reined in Saddam Hussein early on, that the failure to act emboldened Saddam Hussein to take reckless action, including the invasion of Kuwait,” Van Hollen said.
Canadian readers should keep an eye out for Generation Us, a tiny climate change primer by University of Victoria Professor Andrew Weaver, the Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis.
Subtitled The Challenge of Global Warming, Generation Us is like a climate change CliffNotes. Published by Raven Books as part of a "Rapid Reads" series, this is a short, succinct, clear and readable rendering of the science - followed by a passionate appeal for us all to move from "Generation Me" (which really seems to have outlasted its stylishness) to Generation Us, in which we start taking seriously the opportunity we have to mitigate the climate damage that we have already inflicted on future generations.
Actually, if you're looking for an informed tour through the science, I might recommend Weaver's earlier book even more highly. In Keeping Our Cool, Weaver drilled down into the topic a bit more thoroughly, even explaining precisely how scientists such as Lonnie Thompson torture 650,000-year-old oxygen isotopes to get them to admit what the temperature was on the year they were frozen into the Antarctic plains.
But for someone coming to this topic without any science background, GenUs is a perfect introduction - and as such is an important addition to the climate library.<!--break-->
The environmental contamination and human health risk associated with the extraction of natural gas using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” was little known across the United States for years, until a documentary film brought the issue to the national stage. Josh Fox directed the film Gasland, which chronicles the devastation affecting communities where fracking is taking place and the influence of the natural gas industry over regulation of the techniques and chemicals used in the process. The industry aggressively attacked the film, especially when it was nominated for an Academy Award this year. [includes rush transcript]
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