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Originally posted by jaguar
Because a non-lethal weapon, which we don't know this gas was anyway, can be lethal does not make the term an oxymoron.
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Of course it does.
"An epithet of a contrary signification is added to a word...". "Non-lethal" is the epithet, and "weapon" is the word. The examples of "weapon" offered in your own definition were guns, missiles and swords,.all known to comport perfectly with the concept of "non-lethality", right? No "contrary signification" here...
The <b>intent</b> with this chemical weapon was presumambly that it not be lethal, only incapacitating, and it turned out to be a hell of a lot more lethal than was intended. The core problem with the idea of a "non-lethal weapon" is that it seeks to walk such a fine line between being *too* incapacitating and not being incapacitating enough. To do that successfully requires much more control that you will ever have in a chemical agent, especially one used in combat.
Look what a fine line an anesthesiologist walks to keep a patient under general anesthesia. With a constant read-out of heart rate, respiration, blood pressure and oxygenation, and extremely precise control of IV dosages and breathing gas mixtures, an anesthetist can keep *one* person delicately balanced between "too awake to operate on" and "dead" for long enough to get through a surgery. Usually.
It's entirely possible that the scene commanders played the best possible hand from the cards they were dealt. That more people weren't killed is indeed amazing.
But here we had something like 1,000 people, and the goal was to incapacitate the youngest ones in the best condition so quickly they didn't have time to set off the bombs in the building and strapped to their bellies, while not killing the folks who came to see the musical. Doses were administered in bulk to the entire building at once, and feedback was whatever could be seen though fiberscopes or whatever access they had to the inside of the occupied building. If any.
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While Al Queda has links to most extremist Islamic organisations...
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"...where Al Queda is involved..." were indeed my words
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...most Islamic organisations you hear of are unbrella ones that cover thousands of suborganisations that change name and structure with bewildering frequency..
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No kidding. The intent of all that being to confuse the enemy, but most of all to avoid responsibility and retribution for one's actions.
After all, there is no <b>guilt</b>; all they have to do is avoid <b>blame</b>. That's why after 9/11 we got this load of hooey from the Taliban that ran "Oh, bin Laden? He's only our guest. Prove to us that he's done these terrible things you accuse him of."
Aren't you perfectly willing to sanction blaming the US for what the Israelis do? (Oh, but *that's* different. Sure it is.)
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But we could be talking at cross purposes as in country i'm talking about is called Chechnya and the people are called Chechens. I'm not sure who the Chechnians are.
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Oh, I'm sorry. If I wanted you to understand that I meant Chechnya I suppose should have misspelled it "Chehcnay". But you usually transpose vowels, and there just weren't enough to go around. Does that "remind you allot" of anything among "you're weaponary"? Non-lethal, of course.