aangirfan
Thursday, December 21, 2006
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=72073&page=51
~~~
In 1911, the Italians bombed Libyan civilians from the air.
In 1912 the French began bombing Moroccan civilians from the
air.
In 1913 the Spanish began bombing Moroccan villagers from the
air. They later used poison gas.
In 1915 the British began the aerial bombardment of Pathan villages
on India’s North-West Frontier.
In 1919 the British bombed Afghan civilians from the air. The
British aerial bombardment of Dacca killed 600.
Source for the above: http://www.brushtail.com.au/july_04_on/bombing_arabs_history.html
How Britain used terror bombing in 1920s Iraq
The following is taken from:
http://en.internationalism.org/wr/265_terror1920.htm
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 squeamishness about
the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against
uncivilised tribes.'
Today in 1993 there are still Iraqis and Kurds who remember being
bombed and machine-gunned by the RAF in the 1920s.
A Kurd from the Korak mountains commented, seventy years after
the event: 'They were bombing here in the Kaniya Khoran. Sometimes
they raided three times a day.'
Wing-Commander Sir Arthur Harris (later Bomber Harris, head of
wartime Bomber Command) was happy to emphasise that 'The Arab
and Kurd now know what real bombing means in casualties and damage.
Within forty-five minutes a full-size village can be practically
wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured.'
It was an easy matter to bomb and machine-gun the tribespeople,
because they had no means of defence or retaliation.
Iraq and Kurdistan were also useful laboratories for new weapons;
devices specifically developed by the Air Ministry for use against
tribal villages.
The ministry drew up a list of possible weapons, some of them
the forerunners of napalm and air-to-ground missiles:Phosphorus
bombs, war rockets, metal crowsfeet [to maim livestock] man-killing
shrapnel, liquid fire, delayed-action bombs. Many of these weapons
were first used in Kurdistan.
Hugh Trenchard, the RAF's chief of staff between 1919 and 1927
mentioned earlier, submitted a report to the Cabinet shortly after
the RAF had temporarily quelled anti-British unrest in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Trenchard reported that Churchill had first employed aerial bombardment
against Iraq's Kurds as a means of finding "some cheaper
form of control".
Trenchard enthusiastically endorsed the verdict of the British
High Commissioner for Iraq that "a free and vigorous use
of aerial resources" had proven to both highly potent and
cost-effective.
The RAF chief of staff concluded prophetically:"Air power
is of vital concern to the Empire and in Iraq, under the control
of an air officer, further evidence is accumulating of its great
potentialities. A continued demonstration, until its effectiveness
is beyond dispute, may have far-reaching results, in that it may
lead to still further economies in defence expenditure, not only
in Iraq, but also in other Eastern territories where armed forces
are required to give effect to British policy and uphold British
prestige".
Aerial bombardment had proven to be a satisfactory method of
mass killing.
Jonathan Glancey (The Guardian, 19 April 2003) reports that the
RAF "flew missions totaling 4,008 hours, dropped 97 tons
of bombs and fired 183,861 rounds for the loss of nine men killed,
seven wounded and 11 aircraft destroyed behind rebel lines".
The British bombing of Kurdistan was the first use of aerial
bombardment.
British forces engaged in their third Afghan War soon after this
also used this tactic.
The monster 'Bomber Harris' became notorious "for his ruthless
championing of saturation bombing against German civilian and
military targets" (Jonathan C. Randal, After Such Knowledge,
What Forgiveness? My Encounters with Kurdistan, p. 5).
The British military certainly took to aerial bombardment with
gusto as a means of spreading mass terror.
In 1921, Wing Commander J. A. Chamier suggested that the best
way to demoralise local people was to concentrate bombing on the
"most inaccessible village of the most prominent tribe which
it is desired to punish.
All available aircraft must be collected, the attack with bombs
and machine guns must be relentless and unremitting and carried
on continuously by day and night, on houses, inhabitants, crops
and cattle"(cited in Glancey, op. cit.).
After proving it in the colonies, this tactic was then deployed
during World War II to a massive extent - first of all in the
British and German blanket bombing campaigns against each other's
populations, which included the massacre of the workers of Dresden
in 1945.
In Dresden, preliminary sorties were flown using high explosives
to remove the roofs from buildings.
This was followed by targeted bombing of phosphorous devices
into houses, factories, offices, schools and hospitals, with the
objective of spreading a devastating firestorm as rapidly as possible.
An estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people - many of these war refugees
- were killed over three weeks. This was a casualty rate far in
excess of the death toll exacted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which
were also just another example of a massive terror bombing campaign.
Churchill, Harris, Lawrence, Chamier, Trenchard and Hitler were
certainly all terrorists of the first order....
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