White Phospherous used as a chemical weapon in Iraq - by the United States

[michaeledward]

Hey wait, Im cornfused now... So what you are saying is that Iraq DID have chemical weapons all along???

Technopunk ....

How could you possibly confuse ME with a classified document from the Pentagon. That ain't me claiming anything .... that is the whatagon ... and theoretically, someone with enough know-how to be able to get their lunatic rantings 'classified'.

And, of course, this classified document from the Pentagon is dated PRIOR to President Clinton's attacks on Iraq's Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear program facilities in 1998.

 

[Cryozombie]

Technopunk ....

How could you possibly confuse ME with a classified document from the Pentagon. That ain't me claiming anything .... that is the whatagon ... and theoretically, someone with enough know-how to be able to get their lunatic rantings 'classified'.

And, of course, this classified document from the Pentagon is dated PRIOR to President Clinton's attacks on Iraq's Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear program facilities in 1998.

Well, what I meant is that you were using the document that said Iraq had them and used them as chemical weapons to support the idea that Willy Pete was a chem weapon... but that admits then that Iraq had chem weapons if that were the case...

But I did miss the date. My bad.

 

[Tgace]

Its hair splitting...call it what you want, its not illegal by any treaty we are signatory to.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/11/20/special_reports/perspective/18_50_0711_19_05.txt

Fallujah: Feels like the first time
In April 2004, staff photojournalist Hayne Palmour and I were embedded with Camp Pendleton-based Marines in Fallujah.

We had been there since March and documented the violence as it climaxed with the slaying and desecration of four American contractors.

When U.S. forces responded with Operation Vigilant Resolve ---- the first, and later aborted, U.S. assault on the city ---- we spent the first few days of the fight in a freshly dug position with a team of Marines manning a 60mm mortar they had named "Sara Lee."

We watched, and tried to stay out of the way, as they lobbed illumination rounds, high explosives and white phosphorus at targets they could not see, but that were spotted and marked by other troops who could.

I remember the gunner kicking my boots and legs out of the way as he spun around the dusty pit to change the direction of the mortar tube, while I sat against the collapsing sand wall furiously tapping out my story of the action on a laptop hidden under a thick black cloth used to snuff the computer's light.

Often not being able to react fast enough when I heard the team leader yell "Fire!", my head ached and my ears filled with a constant sharp metallic "bing" from the crack of the gun.

The night missions were mostly for "aloom," or the relatively harmless illumination rounds fired high into the air that open with a pop, igniting a flare of glowing white phosphorus that hisses as it drifts slowly to the ground under a white parachute.

Not even the dogs could hide.

'Willie Pete'
During the day, when Marines in forward positions could see their targets, the missions they called into our crowded mortar pit were usually for high explosives, which the skilled gunners "walked" up to targets they knew only by the grid coordinates called in by the forward men with "eyes on."

Occasionally the call came for "Willie Pete," the term the troops used to flesh out the acronym for white phosphorus bombs.

They ordered it mostly to mark targets for bigger strikes. The dense white plume from the long-burning phosphorus made an easy target for Hellfire missiles from Cobra helicopters, or for 500-pound bombs dropped by jet pilots that circled above.

On several occasions, however, Willie Pete was personally summoned to kill.

When Marines could not rout insurgents from a palm grove and from an adjacent cluster of buildings, troops who had been fired on from those locations called on the mortar men to "shake and bake" the insurgents.

Acting on orders, the mortar men fired volley after volley, alternating rounds tipped with high explosives with others filled with white phosphorus.

No secret weapon
The Marines did not act as if white phosphorus were different than any other weapon they used. They did not try to hide it from us. It was just another item to select from a lethal menu handed them by their Corps and made familiar by repetitious training and indoctrination.

In fact, the leader of the mortar section later told me that other weapons would have been more effective in that case: Napalm would have more easily set the palm grove ablaze; and CS gas, similar to tear gas, would have been better to flush the insurgents out into the open.

But the use of napalm (Mark-77) was not approved by commanders, he said, and the CS was considered a chemical weapon, so they used the best tool they had: white phosphorus.

These were individual decisions made by one group of Marines in one skirmish in one part of a seven-square-mile city where Marines and insurgents were fighting nearly 360 degrees. Who knew what was going on elsewhere. It seemed impossible to draw larger conclusions.

That specific palm grove and those adjacent buildings were repeatedly hit with bombs and mortars and gunships, and we and the mortar men stayed low in the sandy pit to avoid the missiles, mortars and sniper fire that insurgents rained in.

 

[sgtmac_46]

Its hair splitting...call it what you want, its not illegal by any treaty we are signatory to.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/11/20/special_reports/perspective/18_50_0711_19_05.txt

Some people seem so persistent, even when obviously in error. It is a sight to see. I guess hair splitting is the last stand of the obviously wrong.