USA admits to dropping chemical weapons on Iraq
 

Wow, this story is huge.

After denying dropping napalm on the Iraqis, the US is now admitting to its use. The USA is one of the only countries left that uses napalm in battle, in fact, a UN convention banned it in 1980, but the USA did not sign on.

How can we have the moral high ground when we use weapons of mass destruction on the very enemies that we are trying to remove WMD from?

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_re...&host=3&dir=70

one word: bastards!

Napalm is hardly a WMD, especially not the way it was used.

Soldiers were warned, they didn't comply, so we followed through on our promise. Better than dropping MOAB's on all Iraqi cities isn't it?

You're mixing quotes from two different incidents. In the first, bombs were dropped on dozens of bridges to clear them for marine approaches. No mention of surrender is made there. In a separate incident, napalm was used on an observation post, and that is where surrender is mentioned. In both cases, the US armed forces denied using napalm until recently, going so far as to issue an official denial.

Napalm not a WMD? I wonder what the USA reaction would be if Iraq napalmed a bunch of US soldiers, or if hundreds of gallons of napalm was found in a warehouse in Iraq.

Wait a minute, now what's important and stands out to me here is that they lied about not using napalm.

But what I don't get is why? Why would they deny using napalm, I don't understand that part and furthermore I don't believe napalm is a WMD, at least hardly in the same sense that a nuclear weapon or biological weapon can be.

That's one definition of WMD. So yes, we did use WMD's against Iraq, however, we've confiscated thousands of WMD's already according to this, so Bush was 100% right.

What really qualifies as a WMD: Biological (IE: Anthrax), or Nuclear.

Oh, and how hard is it for Iraq to hide them? UN Inspectors have told of when they found items they were buried and had a tarp placed over them. The ONLY way they found them is because people told them. They have said over and over that there is absolutely no chance they would have found them otherwise. That it would be harder than finding a needle in a haystack.

Of course, is this mentioned at all by the media? A few times late at night, and that's about it.

If any of your denial specialists try to make torching people into a good thing, I'm going to personally... I can't finish that sentence without breaking the forum rules.

You don't burn people! It's bad enough that you have to kill people without making turning their last minutes on earth hell.
'Psychological warfare' can kiss my ass. It's inhumane, and I think the USA would do well to quickly sign that treaty.

Doubt there would be much reaction if we found napalm. Them using it against us is a moot point since the only effective way of using it is from the air. US troops haven't been under an air attack since Korea.

And no napalm is not a WMD. For that matter it isn't even classified as a chemical weapon.


http://www.opcw.org/ is the source. For the specfic text run a search for napalm on the site.

EverQuest fans will understand what I mean when I call this a_hysterical_and_nonsensical_exagerration_0348.

*shrugs* kinda bastardly that they did that to those people, im still totally opposed to the war, and what bush did, but to drop napalm on them, jebus, those poor guys. Oh well, it sucks too that the media isnt going to cover this at all. they should remove their heads from dubya's ass...

the US goes to war claiming iraq had chemical weap's and we use chem-type weapons?? this is sad.

It's only a big story if the opposition decides to cry about it. Me, I'm glad we still use said weapon. Quick, efficient, brutal. All good things for making war.

They should call it freedom jelly.

Right!

The thing people need to realize is we'll only use this shit for war. Not for terrorist activities. There is a difference and if you can't tell that there is a difference then there's really no point in getting in an argument over it.

I love the smell of napalm in the morning...it smells like victory.

The treaty was for CIVILIAN people not enemy troops, where does it say we dropped it on civilians?

They say roasting Iraqis smell like chicken.

that made me laugh out loud, thanks.

No need to sign the treaty.

We told them when we were going to roll in. They had time to surrender.

We unleased that whole "Shock and Awe" campaign. They saw what was going to happen to them.

If they made the stupid decision to stay against us after all that, then we just gave them what they wanted.

OMG napalm, i was thinking some sort of chemical gas.... napalm isnt that big a deal considering how it was used.

It's so nice to see the American people truly care about the fates of those , how shall we put it... 'lesser' people. Because that's what they are, aren't they? God forbid an American soldier come home in a bodybag. But it's no biggie to fry the rest of them.

It's no double standard, no siree. It's, hmm... it's 'freedom'!

I'm sorry, my friends - but if you feel that using napalm is sound, effective and whatnot, then I'm afraid I'll have to conclude that ramming planes through twin towers is exactly the same thing. It's quite efficient, isn't it? And what are a few deaths when they're not even your own 'kind'.

For god sake, people. Show a little compassion! Imagine those soldiers to be friends of yours. I'm sure you'd rather see them imprisoned, or if need be to die on the battlefield, than to just see them go up in flames which they did not even see coming.

(And don't give me any crap about 'but they were warned'. Desertion equals death)

< sarcasm >
Oh no, titsmurf, Iraqis aren't human beings same as us, they don't deserve compassion. They're all animals, need a good dose of flaming justice to put the fear of our one true God in them. They got what they deserved.
So this is how the other half lives. It sure is comfortable up here on the moral high ground...

< /sarcasm >

Not exactly, kamikaze missions were a huge loss for Japan.

Compassion for a resisting enemy is a good way to get shot as well. No dice, they surrender or get set on fire.

Then rebell. If you're going to die either way, step up and save your ass, but if you shoot at an American, you're going to die. Plain and simple.

And you're approving of terrorists killing COMPLETELY INNOCENT Americans? Oh wait, they're Americans, never mind, they're guilty of being full of themselves or something.

If they're out cheering on the street on 09/11/01, I'm concerned that napalm is too damn nice. They should suffer much more IMO.

Hahaha, I bet it is comfortable up there. I'm sure we'll be taking the blame for attacking other peoples opinions later on this week sometime as well, I'll have to reference this. :icare:

ouch.. napalm.. not much of a choice for the iraqi soldiers.. Iraqi propoganda told them they the americans would kill them if they surrender.. they were brainwashed into doing what they believed was patriotic for their country.. if they gave up and were caught by other iraqi forces they would be killed on the spot.. so.. I guess they were royally screwed..

Yeah, Iraq is getting just what they deserve for masterminding the 9/11 attacks and for their massive stores of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons!

Burn 'em all! Start with the nuns!

/sarcasm

You can feel free to write that down in your freedom journal, but as you might have noticed I've pretty much stepped away from this free-for-all since it seems like there isn't much of a difference to be made. I look forward to having my words thrown back at me. RAWR!

If you're going to trust the media for your information, you need help. If you're going to trust UN Inspectors, then you'd know they're destroyed or, most likely, buried.

And they didn't mastermind it, but if they approve of it, they're just as bad IMO.

Boo, I made a hilarious emote and EVERYTHING.

I'm sure God, who as we all know is totally behind everything the USA does, couldn't agree more. May the USA continue to shine it's beacon of moral superiority over the rest of the poor, retarded world.

You go, Uncle Sam! Fry some for the boys back home!

Hee hee you sound like Art Bell. Yes, a massive conspiracy from the liberal media is covering up for saddam's hundreds of nukes hidden is deep silos.

So you're in favor of immediate war against Saudi Arabia, since they were the ones directly responsible? Yes? No?


I'm just amazed at all the people posting here think the proper way for the world's most powerful army to clear a bridge is to drop flaming napalm onto an urban area.

Christ the way people are talking on this thread is a great reason why people hate our arrogance.

Great, I just LOVE all the arguments being thrown out on both sides here.

First - napalm isn't a chemical weapon - well technically it is but its no in the same department as the chemical weapons for WMD (as in sarin, mustard gas, etc.).

Second - the argument that the Iraqi's deserve it and what not is overshadowed by another fact (see below) - and laughing about other people being burned (hell these were supposed to be our 'allies' who were to rise up and join us) isn't so great if you end up on the receiving end (i think we should see our country lose a few wars, get bobmed at home repeatedly, then everyone here won't feel so high and proud anymore..).

Now the point of this thread is, NOT that the U.S. used it - but rather the fact that the GOV'T said that it DIDN'T use it - only now to have people come out and say that they DID indeed use it.

To me, thats the disturbing part - what other weapons did they use? Some Iraqi's said we used the neutron bomb on them - farfetched somewhat, but others say not really - they claimed the soldiers turned into skeletons instantly at the airport at baghdad, hence the "mass" units there suddenly disappeared.

I find that somewhat farfetched BUT its possible - a neutron bomb is very very clean, leaves little radiation, does not damage structures, and so its very possible.

But thats whats disturbing - the fact the gov't lies repeatedly. And don't make an argument that the other party lies too - its a fact that all of them lie, but thats what is bad - the gov't is willing to deceive the people to get its ends.

Some democracy we live in eh.

No, they don't have that many, but they have some. There have been studies and they show there is overall a slight liberal media bias over the past 30 years. But can you think on your own for a second? Why would they have all these scientists that specialize in biological weapons and nuclear weapons? They were having them over for tea and crumpets?

Their time will come.

And who approved of it? Bush? It's all some big conspiracy that the White House is covering up? The Military uses what it uses, the politicians probably didn't make it clear enough that they didn't want to use napalm and other such weapons. Are they going to go through the media to critize them? No, they're going to do that behind doors.

And I'm pretty sure we dropped some MOAB's on them. Those are just normal, everyday 11-ton bombs. These things are so big it creates a mushroom cloud. Could that be what we dropped? Yes.

Oh, and for all these people tossing the word democracy around, we live in a Republic. Please, go back to a high school government class and learn the basics before trying to debate.

If you're talking about nukes, then you have officially gone into my "ignore the looney" file. Not even the most ardent neocon is currently claiming that Iraq has nukes.

The UN weapons inspectors back in the EARLY 1990's were shocked by how far along Iraq was with their nuclear weapons program. It's been 10 years. I wouldn't be surprised, but I wouldn't bet on it either. They did have biological weapons though.

Actually, not very possible. This quote is going to be a fairly big one, but it's necessary to do justice to the topic. I put the most important section in bold.

this is an exerpt from:
Nuclear Weapons Frequently Asked Questions
Version 2.16: 1 May 1998
COPYRIGHT CAREY SUBLETTE

which can be found @ http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/Nwfaq/Nfaq1.html

This is a great source of information on nukes, I would seriously advise anybody commenting on the effects of nukes to check this out.

Napalm is NOT a WMD by any stretch of the imagination. It is a "chemical weapon" in that it contains chemicals. So do bullets, grenades, bombs and basically any weapon these days.

Napalm is nasty, but so is being blown to bits by shrapnel from an artillery shell, being utterly obliterated in a B-52 raid, or being cut in half by a burst from a modern assault rifle.

War is nasty; the goal is to win it as quickly as possibly, with as little damage to your side as possible. The *only* way to do that is to utterly destroy the enemy's will to fight. That means using overwhelming force, "shock and awe", and using napalm to clear trenches, bunkers and other hiding places.

If two countries decide to fight "fair" by giving the other side an equal chance... then you'd get a situation like the stalemate of WW1, resulting in millions of deaths on both sides. Thank god we're not *that* stupid anymore.

Maybe like WWI, or like the pre-Civil War era of line-em up and shoot. Tactics back then were just ungentimenly.

Very interesting site...led me to some other links...

Gold Jerry. Gold.


Why lie about using it? Oh, thats right, Police State.

Why do we need to know everything that the US military is using in combat?

The objective of war is to win, and whether it is napalm or a nuke if you are on the buisness end of it , it must suck to be you.

Who lied? Technically they didn't use napalm, it was a mark whatever firebomb. Attention to detail, hoo-rawr (internet nerd variation of that thing they do in the military).

Here's the problem here folks. The United STates Governement has, yet again, lied to the public. We continue to preach our justifications of War because of the "potential" of WMD, when the US manufactures and uses them. It's hippocritical and wrong. We search for justice for the many American lives that were lost in 9/11, and whether anyone wants to admit it or not, that is a key reason we are in Iraq. The Government has come out and said that iraq has ties to Al-Queda. Saddam is an evil evil man, but nothing can ever justify the loss of civilian lives from War. Especially in our times of precision-guided laser bombs and such.

No shit its the objective of the military to win.

Pretty much everyone here agrees with it.

The differnece is that some people dont seem to care the gov't would lie about it, and others do care.

If Bush / higher ups didn't order it, then thats more disturbing. Why? Because the military is willing to use its weapons that were not authorized or that the gov't DID NOT know about.

Coup d'etat anyone? When the military starts thinking by itself, starts developing weapons for itself, all in secret and away from the gov't, then you have problems.

All it has to do is fall into the wrong hands and blam, this country could be in deep shit.

Think about it - if Bush / officials didn't know about it, then the military is willing to use weapons to go to war the populace doesn't want.

Oh wait and I thought that people ruled this country, not the military.

IF anyone here thinks its not going towards a military/police state - no, maybe not in the short 10 years ahead, but 50? Very possible.

Fine, lets leave said civilians with Saddam. He'll kill them for us, and continue to do so until he dies of old age and his sons grab power, then they'll kill even more because we allow them to: Justice.

There is no "potential" either, this was a certainty. There was no doubt going into the war they had these things. Unless you count the people who never actually read 1441, they don't actually count though.

How predictable. Going for the old "Saddam would've killed more" and pulling out the old 1441. I still say we could probably write our own post out and predict who responds with what :D

That aside - seriously though, thats going away from the issue.

I call on both sides to just plain stop trailing off to whose right/wrong on going to war and actually focus on whether the gov't acutally lied about using napalm or it was the military itself or what.

Yes, it's an oldie but a goodie. Excuse me, I have to kick my own ass for saying "oldie but goodie."

Anyways, bottom line: NAPALM IS GOOD.

haha, so what if saddam hussien had launched the nukes he didnt have?? the objective of the war is to win right?

if two nuclear powers went to war, and both used wmd's, then both nations would be wiped out.

If Hussien used maybe one or two nukes this would mean Iraq would be the worlds largest glass parking lot.

Nukes have been a deterent since WWII, keeping jack-asses honest from doing anything stupid.

you can call it lying/misinformation/whateve you want but it doesnt change the fact that the us military no longer has a weapon designated as napalm no matter what the common soldiers call it.

Except for the fact Saddam couldn't hit us. While just one of our trident subs could take out all of Iraq.

well, i dont mean mainland US. i meant the forces massing around iraq.

That would be by and large a waste of your nuke. We tend not to clump together, so chances are you'll only get a few hundred soldiers (and lots of civilians). If I were him I'd have sold the thing or whatever I had and skipped town to Syria or something with my billions and billions of dollars.

The WMD in it of itself was evil and why it had to be removed.

In war you have to a certain disregard for the other guys personal safety...

More like a few thousand, but after that we'd probably pull all of our guys out and let our subs do the talking.

Since when was napalm a WMD?:rolleyes:

Since it looked appealing enough to liberals to mislabel and use as slander ammo against America =).

1998: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms Lewinsky - It was a blowjob.

2003: We never dropped napalm in Iraq - we used kerosene, not petrol.

Wrong - the U.S. military does 'tend' to clump up together (during the pre-war). U.S. military installations across the world are much juicier targets for WMDs and it was a possible threat during the period of massing up. After of course it spreads out but thats not to say that most installations aren't together - because in truth, many are.

I am deeply offended that you accused me of labeling the fuel bombs that the USA is dropping on Iraq as Chemical Weapons . I demand that you retract your statement, just like the army did with the australian newspaper that said that they were dropping napalm.

I did not say that at all. I said that the USA was dropping chemical weapons on Iraq. As you can see, fuel bombs are chemical, and they are a weapon, but I never implied that they were Chemical Weapons (capitalized). They, of course, are not, and burning people to death slowly with a mixture of fuel and gelatine is perfectly allowed under US Chemical Weapons policy.

Likewise, I did not said that the USA was using Weapons of Mass Destruction, I said "weapons of mass destruction". They are certainly weapons that cause mass destruction. Your attempt to twist my words offends me, sir. It is not my fault that you cannot take my words for what they literally say.

Who lied? The military lied, that's who. Perhaps you would be interested in the history of the MK77 Napalm Munition

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...tions/mk77.htm

However, only nuclear weapons need apply considering that every soldier was supplied with a protective suit, and ways to prevent contamination were plentiful.

... which was the point of the post which was about nukes being used...

Though I will tell you this - even with protective suits, many weapons don't even take 20 seconds to kill you, so if you're caught off guard, you're toast. Unless you are wearing the suit 24/7 which doesn't happen, you better be able to put that suit on within 10 seconds (not likely) before enough VX or sarin kills.

Yes, they spread out after Saddam knows he's boned, which would be when he'd use it.

I will not.

I know what you said, and I know what you meant to imply. I stand by my original statement.

It is not my fault that you lack attention to detail.

Ho, ho. Quite the opposite. You would have seriously reworded your statement if you wanted to do anything else but defame our boys defending our nation.

Sophistry is in poor taste. Troll elsewhere.

What's funny is that I'm using Phaenx's EXACT WORDS and line of arguing in this thread right back at him, and no one has caught on yet. Please, scroll back and see for yourself.

The only sophistry I see here is the US Armed Forces, which denied the use of napalm in Iraq, failing to mention that they used MK77 Mark 5's, which the entire rest of the world agrees contain napalm, and in fact replaced the MK77 Mark 4's, which everyone including the armed forces agreed contained napalm.

I may pedantic, but I was beaten to sophistry. But hey, at least I'm amused. :) :) :)

Looks like backpeddling from a mean spirited attack on your own country to me. It's also easy for you to say this now, so I will allow you a chance to humor me on these exact words, how they relate to your wording, and why it's not meant to slander your country.

you said:

so i thought it would be fun to take that same literal attitude and see how it played out on your side. Note my use of "attention to detail".

So my twisting of the meanings of words by falling back on a literal definition offended you? Good. The US military did the same thing and you defended it. Interesting, eh?

I believe that napalm is a chemical weapon. Whether some "convention" calls it so is irrelevant. It's not a weapon the US military should be using in Iraq. The fact that we are using nasty incendiary chemicals on Iraqis while accusing them of possessing the same is hypocritical.

I love the united states. I dislike the Bush administration, the patriot act, john ashcroft, ken lay, enron, haliburton, dick cheney, paul wolfowitz, and the lies used to get us into war with iraq when a slower approach using a united UN front would have been better.

But I guess criticizing the current administration and the Iraq war makes me "unpatriotic" in your eyes. Well, so be it.

You have quite a bit of foresight to be able to see into the future. Lets take a look:

Your first post, dripping with contempt for the United States.

Before I even brought it up? You've been consistant in your contempt, don't lie to me, and stop accusing me of twisting your words. This is after the fact that you had already labeled them chemical weapons, and weapons of mass destruction (they are not), continually denouncing the military as liars and hypocrites. To top it off, you proceed to attack the supporters when your intentions are uncovered.

So what are we to think? You could have worded this differently, but you chose to do so in the manner that best illustrated hate towards the military officials.

Guilty as charged. I worded it in the way that showed the most contempt for military officials that think lying to the public is ok, and that using terrible chemical incendiary weapons on a vastly undergunned enemy force is acceptable. Using napalm on iraqi forces for the simple job of clearing bridges is using Weapons Of Mass Destruction in my opinion.

The military did lie, and twist words. That's what the article was about.

When you suggested that burning those three nuns to death was fine by you, I didn't accuse you of having contempt for nuns. So don't accuse me of having contempt for the USA because I dislike the actions of the US military in Iraq.

You called me disgusting, and even if you did say I had contempt for nuns in general you would obviously be spinning, and I'd call you on it, but that's beside the point.

They are also not chemical weapons in the sense that the agents petroleum, benzene, and polystyrene (the ingredients for napalm) are largely distilled from natural substances, or are natural substances. According to NATO, they are not chemical weapons. If they are, then so is laundry detergent. I'd be surprised if it mattered to you though, I believe the far left view on the military, and anything a conservative would support is skewed negatively, hence the anti-Bush anti-American sentiment.

As for the article itself, you cannot call them liars, and there were no words to twist, napalm is not what they used. Albeit a technicality, your accusations are fundamentally not true.

Furthermore, the mark 77 firebombs are apparently a very effective means of killing your enemy.

Hey lets defend anything our team does, because its our team and for no other reason.

Exactly, and you are saying I hate my country using exactly the same sort of extrapolation. I'm calling you on it. You're spinning.

Well you should correct the USA military. The MK77-4, which the armed forces commonly referred to as napalm, was actually, as you said, a mix of petroleum, benzene, and polystyrene. Napalm is "technically" a mix of <b>na</b>phthene and <b>palm</b>itate with gasoline. With the MK77-5 the USA changed the formula slightly and denied that the product was napalm, even through the MK77-4, by your definition, wasn't napalm in the first place.

So, I guess it would be ok for the USA to start using mustard gas again as long as we started calling it Freedom Gas.

Being "technically" correct isn't good enough when people are being roasted alive. The military knew damn well they were using napalm against the Iraqis, but issued a denial to cover up. Clinton was "technically correct" when he said "I did not have sex with that woman." I wonder if you were defending him a few years ago?

The name calling aside,

Napalm isn't a "chemical" weapon in the same sense as is generally meant when the military and government say "chemical" weapon.

Harmless, by your definition (any weapon containing chemicals is a "chemical" weapon), then ALL modern weapons beyond a bayonnette are chemical weapons, as bullets and bombs all use chemical reactions in their functioning.

There's a good reason when they say, "War is Hell".

To suggest that the Pentagon "lied" because it truthfully answered an incorrectly-stated question, is moronic. If you own a Ford Mustang, and I ask you if you own a Corvette, and you say "No, I do not own a Corvette", you aren't lying simply because you own another sports-car. The Pentagon should take questions at face value and not volunteer information which isn't requested -- it's their nature.

Sorry about the high emotion level,Lebell, but seriously, can you define a chemical weapon for me then? Napalm, as far as I can tell, is toxic to the touch, kills people by removing oxygen from the air as well as burning them alive, and has other nasty toxic properties besides burning. It seems to me that it is only not a chemical weapon due to a technicality.

And if bullets contained a gel that burned the flesh off of enemies, I'd call it a chemical weapon too. :)

ok, let's set up the situation there.

1. The government uses napalm (which technically isn't napalm, but the government calls it that anyway) in MK77 -4 weapons.
2. The government changes the formula, comes out with the MK77-5 weapons, and decides on its own not to call it napalm any more. (Apparently, the official name is "fuel gel".)
3. The Sydney Herald, using an embedded reporter, observes the MK77-5 being used. The soldiers call it napalm. They say in a story that napalm is being used:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...749944836.html
4. The pentagon replies, saying:
So the Navy, fully away that MK77-5 bombs had been dropped on the enemy, told the Herald that their story was "patently false."

Misleading? The security group GlobalSecurity.org thinks so:

You can draw your own conclusions. However, I'm going to dial down the rhetoric here and focus on the facts, and I do not think that concluding that the pentagon lied is moronic. It's a reasonable conclusion based on the facts presented.

I'm not spinning at all. You continue to lay out the evidence yourself, I need not elaborate.

As for the napalm. They changed it, they renamed it, they were asked if they used napalm, they answered truthfully. I'm glad you understand they were not lying.

I'm also glad our military knows what they're doing, napalm is a good thing.

Found THIS PAGE while poking around the net to answer the definition of 'chemical' weapons.

This of course is not a comment on the correctness/incorrectness of using Napalm in warfare.

Of course, they didn't use "napalm" so this doesn't address whether whatever they used was a chemical weapon. ;) =)

obviously, we disagree on this point, as I do think they were lying, spinning, and being intentionally misleading to the public, which is a terrible thing to do during a war.

from Phaenx:
from the article:
Based on Lebell's definition, however, I agree that napalm doesn't fit the explicit definition of a chemical weapon as defined by the UN. In my opinion however, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. A flaming chemical gel used to burn the enemy and terrorize them is a chemical weapon as far as I am concerned.

If the US armed forces were so convinced that napalm is a legitimate battlefield weapon, they wouldn't have denied its use in the first place.

To get back to my original point, it's hard to take the moral high ground with Iraq when we're using terrible weapons such as napalm on them.

Harmless....im speculating here because ive never been in the position but i imagine if i was huddled behind a sand dune considering the entrenched enemy a couple hundred yards ahead i would be much more comfortable with the idea of them burning to death than myself and/or a bunch of my buddys getting shot to hell digging them out of there. War is not pretty. At the most basic level the object is to kill the enemys people and break his things and not let him do the same to yours. Dropping flaming death upon him from the sky is a very effective way to do this as well as hopefully breaking his will to fight which will save lives on both sides.

just something to think about.

shalafi:

whether or not napalm is legitimate or not is another matter...

they DO have other weapons for taking out those bunkers/trenches - and many are more effective now at sealing em up for good

the difference now is IMo whether or not the military loves to lie about what it does

for all you know right now it has a buncha concentration camps and the public would never know

<b>just something to think about.</b>

I'm curious where you draw the line? I don't mean to be inflammatory, but I'm honestly curious. Are the following things ok?

- Burning the enemy to death using flaming gel to clear a bridge approach
- Using sarin nerve gas to kill the enemy? Using it in a mixed area with civilians in it?
- Using anthrax to eliminate the enemy.
- Assasinating the enemy leaders? The leader's family?
- Feeding enemies through plastic shredders in front of their children?
- Forcing the children of an enemy to shoot their parents?
- Passing prisoners of war off to countries that allow torture in order to get confessions
- Imprisoning citizens for years without access to lawyers or family

Remember, we got into this war because Hussein was a "bad guy".

HarmlessRabbit, that's probably the silliest post I've ever read.

I wonder where *you* draw the line? Are the following things okay?

- Burning/suffocating people to death with napalm
- Cutting people in half with an M-16 or M-60 burst
- Blowing people's limbs off with a grenade
- Cutting open someone's belly with a knife
- disintegrating someone with a 155 mm artillery shell
- disintegrating someone with a 500-pound bomb
- burning people to death by hitting their tank/APC with an anti-tank round/missile

See? You don't need to bring out those silly WMDs or torture examples to show that war is nasty. Do you seriously think that napalm is any worse than the other examples I mentioned?

Zeld, HR,

First off, the "military" is made up of people just like you and me. When you take the oath, they don't zapp your brain and make you a mindless killer. Nobody likes killing. It is only when our government, elected by the people, tells us to that we fight.

The military is a very technical place, definitions mean a lot, they have to. Now in this particular case I would say that the line was crossed in saying that napalm was not used. The person responsible should be reprimanded.

Now on to napalm. Napalm is not a chemical weapon. Does it have a psychological effect? You bet, so does watching your buddy get shot in front of you. The primary mechanism by which Napalm acts is burning, just like white phosphorous, Thermite, and many other incendiary agents.

The toxic effect of napalm is irrelevant, rather akin to the effects of lead poisoning that a bullet wound inflicts.

Napalm is not a weapon of mass destruction. It is a targeted weapon capable of destroying entrenched enemy forces. It is the best one at doing that.

Zeld, the public would know, because if the military was running concentration camps, people in th emilitary would be as outraged as you or I would be.

Do not blame the military for the faults of the government that controls it.

Other than the first example, which of those is relevant to the US action against Iraq?

three of those, in addition to the first one, are directly related to the actions of the USA in the war against "terrorism". I'll leave it to you to decide which three.

i'm just curious where everyone's moral compass is. It appears to me that shalafi was saying that during a war you can do <b>anything</b> to the enemy.

The general idea is to make them dead. Whatever is most prudent or efficient is what we should use, I don't believe we should be concerned with how our enemy feels about it.

Absolutely not. We are bound by the Law of Land Warfare, comprising the Hague and Geneva conventions. There are very specific rules we have to play by, even if the enemy doesn't.

And looking back over the above list, only the first example has occured.

How would you clear it? Kindly ask them to move for a few minutes so we can roll through?

<b>And looking back over the above list, only the first example has occured.</b>

Ah, you're wrong, sir. Besides the first one, one was contemplated and publicly discussed, one was done in Afghanistan and publicly admitted by the US military, and one is going on today.

<b>How would you clear it? Kindly ask them to move for a few minutes so we can roll through?</b>

I have made my position clear. Napalm is a chemical weapon and shouldn't be used under any circumstances. Are you saying the only way to clear a bridge is by using napalm? Tell that to the rest of the world, which doesn't use it.

This wouldnt be an interesting dicussion if Napalm was considering a "chemical weapon," but it isn't. God damn, you liberal crybabies will bitch about anything huh?

Would you mind clarifying which ones you are speaking of, because you have lost me.

<b>Would you mind clarifying which ones you are speaking of, because you have lost me.</b>

Nah, it's off-topic for this thread, so I'll leave it to you as a mystery. :)