So it's official.

[chaotic_nipple]

We used White Phosporus as an anti-personnel weapon in Fallujah after all. Of course the Pentagon had to deny it first, just in case there are one or two people out there who still actually trust anything our current administration says.

FWIW, I, personally, don't really object to using incendiary weapons against enemy troops. The whole point of going into battle is to kill the other side and keep killing them until the survivors surrender. The more casualities you can inflict in a given amount of time, the quicker they'll surrender, and, hopefully, the more they'll think about it before shooting at you the next time. Using any indiscriminate weapon in a area heavily populated with civilians is a bad idea, for publicity reasons if nothing else, but I don't think incendiary weapons are uniquely "evil" in that regard (Unlike, say Depleted Uranium, which really should be banned as a chemical weapon).

The real problem here is, don't those morons in Washington realize that lying about something that's so easily checked on is a bad idea? Granted, the average American voter has the attention span of a gnat, and will fall for just about any fabrication provided you say it with enough conviction; They'll have forgotten this little bit of chicanery within the week. But, that creaking sound you hear? That's a little bit more of what little credibility we still had with the international community, shuffling off this mortal coil.

Comments

[entropy156.livejournal.com]

I wish Washington would stop trying to pander to the kind of people who would *care* about the appearance of willie peter in Falluja. I want them to just stand up and say "Hey, assholes.....it's a war. In wars it's considered within the bounds of etiquette to kill the fucking enemy. If our troops need white phosphorous, flamethrowers, shotguns or pointy fucking sticks to accomplish that goal, then goddammit, they're going to fucking have them!"


But that's why I'll never get elected to national office.....

[(Anonymous)]

It does seem hypocritical to care about white phosphorus and not care about tank rounds, bombs, rifles, etc. Dead is dead, no matter what sort of weapon was used. We need to talk seriously about why we invaded Iraq in the first place, though I don't see that happening during this administration because if we did they'd have to be fired.

We ought to be responsible and humble with our power. Instead we are arrogant with it and therefore cause so much unnecessary death. We are continuing to develop landmines though the vast majority of landmine victims are civilians, and we have the largest nuclear weapons program in the world. We count insurgent deaths as if they were Americans but we "don't do body counts" when the dead are civilians. Tobias Wolff said "War isn't a contest between champions. It isn't even a contest between armies. War is mostly violence -- economic, emotional, physical -- against civilians." Sadly, he's right. Which is why the question shouldn't be about which weapon we used but why we used any at all.

-- Kate, Broken Windows

[(Anonymous)]

Here's what Bouphonia had to say about it a week or so ago:

"Sometimes I wonder if a certain amount of the horror that ordinary weapons should inspire has been deflected onto chemical weapons and their ilk, as though the distinction between blowing people up and poisoning them constituted a clear and decisive line between civilization and barbarism. Chemical weapons, properly so called, are inherently of limited use on the battlefield; their real utility, perhaps, lies in their ability to make other forms of mass murder seem relatively acceptable."

Here's the link to his whole post: http://bouphonia.blogspot.com/2005/11/smokescreening.html

Thought you'd be interested in what he wrote about white phosphorous.

Take care, Mike --

Kate (Broken Windows)

[inhuman14.livejournal.com]

Got your package.

[inhuman14.livejournal.com]

How the hell did you fit 1.26 gigs onto a CD????

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

When you download it onto your hard drive, it should show as only 700 meg.

[(Anonymous)]

Fine. How the hell did you fit 700MB on one CD????

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

Ian, that's the standard size for CDs. Unconverted audio files take up a LOT of space, MP3s take up much less.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, ok.

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

so, listened to 'em yet Ian?