Patterico's Pontifications

11/28/2005

Incendiary Devices: They’re Not Just For Wars Anymore (And They Never Were!)

Filed under: Terrorism,War — Patterico @ 10:09 pm

C.W. Taylor smartly puts the white phosphorus debate in context, by telling us about damage caused by incendiary devices here at home.

Comments (27)

27 Responses to “Incendiary Devices: They’re Not Just For Wars Anymore (And They Never Were!)”

Mr. Taylor, just like the LA Times, is missing the real point. As I said on my blog this AM, the primary use for White Phosphorus is marking targets and screening, rather than killing people or setting their stuff on fire. Moreover, it is a standard munition that U.S. Forces have been routinely using for 60 years or so. There has never been anything controversial about it in the past, this is just more anti-war, anti-U.S. propaganda.
Roscoe (713860) — 11/29/2005 @ 1:03 pm
Right–WP’s usually for signalling but it has been used as a weapon. Ther ewere WP grenades in WWII. In Fallujah, I don;t think there’s any doubt that WP artillery rounds were used to dislodge terrorists from bunkers–they alternated them with HE rounds and called it “shake and bake”.
See-Dubya (784dd7) — 11/29/2005 @ 1:51 pm
What does what we do to each other here have to do with how we kill Iraqi people over there? Two wrongs make a right? You’ve got to be kidding…
Tillman (1cf529) — 11/29/2005 @ 6:05 pm
Sorry to be the constant nay-sayer but WP does have its legitimate uses, particularly against terrorists in bunkers. So I guess I’m only seeing one wrong here.

Over there, we’re just accomodating the jihadists’ desire to get to those 72 Virginians, or whatever it is that they’re after in the next life.
Harry Arthur (b318a5) — 11/29/2005 @ 8:08 pm
On a very slightly different note regarding our progress in Iraq, Joe Lieberman has some very interesting observations in his article in the WSJ Online.
Harry Arthur (b318a5) — 11/29/2005 @ 8:14 pm
Well Harry, all I can say is that I hope the reports about Fallujah are not true. For example:

We were told going into Fallujah that every single person going into the combat area that was walking, talking, breatheing was an enemy combattant. . . It seemed like just a massive killing of Arabs. It looked like just a massive killing. . . Burned bodies. Burned children. Burned women. White phosphorus kills indiscriminately.

Children being burned alive is disturbing to me.
Tillman (1cf529) — 11/30/2005 @ 4:34 am
Burned bodies. Burned children. Burned women. White phosphorus kills indiscriminately.

The difference is the intent…as opposed to flying airplanes into buildings.
Old Coot (2f7b84) — 11/30/2005 @ 5:26 am
Tillman – I looked at the site you linked to, and frankly it doesn’t make any sense. There is a photo of a helo dropping illumination rounds. This isn’t WP, illumination rounds are harmless (well, unless one lands on you, I guess). And somebody at that site makes a big deal about a morter team firing without knowing where their rounds are going. Tillman, morters are indirect fire weapons, and the people working the tubes usually can’t see the targets they are shooting at. They generally work with an observer, who can see the target.
And, finally, American military forces have been using WP since before World War II. It has been a standard munition that entire time. The only reason it is an issue now is because prople are buying into anti-war propoganda.
Roscoe (713860) — 11/30/2005 @ 8:43 am
Tillman – The weapons data on that site you linked to is all wrong too. Does anyone think that a WP round (even a 155mm, which is the big guy) is lethal out to 170 yards from impact? We should only wish.
Roscoe (713860) — 11/30/2005 @ 9:06 am
Well, Tillman, all I can say, as a career Army officer with 25 years experience flying helicopters and fixed wing, including a combat tour in Viet Nam, is that “children being burned alive is disturbing to me” too. In fact, we in the military are so disturbed by the killing of inocents that we often place ourselves at great personal risk to protect them or at the very least to avoid injuring them. I can also assure you from extensive personal experience that indiscriminant killing is not now, nor has ever been, the policy of any branch of America’s military. We prosecute and jail those who choose to operate differently.

Had we wished to obliterate Fallujah without any thought for civilian casualties, we have some very effective 15,000 lb fuel-air bombs in our arsenal that could have very easily turned Fallujah into a parking lot in short order. And this without significant risk to our brave Marines who risked their lives in house-to-house, man-to-man combat – easily among the most difficult of military combat tasks.

You might peruse this very balanced LA Times article regarding the use of WP in Falloujah. It at least gets the facts straight. The source is certainly no conservative mouthpiece for the Bush WH.

Your citation, on the other hand, gets the facts almost completely wrong. Oh, there is some element of truth about the employment of WP, as there usually is, but most of the citation is evidence only of ignorance of how the military employs WP. In short, it includes a little truth wrapped in a big lie, and there is clearly an agenda behind the site.

The LAT article directly addresses the “charred bodies of women and children”, clearly illustrating why they could not have been killed by WP. It also debunks the two myths that WP is an “illegal” weapon or that it is a chemical weapon.

One perfect example of the inaccuracy of your citation is the picture of “a helicopter [alleged to be] repeatedly raining down white phosphorous at night.” Pure imagination. The picture is most likely of the very common use of flares to protect the aircraft from IR-seeking ground-to-air missles. All current combat aircraft use these flares routinely during both day and night operations.

Helicopters aren’t really all that great at delivering illumination rounds in a high threat environment. Indirect artillery and mortar fire are much less risky for firing battlefield illumination rounds. WP is never “rained down” from military attack helicopters in the manner suggested by your citation. Even the short discussion of the accuracy of mortars and artillery as well as the kill radius of these weapons is well off base as Roscoe correctly notes above.

In short, the accuracy of the source you provided is easily checked if you take a few minutes to do some basic research. Or … you can believe what you want to believe about the finest military in the world … your choice.
Harry Arthur (b318a5) — 12/2/2005 @ 10:13 pm
Tillman, a bit more on the subject.

This site may also be of some interest regarding the credibility of Jeff Englehart and his observations regarding Fallujah which you quoted. It seems that he wasn’t even there except for the last few days. Additionally, it seems that his recollection of the radio transmissions regarding the use of WP has “evolved” with time.

His long discourse on WP being a chemical weapon and its effects on personnel on the battlefield tell me that he is in way over his head on what he thinks he knows about the subject. His comments to the Italian interviewer are largely ridiculous. Apparently he has now backed away from several of his observations, indicating that he was misquoted.

His web site is instructive of his political agenda and his alliance with Cindy Sheehan speaks volumes.

He has actually even admitted that he has limited direct knowledge of the events in Fallujah. He clearly has little to no credibility regarding his understanding of how WP was used there or of much of the combat operation there in general. His accounting can only be believed with a very large accompanying dose of credulity.
Harry Arthur (b318a5) — 12/2/2005 @ 10:48 pm
On a slightly different note there is this article from the WaPo indicating that the Iraqis are better off financially than they have been for the last 20 years, and that according to the World Bank, per capita income has doubled since the toppling of Saddam.

The article also makes the point that the Iraqi people are freer to express disenting views and to participate in political discussion and activities than virtually anywhere else in the region.
Harry Arthur (b318a5) — 12/2/2005 @ 11:35 pm
Harry – I appreciate all the information. This WP story is so political that getting to the truth may be impossible at this point. So I’m keeping an open mind.
But according to this article, a Lt. Col. Admitted that WP was used as a weapon, but only against insurgents. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10064711/
Also, I don’t believe that Jeff Englehart is the only source of information about this subject. I just picked that article as one example.
Tillman (1cf529) — 12/3/2005 @ 9:19 am
Tillman, good. Though I would disagree that getting to the truth may be impossible. The Italian film “expose” is demonstrably full of inaccuracies. And though I agree that Jeff Englehardt is not the sole source of information, the Italian “expose” certainly presented him as a subject matter expert on many levels and on many aspects of the battle, of which, unfortunately neither he nor they happened to mention, he had little to no direct knowledge.

While I can’t possibly speak to his motives, I can certainly address the inaccuracies of his “perceptions” and critique him for speaking authoritatively about what is at best third hand information. Jeff clearly has an agenda that is aligned with socialists and communists who are reflexively anti-American and anti-Bush. All that is necessary to see through that is to read his web site and those to which he links for authoritative comments.

Furthermore, the preponderance of his comments quoted by the Italian film are just flat wrong. They indicate a clear lack of understanding on his part about how WP works. Even the language he quotes from radio transmissions he claims to have heard do not square with military jargon or combat slang. His assertion that WP burns only skin without marking clothing, but at the same time melts through rubber gas masks, is particularly noteworthy for its absurdity. WP is simply a very intensely burning substance that burns anything that it can heat sufficiently to reach a flash point.

Finally, regarding Jeff’s observations about “orders that came directly from the Pentagon” is another bogus bit of nonsense. He was, after all, a Specialist (E4). All Army soldiers graduate Basic Training and Andvanced Individual Training as at least Privates (E2). Within 6 months or often upon graduation from AIT, they are promoted to Private First Class (E3). It takes another year or two at most to become an E4. His assertion that he knows anything about the commanders’ orders from the Pentagon is roughly equivalent to the supply room clerk in a corporation asserting that they have first hand knowledge about decisions being made by the CEO. Young enlisted soldiers in combat do not have the “big picture” regardless of what they’d like to believe or what barracks chatter and rumors they might hear.

The article you cited immediately preceding is a fair and balanced description of the use of WP in Fallujah, as was the LAT article I provided. As in most cases, the simple explanation happens to be the truth. Our government did over reach in our denial that we had used WP against “insurgents”. That was basically a PC exercise because there is nothing illegal or even immoral about using WP in the manner described by the LTC in your article. In the grand scheme of things, one could legitimately argue that its use in this manner actually resulted in fewer rather than more civilian casualties because it limited the destruction to “insurgents”. Our artillery, mortars and air dropped munitions are extremely accurate to within feet, minimizing the potential for civilian “colateral” injuries and deaths.

I’m happy to hear that you’re taking whatever you read or see on this with a large grain of salt – from either side of the argument. I assure you, though, that our military is populated by very highly disciplined and well educated people at all levels and that the Non-commissioned officers and commissioned officers commanding these forces would not stand for the illegal use of WP against innocent civilians. Unfortunately innocents are killed in battle. I’m not minimizing that tragic fact. We even occasionally kill our own troops (fratricide) through errors in the fog of battle but we do everything we can humanly do to avoid either. This whole issue has been politicized but it was with the purpose of casting aspersion on our fine troops, their leaders and the country as a whole.

Healthy skepticism is always a good thing, my friend.
Harry Arthur (b318a5) — 12/3/2005 @ 10:55 am
This is part of an interesting article from the NYT editorial page:

The United States restricted the use of incendiaries like white phosphorus after Vietnam, and in 1983, an international convention banned its use against civilians. In fact, one of the many crimes ascribed to Saddam Hussein was dropping white phosphorus on Kurdish rebels and civilians in 1991.

But white phosphorus has made an ugly comeback. Italian television reported that American forces used it in Falluja last year against insurgents. At first, the Pentagon said the chemical had been used only to illuminate the battlefield, but had to backpedal when it turned out that one of the Army’s own publications talked about using white phosphorus against insurgent positions, a practice well known enough to have one of those unsettling military nicknames: “shake and bake.”

The Pentagon says white phosphorus was never aimed at civilians, but there are lingering reports of civilian victims. The military can’t say whether the reports are true and does not intend to investigate them, a decision we find difficult to comprehend. Pentagon spokesmen say the Army took “extraordinary measures” to reduce civilian casualties, but they cannot say what those measures were.

They also say that using white phosphorus against military targets is legal. That’s true, but the 1983 convention bans its use against “civilians or civilian objects,” which would make white phosphorus attacks in urban settings like Falluja highly inappropriate at best. The United States signed that convention, but the portion dealing with incendiary weapons has been awaiting ratification in the Senate.

So I suppose that if other countries use WP, it is a chemical weapon. When we use it, it’s just a conventional one. Got it.
Tillman (1cf529) — 12/3/2005 @ 8:34 pm
Reasonably balance article but your conclusion is off base. WP is NEVER a chemical weapon no matter who uses it. And we don’t claim that it is even when “other countries use it.” Chemical weapons are generally binary and when fired, combine two stable, relatively safe elements, to produce deadly gases such as nerge agents or blood agents. WP in no way resembles or is a chemical weapon and the gases produced by the burning of WP are not fatally toxic. Your clue would be whether when we fire WP rounds we suit up in NBC gear. If that happens, then we’re firing chemical weapons or expecting chemical weapons to be fired at us.

Tillman, in all honesty I don’t see how you can do the research to post the article you did, which is relatively fair and balanced for the NYT, and then form the non-sequitur conclusion you did. I don’t have a problem arguing a point with anyone who understands the basic principles of logic and argument but I’m wondering about your capabilities in that regard.
Harry Arthur (b318a5) — 12/4/2005 @ 6:58 am
You’re right Harry. The quote I used had nothing to say about whether WP is a chemical weapon. I also forgot the
link for the article. I’ll try to do better, OK? :o)

But if you do much reading at all about WP, you will find articles that do talk about WP as a chemical weapon like this :

…a reported US army document from 1991 … refers to WP as a chemical weapon. The document reports the possible use of WP by Iraq against the Kurds who rose up after the Gulf War. It says: “Iraq has possibly employed phosphorous chemical weapons against the Kurdish population.”

Maybe WP can be called a chemical weapon if it is used to cause injury rather than just for light or a smokescreen. That’s the debate.

BTW Harry, have you ever dropped napalm from a helicopter or airplane? Also, was it true that the use of herbicides led to the saying “Only we can prevent forests” by some in the military?
Tillman (1cf529) — 12/4/2005 @ 8:47 am
Harry,

See the thanks you get.
Black Jack (ee9fe2) — 12/4/2005 @ 9:12 am
What, Black Jack? Do you think I’m being mean or something? I don’t think so. I’m confident that Harry can fend for himself if he thinks that it’s warranted.
Tillman (1cf529) — 12/4/2005 @ 11:26 am
Tillman: Smokeless gunpowder is made of chemicals. Does that mean that a speeding bullet is a chemical weapon?

I read the BBC article you linked. I thought the use of WP directly against troops had the purpose of smoking them out of their defensive positions. The following is a quote from the on-the-spot U.S. soldiers report.

“WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes where we could not get effects on them with HE [High Explosive]. We fired “shake and bake” missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out,” the article said.

I can’t imagine anyone in the U, S., military or civilian, advocating the us of WP against civilians.
RJN (c3a4a3) — 12/4/2005 @ 2:41 pm
No, RJN, I don’t think that bullets are chemical weapons because gunpowder is used to fire them. But if we were burning civilians alive with gunpowder, that would be tragic.

Here’s the thing – the Italians ran this video and a lot of people there and elsewhere now believe that our U.S. military is guilty of killing civilians by burning them to death. It may not be true – of course I hope it isn’t true (but hey, we used napalm in Nam didn’t we?). So what are we doing about it? We should be doing something. If it is true, we should, at the very least, vow to never do it again. If it isn’t, we need to start a campaign that clears our good nation’s name, shouldn’t we? But is anything at all being done about it? If not, it just makes us look guilty.
Tillman (1cf529) — 12/4/2005 @ 5:59 pm
…a reported US army document from 1991 … refers to WP as a chemical weapon. The document reports the possible use of WP by Iraq against the Kurds who rose up after the Gulf War. It says: “Iraq has possibly employed phosphorous chemical weapons against the Kurdish population.”

I’m admittedly not familiar with this publication but I’m suspicious because the site did not link to a full report and the quotation is at best second hand. Absent the full context I’m not ready to rely on a third party interpretation of an Army document that is alleged to classify any use of WP as a chemical weapon. Furthermore, simply to assume that a weapon loosely classified as “a phosphorous chemical weapon” is necessarily equivalent to WP as constituted within our arsenal, is at best a large assumption, given again that the statement is without context and is being quoted by a commenter on a web site to attempt to prove a point. Point me to the exact article in the precise publication and I’ll have more to say. Though it is a common Russian tactic to disguise the disbursement of chemical weapons within otherwise non-toxic smoke.

WP is as far as I know, considered within current Army doctrine to be an incindiary weapon. As I indicated up thread, if the US military considered its use to be of a chemical nature, and it produced any level of toxic gases, soldiers employing WP would be placed in full NBC protective gear. The WP rounds we use just aren’t chem weapons, period, end of discussion, no matter who says differently, or which group tries to spin it that way. WP injures primarily by burning. The purpose of artillery weapons is to incapacitate and/or kill enemy combatants – it’s as simple as that. WP is one of several weapons we use. To somehow imply that it’s civilized to blow up enemy soldiers/combatants but somehow just isn’t quite sporting to burn them up, is in my mind just silly.

Your point that we ought to stand up on our hind legs, look the rest of the world in the eye, tell them they’re full of horse hocky, that we didn’t and don’t use chemical weapons because we’ve agreed not to do so and have honored our word; nor do we ever target civilians with incindiary weapons; and state this in no uncertain terms that even journalists can understand, is well taken. Of course, in some respects you are asking us to prove a negative, for what that’s worth.

As for your second set of questions. No, I haven’t dropped napalm from a helicopter or airplane. Napalm is not well deployed from helicopters. They move too slowly. I flew Chinook cargo helicopters in Viet Nam and did transport thousands of tons of artillery guns and amunition, troops, food, water, refugees and USO shows including Bob Hope once. Never flew airplanes in combat so didn’t have the opportunity to drop napalm, though I will admit that I have no moral objection to its use and had I been flying airplanes from which napalm could have been dropped would not have objected to deploying it against enemy troops. But I suppose that is the subject of another thread at some future point.

As for whether I ever hear the quotation you provided. Again, no, however we did defoliate large areas of Viet Nam in an attempt to eliminate sanctuaries from which Viet Cong or NVA troops could mass for attacks on the local population. Probably have some medical effects from being exposed to Agent Orange. Whether we were justified in doing so; whether we knew the potential harmful effects to humans; and whether we could have anticipated the harmful effects to future generations are all other considerations for future threads as well.

Finally, I’ve watched the video several times now and have changed my viewpoint on the supposed helicopter drops of WP. I no longer think they were IR decoy flares. My current belief is that these probably were air burst WP rounds fired from artillery or mortars for the purpose of either screening or illumination. They are most certainly NOT “WP raining down from helicopters” simply because, as I have stated previously, that’s simply not a standard tactical employment.

Having said all that, my original take on the “expose” remains unchanged: it’s mostly nonsense, exageration, inuendo, and the skin of some truth stuffed with a large quantity of untruth.
Harry Arthur (b318a5) — 12/6/2005 @ 7:40 pm
Tillman, one other comment about the video and accompanying article. One or both of them make a point of indicating that the mortar-men firing mortars never saw what their rounds hit. So what? No artilleryman ever sees where his rounds hit. That is for the Forward Observer to coordinate. The accuracy of our weapons today is multiple times that of WWII or even Viet Nam and is certainly now within feet of the aiming point.

If you are interested in an excellent take on the use of artillery, I refer you to Tommy Franks’ excellent book: American Soldier. He details very accurately the duties and responsibilities of a Forward Observer and how they do their job. It is an excellent history of the US Army from Viet Nam to the stunning victories of Afghanistan and Iraq. He details the “Mission Accomplished” statement and why Bush made it and he discusses in great detail why we had and have the numbers of soldiers in Iraq that we have and the planning that went into both Gulf wars and the Afghanistan campaign. Remember how we were all told that Afghanistan would surely be a quagmire and that we would loose thousands of troops? Gen Franks also discusses why we wanted to keep the number of troops lower in Iraq. If you want to hear “the rest of the story” then you need to read Gen Franks’ book.
Harry Arthur (b318a5) — 12/6/2005 @ 7:56 pm
You make some really good points Harry and I appreciate your response.

I would like to explain one thing though. If at all possible, I would plead with the military not to use weapons that cause great suffering like napalm or WP. If you are directly hit with napalm, it doesn’t cause a long, torturous death. But I’ve suffered a burn before – not even a major one – and it was a nightmare. (It was only on about 6% of my body.) But if we use a torturing weapon like that against our enemies, how can we complain if they do the same?

Also, I wasn’t asking if you had dropped napalm just to try to find fault with you. If you had done so, I couldn’t blame you – that’s what the forces were doing at the time and I realize that it was used at times just for deforestation rather than an enemy killing weapon anyway.

Here is another story claiming that white phosphorous was used. Hopefully, not many civilians were hit by it though; the article mentioned that about 60,000 people had already fled the area. I’m beginning to believe that our forces really did use white phosphorous as a weapon to kill. There are too many reports documenting its use.
Tillman (1cf529) — 12/10/2005 @ 7:53 pm
Here is an article that describes the declassified document and a link to the document where WP weapons where referred to as “chemical.” http://www.thecatsdream.com/blog/2005/11/de-classified-report-from-us.htm
Tillman (1cf529) — 12/10/2005 @ 8:40 pm
Tillman: I read the story you linked to in comment #24. I thought the reporters specifics were too loosely drawn to be sure of the aim point, and shell setting, for each type of munitions; WP or HE.

Regarding the report referred in comment #25: There sure could be some hypocrisy in this, but maybe not. I suppose it is possible that Iraq (1991) was using WP in a manner that would call for the term “chemical weapon”. We may not use the WP in the same way. We may not apply directly into the midst of groups of people, or troops.
RJN (c3a4a3) — 12/10/2005 @ 9:47 pm
RJN and Tillman, now that I’ve read the DOD intelligence report in context I can still assert that the term “chemical weapon” is used incorrectly and inexactly when associated with WP. In short, unless there is a WP chemical weapon about which I am uninformed (certainly not in the US inventory) this was a very poor and inaccurate choice of words, not a double standard as a few of the commentors to the article assert.

Whether Saddam used some nonconventional type of phosphor “chemical weapon” I don’t know, but in the context of every single international agreement to which the US is either a signator or even considering being a signator, WP explosive rounds are NEVER classified as chemical weapons.

To suggest, as has been done elsewhere, that because a chemical reaction takes place in a WP explosion, then it is a chem weapon, is clearly stretching the facts well beyond any reasonable level. In fact, a chemical reaction takes place in every single artillery or mortar round we use. Some of these chemical reactions produce explosions and some produce intense heat, light and smoke as does WP.

Let me say it again. White Phosporus rounds as used by every civilized western nation are NOT chemical weapons and cannot be considered to be chemical weapons. They are incindiary weapons. While it is true that there is a chemical reaction when WP contacts air, the result is extreme, instantaneous heat. It’s very simple.

Chemical weapons have the peculiar characteristic that they effect the nervous system or the circulatory system often through the skin or by breathing. Chemical agents such as VX, VG, or blood or blister agents require breathing or touching only the smallest drop for deadly results. The smoke from WP rounds, while irritating, is not fatal by itself. If WP were a chemical agent, our troops would handle and use it only in MOPP protective gear.

I’m beginning to believe that our forces really did use white phosphorous as a weapon to kill. Entirely correct observation on your part, and entirely legal and moral use of WP by our forces. The use of WP against personnel is only proscribed when used against civilians. In fact, NO weapon may be intentionally targeted against unarmed civilians. The only problem here was that our government initially reflexively denied its use in an attempt at being PC. The result of the denial was to make it look like we were trying to hide something for which we should not have been apologetic in the first place.

Tillman, no offense taken WRT your question regarding napalm. I’ve addressed that on a follow-on thread. BTW, it would be entirely appropriate to question my consistency if by employing napalm I had violated the laws of land warfare, just war doctrine, other tenant of the rules of war, or followed an illegal order. It was also entirely appropriate to determine whether I “had a dog in this hunt” so to speak, i.e., whether my argument was simply an attempt to justify some long past personal “war crime” or other illegal or immoral activity. I think I’ve been clear on that so no need to belabor that further.
Harry Arthur (b318a5) — 12/12/2005 @ 11:04 pm

11/28/2005

Incendiary Devices: They’re Not Just For Wars Anymore (And They Never Were!)

27 Responses to “Incendiary Devices: They’re Not Just For Wars Anymore (And They Never Were!)”

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