Willy Pete alleged to have been used in Falluja

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Sergei:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by John D Salt:

That WP is not banned by any international convention remains an objective fact in the external world.

By any international convention signed by USA, you mean. </font>

[Sergei]

Originally posted by John D Salt:

It is very clearly not the 1980 protocol on certain conventional weapons. Those who doubt this fact can follow the link I provided to the text of the document, and read it.

Dear John, you are wrong, as you would know if you had read the text.

1. "Incendiary weapon" means any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat, or a combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target.

(a) Incendiary weapons can take the form of, for example, flame throwers, fougasses, shells, rockets, grenades, mines, bombs and other containers of incendiary substances.

( Incendiary weapons do not include:

(i) Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems;

If you intentionally use WP to burn down things and people, it is not incidental.

[Dinger]

Just a point of information. WP in Fallujah was never something the US was hiding, not merely in the house-cleaning ops mentioned here, nor in the reporters accounts of glowing bits of WP in the streets as they advanccd. The commonly available video and still photographs clearly show 155mm WP/Time barrages going in.

WP is not an illuminant. In many configurations (e.g., M825 155mm Improved Smoke round) it is used as a smoke generator. Its really good for screening, particularly if you don't want stuff coming through your screen (Breaking contact), suppressing, and setting stuff on fire.

Oh yeah, we need WP grenades in CM:SF.

And a new version of the Mk77 napalm bomb I hear is being used again. Incendiaries have their role.

[Romulus]

For those of you interested in watching the RAINews24 reportage (22 mins long), just choose the language you prefer (Italian, English, Arab):

Link to RAINews24

[Matthias]

yeah i thought WP was ban'ed as Sergei said, and i argee about how this thread shows how different societies have different realities, and also how different people view information, some talk about the errors in the weapon profile (cloths not burning) while others think about if the USa should use the chemical weapon against the "mad village nutters", its been a very good thread.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by Matthias:

yeah i thought WP was ban'ed as Sergei said, and i argee about how this thread shows how different societies have different realities, and also how different people view information, some talk about the errors in the weapon profile (cloths not burning) while others think about if the USa should use the chemical weapon against the "mad village nutters", its been a very good thread.

What is really strange to me is that WP is now suddenly considered a chemical weapon. Prior to this story I had never heard of it refered to as such, and I think putting it in the same category as VX nerve gas has been done here to be inflammatory (no pun intended).

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by Sergei:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by John D Salt:

It is very clearly not the 1980 protocol on certain conventional weapons. Those who doubt this fact can follow the link I provided to the text of the document, and read it.

Dear John, you are wrong, as you would know if you had read the text.</font>

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

I would say that, in the minds of the average Italian willing to even think about the issue, the US use of WP in Iraq is hypocrytical and overkill. The perception probably is here's this giant superpower is hunting down some Arab nuts in a dirty desert town, and the superpower is so afraid to "fight fair" that it resorts to horrid chemical type weapons.

If that is true, then the problem is that the average Italian has no freakin' clue about what war is, or especially how the war in Iraq is being fought. The US would like nothing better for the insurgents to come out and "fight fair" (whatever that means; pistols at 20 paces?). It would be to the US advantage for them to do so, as anyone on this forum should realize. It is the insurgents who hide and snipe, and disguise themselves as civilians, and the US soldiers who are out patroling in full view of everyone, wearing military uniforms. For anyone to think it the other way around is one of the most blinkered notions I've seen in a long time.

[hellfish]

It's pretty hard to define a civillian population in Iraq - you drop some WP on some insurgents, their surviving buddies take the guns off the dead and run away and pretty soon, to some ambitious reporter, it'll look like you massacred civillians.

[Bigduke6]

Vanir Ausf B,

I think in the first place you need to expand your definitions. It's not just Italians, it's most people everywhere. Civilians. Soldiers and people interested in them are a minority in every society. The vast majority of people do not differentiate about weapons much, and for the vast majority, an artillery shell that disperses a chemical that burns even human flesh, and cannot be put out, is a chemical weapon quite as nasty as asphixiating gas.

After all, the human fear of fire and suffocation is, in most people, roughly equal.

My point is, although there may be international agreements allowing the use of WP, the vast majority of people could care less. They know horrid when they see it, and when exposed to images of the effects of a horrid weapon, people will react to it. No matter what the soldiers say.

As to "equal fighting", I think you need to be a bit more specific, because if you are not, you will skew the way you look at combat. This is risky if you are trying to convince other people the combat makes moral sense: you may well wind up arguing from a reality the other people don't see, never mind accept.

If a "fair fight" is a war where the U.S. military gets to use all of the weapons available to it, no limits, and the Iraqi insurgency gets to use all the weapons available to it, and the civilians are kept out - well, I can see why U.S. soldiers are looking for that "fair fight".

But if a "fair fight" is in the terms of most people for most times in human history, i.e., a single man against a single man, at most with similar but equal hand weapons - well, I am quite sure the U.S. soldiery would not go for that. Not that the U.S. soldiers aren't brave enough to do their job, or that they cheat playing sports or something.

Rather, I mean that the general perception of a fair fight is very different, from what members of U.S. forces perceive a fair fight to be.

Not to be abrasive, but I am 100 per cent sure that a member of the insurgency, if told the U.S. soldiers believed they were brave by wearing uniforms and walking out in the open, would answer along the lines of:

"How much bravery does it take to walk anywhere, when the military might of the United States is behind you? You want brave, think about an untrained Arab kid willing to fight and die trying to hurt one of those lavishly-equipped Americans."

Again here's the official warning, this is not necessarily my personal point of view, but rather my impression of a foreign point of view.

And if you're talking man-to-man fighting, without the support weapons, well fanatacism is probably the very best weapon there is.

fytinghellfish -

I think you are making a distinction that doesn't exist. No matter how careful an army is, the moment it starts hurting people and property in a foreign country, it is going to create enemies. Even if the army is, by its rules, well within its rights to do it. Some of the people harmed are going to be angry and think what the foreigners did was unfair, and a smaller portion of them will, after time, decide violence against the foreigners is the solution to having the army in one's neighborhood. So there really is no separation of civilians and militants; it's just that some are more actively involved in the conflict, and some more passively; and the foreign military's main effect on that is shifting the priorities one way or another.

You know all that, of course.

My question is, how does a journo report that? If reality is that muddy, how do you describe reality in 500 words or two minutes of video? To an audience so ignorant of the region's background, many of them can't find the foreign place their soldiers are dying in, on a map?

And to (try) to keep this thread from getting locked, will CMSF have reporters? I think it should! Extra VPs if you get the reporter to the objective, less VPs if you get him killed.

Or maybe a very big VP boost, if you get the reporter killed and make it look like the insurgents did it.

BFI could even get really sneaky and have a non-U.S. cable news team on the scene. Their reporting would work a whole lot like a U.S.-controlled UAV; less responsive than the American collection system, but a whole lot worse for the Americans, if the camera crew gets trashed.

[aka_tom_w]

Bigduke makes a very good point, most folks don't think or have any idea how to think or understand combat or war like military personel or those interested in military affairs.

Doesn't someone's signature line around here somewhere say:

"Strategy is the art of avoiding a "fair fight" at all costs"

or something like that?

or how about this one:

And you can sum up all of Sun Tzu as: "Never pick a fair fight."

-tom w

[ November 10, 2005, 09:43 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

Soldiers and people interested in them are a minority in every society.

for example in Finland some 90% of the male population has military training. only extreme minority of females have military training though.

i don't see what fairness has to do with warfare, as warfare is based on avoiding a fair fight, but regarding "fair fight" and the US, i dare to say that the US is one of the most "unfair" nations what comes to warfare. and that's how it should be, considering the material advantage that the US has enjoyed.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

Vanir Ausf B,

I think in the first place you need to expand your definitions.

I don't think I do. You are arguing that perception is reality, which can be true at times in some circumstance. But 1000 years ago most people thought the Earth was flat. They were all wrong.

WP is a nasty weapon, but there are no nice weapons being used in Iraq. From the point of view of the grunt on the ground, war is about killing the enemy before he can kill you. PR is for politicians and generals to worry about.

Pictures of people killed by explosives and cannons are as horrid as any other.

If a "fair fight" is a war where the U.S. military gets to use all of the weapons available to it, no limits, and the Iraqi insurgency gets to use all the weapons available to it, and the civilians are kept out - well, I can see why U.S. soldiers are looking for that "fair fight".

But if a "fair fight" is in the terms of most people for most times in human history, i.e., a single man against a single man, at most with similar but equal hand weapons - well, I am quite sure the U.S. soldiery would not go for that. Not that the U.S. soldiers aren't brave enough to do their job, or that they cheat playing sports or something.

Rather, I mean that the general perception of a fair fight is very different, from what members of U.S. forces perceive a fair fight to be.

Not to be abrasive, but I am 100 per cent sure that a member of the insurgency, if told the U.S. soldiers believed they were brave by wearing uniforms and walking out in the open, would answer along the lines of:

"How much bravery does it take to walk anywhere, when the military might of the United States is behind you? You want brave, think about an untrained Arab kid willing to fight and die trying to hurt one of those lavishly-equipped Americans."

Again here's the official warning, this is not necessarily my personal point of view, but rather my impression of a foreign point of view.

Note that under this view of what constitutes a fair fight, it would be nearly impossible for the US military to fight fair in Iraq, unless they were to engage in some really stupid and absurd antics, like the pistols at 20 paces example. This has nothing to do with the use of WP. The US cannot be expected to conform to some people's fantasy idea of warfare. There are a lot of ignorant people in the world. The fact that there are a lot of them doesn't mean they're any less ignorant.

[Matthias]

? so you say the USA can't have a fair fight coz that would be silly of them? well isn't that true of the arabs there fighting? for it to be a "fair fight" they would both have to wear uniform so they could be easy ID'ed and both have the same weapons and manpower, anyway its not going to happen, the theory about WP being worst then being shot is the fact Being Burnt to death is The most painfull way to die, and most horried to see, no one want to see or hear it, and given the choice of certain death 100% people whould take being shot, so even tho there is no nice weapon, it don't mean we got to use one of the most horrifing, when there are other choices available like HE.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Sergei:

[snips]

Dear John, you are wrong, as you would know if you had read the text.

Oh dear. First you tell me what I mean, then you tell me I haven't read a source I've posted. I'm afraid this would make you look obnoxiously arrogant even if you were not completely wrong.

Originally posted by Sergei:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />1. "Incendiary weapon" means any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat, or a combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target.

(a) Incendiary weapons can take the form of, for example, flame throwers, fougasses, shells, rockets, grenades, mines, bombs and other containers of incendiary substances.

( Incendiary weapons do not include:

(i) Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems;

If you intentionally use WP to burn down things and people, it is not incidental. </font>

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by Matthias:

? so you say the USA can't have a fair fight coz that would be silly of them? well isn't that true of the arabs there fighting? for it to be a "fair fight" they would both have to wear uniform so they could be easy ID'ed and both have the same weapons and manpower, anyway its not going to happen,

That is true. But I don't see anyone expecting the Arabs to fight fair.

the theory about WP being worst then being shot is the fact Being Burnt to death is The most painfull way to die, and most horried to see, no one want to see or hear it, and given the choice of certain death 100% people whould take being shot, so even tho there is no nice weapon, it don't mean we got to use one of the most horrifing, when there are other choices available like HE.

I'm sure it is very painfull. But it is not actually very usefull for killing people. The large majority of people hit with WP don't die. It's the fear factor that makes it a usefull tool at times. Read what the US captain in Falluja had to say about its use:

"White Phosphorous. 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 when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired “shake and bake” missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."

As you can see, they did not use the WP to kill. HE was used for that.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Matthias:

[snips]

the theory about WP being worst then being shot is the fact Being Burnt to death is The most painfull way to die, and most horried to see, no one want to see or hear it, and given the choice of certain death 100% people whould take being shot,

While this is true as far as it goes, you are much less likely to die or be permanently disfigured from being hit by bullets or shell fragments than the equivalent weight in WP. Indeed, the PRO document I referred to earlier suggested that WP was a more humane weapon than HE because it caused fewer deaths for the same suppressive and incapacitating effect. The choice is, therefore, not going to be one in which death is 100% certain either way. Would you prefer, say, a 50% chance of being shot to death against a 25% of burning to death?

The same kind of argument has been used for war gases (banned under the 1925 Geneva gas protocol) and flamethrowers (incendiary weapons as defined in the 1980 protocol), and people tend not to be convinced by it, but on emotional rather than rational grounds.

A book on gas warfare I read about 25 years ago, published in the United States around 1925, acknowledged this, and so the author decided to put the emotional case for the relative humanity of gas warfare. Figure 1 was a full-page photograph entitled "bullet wound to face", and it was horrific enough in black-and-white to have stuck in my mind for the past 25 years. What it would have been like in colour I hate to think. I'm sure the author could just has easily have produced equally nauseating pictures of what HE does to people.

The argument for the humanity of flamethrowers is rather different, and relies on looking at the proportion of prisoners to killed and wounded when such weapons are used. A flamethrower's main effect is to terrorize, so people surrender quicker and fewer have to be killed to achieve the same miitary effect. I'm sure there is plenty of support for the banning of flamethrowers, but it seems to rely on the curious proposition that it is better to kill people than to terrorize them.

Funny folks, people.

All the best,

John.

[Vanir Ausf B]

It is perhaps worth noting that even with respect to incendiary weapons such as flame throwers, Protocol III does not ban them, but mearly limits their use in certain circumstances. From my reading I think that even if the US were party to Protocol III, and if we did not exclude WP as it clearly is, I do not think use of it in Falluja would have been a violation of Protocol III. Unless you consider a city 90% evacuated to be a "concentration of civilians".

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by John D Salt:

While this is true as far as it goes, you are much less likely to die or be permanently disfigured from being hit by bullets or shell fragments than the equivalent weight in WP.

I think you meant "more"? Otherwise, good points all around.

[Bigduke6]

Vanir Ausf B,

If we we discussing a empirical fact - earth flat or no - then you would have a point. But the topic here is the morality of the use of white phosphorus

against Iraqi insurgents, and any one else unlucky enough to get caught in the impact area, in the town of Falluja by U.S. forces.

That's a relative call, and whether or not that weapon use is "ok", or "pretty much the same as using chemical weapons banned because they were too horrible", depends very much on whom you ask. And very little on treaty terms invented close to a century ago to prevent the worst of WWI.

I very much disagree when you say "PR is for politicians and generals to worry about." In my opinion, we are all humans, and it's not such a hot idea when any group of human - even soldiers - figures out a way to avoid thinking about the morality of harming or killing other humans. From what I can tell, it is precisely when people stop worrying about the right or wrong of killing, that the killing of people really takes off.

Just my opinion there, of course.

On the fair fight, I'm not arguing the U.S. should base its definition of acceptable wartime behavior on some outside source, never mind its wartime opponent. That, obviously, is silly.

You are quite right, there are a lot of ignorant people in the world.

My question is, what if those ignorant people, in their ignorance, don't see U.S. military operations the benign way the U.S. military sees them? Rich Italians sunning on Lake Garda or dirt-poor Fallujans, middle class computer geeks in Bombay - the world is a big place. Heck, there are even a few Democrats left in the U.S., I hear.

What if a critical mass of people like that decides U.S. peacekeeping is actually occupation? If what what the U.S. sees as attacking insurgent strongholds, is considered most every where else as foreign conquerers fighting on one side of an ancient religious conflict? How do you change those perceptions? Can you do it fast enough, to counteract the negatives from those people "misunderstanding" what the war is all about? Otherwise the Italians may bail on keeping infantry in Iraq, the Bombay computer geeks may work a bit harder to undercut Silocon valley, and some of the Falluja peasantry might reconsider avoiding the insurgency.

I guarantee you if any one hit by William Peter in Falluja survived, he or she was not convinced of a traditional sense of humanity and fair play on the part of U.S. forces, no matter what the treaties say.

And I bet he or she told his family and friends something along the lines of "The Christian infidels used chemicals that burned on us, just as bad as what Saddam used on the Kurds."

Whose definition is right? The one imported by the U.S., or the home-grown one? Which definition, and its interpetation, will have more influence on the end result of the war?

See how important perception can be?

[Abbott]

Next some of you guys will be calling for a "Kinder, gentler machinegun hand".

Maybe we could wrap the enemy in plastic before they are shot so none has to see any blood?

Maybe terrorists will just go away if we ignore them?

Maybe they could get some therapy?

One would think that some members of a Forum based on a military hobby would have a better understanding of warfare. Some of you guys aught to consider taking up needlepoint.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

I guarantee you if any one hit by William Peter in Falluja survived, he or she was not convinced of a traditional sense of humanity and fair play on the part of U.S. forces, no matter what the treaties say.

And I bet he or she told his family and friends something along the lines of "The Christian infidels used chemicals that burned on us, just as bad as what Saddam used on the Kurds."

I'm guessing that anyone hit by a US munition is not going to be happy about it regardless if it's WP or a bullet.

WP is not classified as a chemical weapon. Just because an Italian newspaper decides to start calling them that doesn't change that fact. If the New York Times started calling 2000lb JDAMs "Weapons of Mass Destruction" would the US have stop using them? Of course not.

What if a critical mass of people like that decides U.S. peacekeeping is actually occupation? If what what the U.S. sees as attacking insurgent strongholds, is considered most every where else as foreign conquerers fighting on one side of an ancient religious conflict? How do you change those perceptions?

This has already happened, and I suspect it is not possible to change those perceptions.

I agree that world opinion does matter, but you can't make yourself a slave to it. WP isn't going to change anybody's mind. It may reinforce opinions already held.

I agree that the morality of WP use is subjective. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with it. In my opinion I have not seen any good arguements to convince me it is immoral. Therefore in my opinion anyone condemning the US for its use is doing so out of ignorance and I don't have a lot of patience for ignorant people. But that's just me.

Oh BTW, I was against the invasion of Iraq and still think it was a bad idea.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Vanir Ausf B:

[snips]I think you meant "more"?

Whoops, yes. My mistake.

All the best,

John.

[Bigduke6]

Vanir Ausf B,

I mostly agree with you, personally. Me, I don't see anything particularly wrong about using WP per se. I haven't seen what WP does in RL but I have seen the results of bullets and shrapnel, and that's bad enough. If it was left up to me armies would have nerve gas and nothing else; no one is going to start a war if he has to put on his MOP suit. Well, almost no one.

Anyway, my now belabored point is that military types can quote treaties and Clauswitz and Dugout Doug ("No substitute for victory) all they want; but if the war is limited and the support for it is less than rock-solid and universal, the military types are digging themselves a hole if they just ignore the "ignorant," be they targets, third parties, or members of the domestic opposition. Taken together those "ignorant" are the overwhelming majority of civilians on this planet, and in an increasingly interconnected world, their opinion counts more and more.

So I see use of WP in Falluja as not exactly a bright idea. Oh sure, it smoked out the insurgents but good, but that wasn't the end of it. The stuff is to the usual target evil and frightening and chemical and it burns. Lots of Iraqis survived Falluja. So now they have a pretty scary story to tell; at least, they and the people the tell it to, will think it's scary.

In Iraq, considering WMD and the huge range of other weapons in this U.S. arsenal, WP is not a particularly bright weapon choice for a country defending Democracy and human rights. It is a public relations bomb waiting to go off, and if it does the war effort is undermined.

Thus you and I part ways here, you see use of WP as not really making things worse, and I do. Ok, I can live with that.

To me it's pretty straightforward. This is not not touchy-feely "let's all hold hands and give peace a chance." This is a simple case of "You piss off enough people, sooner or later you're going to have a problem you can't handle."

It is the job of military professionals to win wars, and if they obstinately ignore the opinions of others, to the detriment of the war effort, the military professionals are not doing their job.

[Peter Cairns]

Bigduke6

Iam pretty much with you on this, just because you have a capacity or weapon doesn't mean it's a good idea to use it.

Over the last decade or so we have seen a series of short conflicts where damage done has taken years to repair.

We now have the capcity to do in ten days damage to infrastructure that can take ten years to repair. But if in that ten years you force an entire people to suffer for the crimes of a regeme that they probably hated, then you run the real risk of alienating a generation.

I think there is a strong arguement for at least the reassment of the utility of strategic targeting in the short term in light of the potential long term effects.

It's a possible case of the law of unintended consequences, where in an attempt to achieve a desired outcome you also create a different unexpected negitive outcome, that may out weigh the short term benefit you wanted.

Peter.