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Please tell me we didn't do that in Iraq (pg. 6)
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by ogvh5150
Are you implying that since the US did not sign Protocols III and IV of the Convention on Conventional Weapons that this give the US carte blanche? |
No, I'm saying there's not a damn thing your bitching and whining can do to change the fact that given the context in which these events occurred and the likely specific documented orders that back those actions up--you accomplish nothing. What is your point?
| quote: | | I have no access to classified military documents. |
Obviously.
| quote: | | Unless you have positive proof that WP was not used on non-combatants and civilians, you have no leg to stand on. |
Ah. Guilty until proven innocent now, is it? No leg to stand on. Laughable.
| quote: |
Have a nice day believing that no Iraqi civilians were killed during so called "shake and bake" operations. |
Oh, I'm quite certain they were. Were they intentionally targeted after being told to evacuate the city? I surely doubt it. Was the context in which the WP was deployed one in which it was used as an incendiary device or a smoke screen? I don't have access to military documents either, but that argument really isn't very strong. It is unfortunate that anybody dies in a war, let alone an innocent civilian, but I love how you presume the U.S. military behaves like a blood lust machine, targeting concentrations of innocent people, attempting to inflict maximum carnage. It's friggin sweet, man. Guts n' everywhere.
| quote: | | Must make you all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that GI's can actually discern between combatant and non-combatant through all that WP smoke. |
All we can ask is that they try based on the best training we can provide them. |
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| ogvh5150 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
No, I'm saying there's not a damn thing your bitching and whining can do to change the fact that given the context in which these events occurred and the likely specific documented orders that back those actions up--you accomplish nothing. What is your point? |
You have not answered the question:
Because the United States did not sign or ratify Protocols III and IV does that give them a green light to violate those sections just so?
By your use of baiting with words like "bitching and whining" does not make you exempt from a sensible or coherent argument.
But to satisfy your curiousity am I "bitching and whining" as you say? No, I don't think so any more than you would when you make a post complaining about my "bitching and whining."
| quote: | | Ah. Guilty until proven innocent now, is it? No leg to stand on. Laughable. |
You haven't answered the question:
Can you prove beyond a reasonable doubt with actual evidence that no civilians, as in the sense of the words "non-combatant", were not harmed, maimed, imolated or killed during "shake and bake" operations involving WP and HE.
| quote: | | Oh, I'm quite certain they were. Were they intentionally targeted after being told to evacuate the city? I surely doubt it. |
Ditto but I doubt any one was warned to evacuate.
| quote: | | Was the context in which the WP was deployed one in which it was used as an incendiary device or a smoke screen? I don't have access to military documents either, but that argument really isn't very strong. |
That's why we in general have to question why it was used along with other possible war crimes that have yet to make the news.
| quote: | | It is unfortunate that anybody dies in a war, let alone an innocent civilian, but I love how you presume the U.S. military behaves like a blood lust machine, targeting concentrations of innocent people, attempting to inflict maximum carnage. It's friggin sweet, man. Guts n' everywhere. |
Did I say it was a cakewalk? No. DO I want this war? No.
All the money that is being spent could have been used for social programs (at the very least) here stateside but instead it goes into spending on a war machine for something that doesn't exist.
Pols will tell you that terrorists will win. But sad to say they are winning already with the blood of the poor who fell for the lies of WMD's that have yet to be found and never will be.
Only the 1% gain and we are not the 1%.
| quote: | | All we can ask is that they try based on the best training we can provide them. |
If they tried we wouldn't be talking about them now would we? |
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| Fir3start3r |
| quote: | Originally posted by ogvh5150
You haven't answered the question:
Can you prove beyond a reasonable doubt with actual evidence that no civilians, as in the sense of the words "non-combatant", were not harmed, maimed, imolated or killed during "shake and bake" operations involving WP and HE. |
That's just a ludicrious question.
If there's so many of these "Shake and bake" operations, why only report the one? This is big news isn't it?
(and let's not wandering into the, "Well the government controls all the news BS).
I'm sure there are soldiers out there who just can't wait for their turn in an indiscriminate "shake and bake". :rolleyes:
Look, the weapon is horrible to use, but I can't think for one minute that there wasn't reasonable doubt in it's use, when it was being used. |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by ogvh5150
You have not answered the question:
Because the United States did not sign or ratify Protocols III and IV does that give them a green light to violate those sections just so?
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Depending on the context, yes. And again, if you read the protocol, it has no teeth, so what is your point?
| quote: | | Can you prove beyond a reasonable doubt with actual evidence that no civilians, as in the sense of the words "non-combatant", were not harmed, maimed, imolated or killed during "shake and bake" operations involving WP and HE. |
I love how you can stretch the limits so wide as to interpret "intentionally targeting civilians" and "concentrations of civilians" directly from the protocol to mean it is violated when the very first, singular civilian is unintentionally harmed or killed in an operation. Guilty until proven innocent. |
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| ogvh5150 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Fir3start3r
(and let's not wandering into the, "Well the government controls all the news BS). |
Obviously you've never RSVP the Bohemian Club since they will never send you nor I an invitation.
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
Depending on the context, yes. And again, if you read the protocol, it has no teeth, so what is your point? |
If the Conventions individual Protocols have no teeth then neither does the Geneva Convention nor the UN. And if they all don't have teeth then incidents such as this are pre-manufactured for people to give them teeth.
Hence a global economy and global justice system.
What they've wanted all along.
People will beg for UN troops, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger.
| quote: | | I love how you can stretch the limits so wide as to interpret "intentionally targeting civilians" and "concentrations of civilians" directly from the protocol to mean it is violated when the very first, singular civilian is unintentionally harmed or killed in an operation. Guilty until proven innocent. |
No what I was trying to imply is that you tried to put the onus on me by showing proof that WP was used on civilians.
I then put it on you to prove that it was not used on civilians.
You can never answer the question because you have no proof. Just as much as I can't show proof.
End of story. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by shaolin_Z
I understand your point of view occ (although I don't agree with it), what I don't get is why you're so upset about white phosphorous being labelled a "checmical weapon." |
Well first of all I'm not upset about it, I'm simply suggesting that when criticizing the incident, it should be criticized accurately. The incident doesn't need to be hyped and mischaracterized as an attack with chemical weapons. An apparent violation of the 3rd protocol of the geneva conventions is what it really is and it doesn't need unnecessary hyperbole. It has the equivalency of the US using napalm in a civilian area ... no more, no less. |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by ogvh5150
People will beg for UN troops, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger.
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| quote: | Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government."
- Henry Kissinger (speaking at Evian, France on May 21, 1992) |
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| Shakka |
Today there's this from the NY Times--generally a more liberal leaning outfit (putting it nicely). The article makes a pretty clean case out of it. With one exception that they did use WP as a weapon directly against insurgents, as opposed to primarily for light. Someone will try to turn this into the next Abu Ghraib.:rolleyes:
U.S. bungling the response to the incident
| quote: | Defense of Phosphorus Use Turns Into Damage Control
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 - On Nov. 8, Italian public television showed a documentary renewing persistent charges that the United States had used white phosphorus rounds, incendiary munitions that the film incorrectly called chemical weapons, against Iraqis in Falluja last year. Many civilians died of burns, the report said.
The half-hour film was riddled with errors and exaggerations, according to United States officials and independent military experts. But the State Department and Pentagon have so bungled their response - making and then withdrawing incorrect statements about what American troops really did when they fought a pitched battle against insurgents in the rebellious city - that the charges have produced dozens of stories in the foreign news media and on Web sites suggesting that the Americans used banned weapons and tried to cover it up.
The Iraqi government has announced an investigation, and a United Nations spokeswoman has expressed concern.
"It's discredited the American military without any basis in fact," said John E. Pike, an expert on weapons who runs GlobalSecurity.org, an independent clearinghouse for military information. He said the "stupidity and incompetence" of official comments had fueled suspicions of a cover-up.
"The story most people around the world have is that the Americans are up to their old tricks - committing atrocities and lying about it," Mr. Pike said. "And that's completely incorrect."
Daryl G. Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association, a nonprofit organization that researches nuclear issues, was more cautious. In light of the issues raised since the film was shown, he said, the Defense Department, and perhaps an independent body, should review whether American use of white phosphorus had been consistent with international weapons conventions.
"There are legitimate questions that need to be asked," Mr. Kimball said. Given the history of Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons in Iraq, he said, "we have to be extremely careful" to comply with treaties and the rules of war.
At a time when opposition to the war is growing, the white phosphorus issue has reinforced the worst suspicions about American actions.
The documentary was quickly posted as a video file on Web sites worldwide. Bloggers trumpeted its allegations. Foreign newspapers and television reported the charges and rebuttals, with headlines like "The Big White Lie" in The Independent of London.
Officials now acknowledge that the government's initial response was sluggish and misinformed.
"There's so much inaccurate information out there now that I'm not sure we can unscrew it," Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Defense Department spokesman who has handled many inquiries about white phosphorus, said Friday.
The State Department declined to comment for the record, but an official there said privately that the episode was a public relations failure.
The Italian documentary, titled "Falluja: The Hidden Massacre," included gruesome images of victims of the fierce fighting in the city in November 2004. American and Iraqi troops recaptured the city from insurgents, in battles that destroyed an estimated 60 percent of the buildings.
Opening with prolonged shots of Vietnamese children and villages burned by American use of napalm in 1972, the film suggested an equivalence between Mr. Hussein's use of chemical weapons in the 1980's and the use of white phosphorus by the American-led forces.
It incorrectly referred to white phosphorus shells - a munition of nearly every military commonly used to create smoke screens or fires - as banned chemical weapons.
The film showed disfigured bodies and suggested that hot-burning white phosphorus had melted the flesh while leaving clothing intact. Sigfrido Ranucci, the television correspondent who made the documentary, said in an interview this month that he had received the photographs from an Iraqi doctor. "We are not talking about corpses like the normal deaths in war," he said.
Military veterans familiar with white phosphorus, known to soldiers as "W. P." or "Willie Pete," said it could deliver terrible burns, since an exploding round scatters bits of the compound that burst into flames on exposure to air and can burn into flesh, penetrating to the bone.
But they said white phosphorus would have burned victims' clothing. The bodies in the film appeared to be decomposed, they said.
In their first comments after the Nov. 8 broadcast, American officials made some of those points. But they relied on an inaccurate State Department fact sheet first posted on the Web last December, when similar accusations first surfaced.
The fact sheet said American forces had used white phosphorus shells "very sparingly in Falluja, for illumination purposes, and were fired "to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."
The Americans stuck to that position last spring after Iraq's Health Ministry claimed it had proof of civilian casualties from the weapons.
After the Italian documentary was broadcast, the American ambassadors to Italy, Ronald P. Spogli, and to Britain, Robert H. Tuttle, echoed the stock defense, denying that white phosphorus munitions had been used against enemy fighters, let alone civilians. At home, on the public radio program "Democracy Now," Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, an American military spokesman, said, "I know of no cases where people were deliberately targeted by the use of white phosphorus."
But those statements were incorrect. Firsthand accounts by American officers in two military journals note that white phosphorus munitions had been aimed directly at insurgents in Falluja to flush them out. War critics and journalists soon discovered those articles.
In the face of such evidence, the Bush administration made an embarrassing public reversal last week. Pentagon spokesmen admitted that white phosphorus had been used directly against Iraqi insurgents. "It's perfectly legitimate to use this stuff against enemy combatants," Colonel Venable said Friday.
While he said he could not rule out that white phosphorus hit some civilians, "U.S. and coalition forces took extraordinary measures to prevent civilian casualties in Falluja."
Ian Fisher contributed reporting from Rome for this article.
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| MisterOpus1 |
Quick question here - something a blogger just stumbled across. If the Pentagon calls this a "chemical weapon", white phosphorous that is, when SADDAM USES IT, then what the is wrong about calling it that very same descriptive when WE use it?
A 1995 Pentagon Intelligence document:
| quote: |
IRAQ HAS POSSIBLY EMPLOYED PHOSPHOROUS CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGAINST THE KURDISH POPULATION IN AREAS ALONG THE IRAQI-TURKISH-IRANIAN BORDERS. [...]
IN LATE FEBRUARY 1991, FOLLOWING THE COALITION FORCES' OVERWHELMING VICTORY OVER IRAQ, KURDISH REBELS STEPPED UP THEIR STRUGGLE AGAINST IRAQI FORCES IN NORTHERN IRAQ. DURING THE BRUTAL CRACKDOWN THAT FOLLOWED THE KURDISH UPRISING, IRAQI FORCES LOYAL TO PRESIDENT SADDAM ((HUSSEIN)) MAY HAVE POSSIBLY USED WHITE PHOSPHOROUS (WP) CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGAINST KURDISH REBELS AND THE POPULACE IN ERBIL (GEOCOORD:3412N/04401E) (VICINITY OF IRANIAN BORDER) AND DOHUK (GEOCOORD:3652N/04301E) (VICINITY OF IRAQI BORDER) PROVINCES, IRAQ.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/declass...431050_91r.html |
Is the Pentagon incorrect?
And I completely agree with you Occ, this argument should be more focused on the killing of innocent civilians, rather than the weaponry itself, but I must respectfully disagree, especially if the Pentagon names it a chemical weapon when Saddam uses it. |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
Today there's this from the NY Times--generally a more liberal leaning outfit (putting it nicely). The article makes a pretty clean case out of it. With one exception that they did use WP as a weapon directly against insurgents, as opposed to primarily for light. Someone will try to turn this into the next Abu Ghraib.:rolleyes:
U.S. bungling the response to the incident |
I'll come to bat any day of the week to state that the NYTimes is anything but a liberal leaning outfit, outside of its editorial pages. And the first two words I have for my case are these:
Judy Miller.
Now I won't say they're right leaning either, because I don't tend to see that too often myself. But they do tend to hit about as close to the middle as they possibly can, right up there with the WaPost.
Anyway, in addition to counter that fairly dubious article by that darn "left leaner" paper aside of what I showed above, here's an article from an instruction manual not too far from my neck of the woods. Strangely, this came from a British paper:
| quote: | US Army rules say: 'Don't use WP against people'
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Published: 19 November 2005
The debate over the use of white phosphorus in the battle of Fallujah took a new twist when it emerged the US Army teaches senior officers it is against the "laws of war" to fire the incendiary weapon at human targets.
A section from an instruction manual used by the US Army Command and General Staff School (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, makes clear that white phosphorus (WP) can be used to produce a smoke screen. But it adds: "It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets."
The row has raged since last year when US troops cleared the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah during a two-week operation that resulted in the deaths of 50 US Marines and more than 1,200 insurgents. Though the US at first denied it had used WP, the Pentagon has admitted using the weapon against insurgent targets. It insists the use of incendiary weapons against military targets is permitted.
But military specialists said the "laws of land warfare" taught at the CGSC are the guidelines that the US Army teaches as general principles. The GCSC generally teaches officers of senior rank such as major and colonel. John Pike, of the military studies group GlobalSecurity.Org, said: "These are the general principles about proportionality, doctrine and so on and so forth."
The Pentagon said it could not account for the discrepancy between its admission that WP was used at Fallujah and the guidance in the teaching manual. A Pentagon spokesman, Lt-Col Barry Venable, said: "For starters, the handbook doesn't say it's banned ... It's also important to remember that WP was used in Fallujah to help dislodge insurgent fighters from prepared defensive positions so that they could then be targeted with high-explosives ammunition."
He also quoted the Army Field Manual, which states: "The use of weapons which employ fire ... is not violative of international law. They should not, however, be employed in such a way as to cause unnecessary suffering to individuals."
The 1980 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons prohibits use of incendiaries against civilians and demands that forces using them against military targets take all available steps to avoid civilian casualties.
Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, said: "The evidence available suggests that that may not have been done."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world...ticle327926.ece |
I dunno, seems again they're trying hard to parse definitions a bit here. |
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| ogvh5150 |
The Times does not fall in the same category of a credible news source.
All the news editors and publishers have to be pro war. Without this war too few people will never see substantial gain in their investment portfolios.
Now let me check my mailbox for that invite to Bohemian Club this summer.....nope looks like I didn't make the cut. I am not a one percenter. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
Is the Pentagon incorrect?
And I completely agree with you Occ, this argument should be more focused on the killing of innocent civilians, rather than the weaponry itself, but I must respectfully disagree, especially if the Pentagon names it a chemical weapon when Saddam uses it. |
Yea the Pentagon is incorrect. If the Bush administration tried to make a case for war by saying that Iraq was using chemical weapons, and pointed to an instance whereby they used WP in 2003, I would laugh in their face. It's an incendiary, not a chemical weapon. |
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