US Army Intel Specialist Admits Torture in Iraq; Marines, Navy SEALS also Torturing

[Drake Tungsten]

Well, if WP really could be classified as a chemical weapon under some usages, you figure someone would've got around to it in its 60+ years of common use.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


WP creates a noxious gas, and exposure to WP can poison a human being through chemical toxicity. Both are prohibited under the 1928 protocol.

Bull****.

[notyoueither]

That convention is covering the use of poison gas, or other wide area chemical or biological agent. It does not ban tracers.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


WP creates a noxious gas, and exposure to WP can poison a human being through chemical toxicity. Both are prohibited under the 1928 protocol.

WP burns at extremely high temperatures any time it comes into contact with oxygen. People are going to die from the 1200 degree burns long before they get die of chemical toxicity. The big problem is that WP burns on a basic compound level so that even tiny pieces of dust are going to burn at temperatures hot enough to melt steel and that can't be good to breath in. Those people are going to die from their burns though since humans just can't survive that kind of heat.

[Dinner]

Also I've heard that WP is used for illumination rounds at night. A very small amount of WP burns extremely brightly so A WP round with a small paraschute is used to light up a battlefield at night.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by notyoueither


Bull****.

Sorry, KH, but don't you think the use of WP in combat would have been raised sometime in the '40s if what you say is correct?

[Chemical Ollie]

WP was used by UK in the Falklands and in Afghanistan, according to some documentary books I've read. The SAS call it "Warm Persons".

While being a nasty weapon, all weapons are, and it's not illegal. WP grenades hits only a limited area. I would say excessive use of 20 mm bullets are more nasty, travelling long distances, penetrating multiple walls and killing innocents trying to get cover inside their homes.

But wasn't torture the topic of this thread?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Oerdin

Napalm is nothing more then the same petroleum jelly you use to bugger your girlfriend with mixed with gasoline.

Not all of us come from the MRT144 school of sexual conduct.

[Agathon]

Nice to see the usual suspects ready to defend the use of horrific weapons and torture against civilians.

Who cares if it is called a "chemical" weapon. It's evil crap and shouldn't be used except to illuminate, which is not how it was being used here.

[Egbert]

Originally posted by Seeker
Because it's tradition

Oh, and I see the Americans are up to the usual shameless evil.

Why is everyone surprised at the results of a unilateral, illegal aggression? Isn't this exactly what I predicted would happen?

The world needs a permanent standing UN army, paid for by UN taxes, with the right to enter any country and arrest war criminals indicted by the International Court.

That would make the next crop of Little Caesars, yankee or otherwise, think twice and give International Law the teeth and credibility it has so sadly been lacking.

Allow me to point out one little problem with a UN army paid for by UN taxes. THE USA , Japan and the big European countries would be paying most of the "UN taxes". The USA would be paying the biggest share (her allies would be paying for most of the remaining expense).

I can not begin to imagine the USA (or Japan or Europe) paying for an army capable of invading the USA. It becomes particularly unimaginable when one considers that every member has a vote at the UN. It becomes ludicrous when one considers that a gaggle of countries such as North Korea , Syria et al could join up to force a vote to invade the USA with an army paid for by the USA and her allies.

[DRoseDARs]

Well, any such action in this hypothetical scenario would be decided in the Security Council, not the General Assembly, so really only 5 members would have a vote currently. Then there's the power of veto...

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

Nobody said it was.

Obviously, the U.S. military doesn't feel that such weapons are o.k. to use, hence the their self-ban of using napalm. There's not much difference between WP and napalm in its effect.

Did we also fail to note that Fallujah was a city full of innocent civilians? In fact, the news reports from RAI that sparked the outrage in Italy indicated evidence for large civilian casualties due to WP:

Fallujah had been emptying out for weeks as the U.S. had been warning everyone to get the hell out, we are coming. That is the main reason that there were so few civilian casualties and why the insurgents had built up so many fortifications. IIRC less than 10% of the normal population of the city remained, mostly men who wanted to protect their property and were confident that their distance from known insurgent positions offered them decent protection from American firepower.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Oerdin
I know our incendiary granades issued with vehicles (to disable the vehicle to prevent capture by the enemy) are all WP granades. You're supposed to put the incendiary granade on the hood of a Humvee so that it would burn through the engine block or on top of a radio to prevent the enemy capturing a working frequency hopping radio with the current encryption fill.

Would the anti-WP people agree that is a legit use of WP?

When I was in the Army it was a thermite grenade that was used to burn through the engine block in the demonstration.

On a seperate note, the military didn't decide it didn't need napalm, it was eliminated from the inventory by executive order during the Clinton administration, and there was some disagreement within the military as to the wisdom of that move, and moreso later during the battle of Tora Bora when our HE and penetrator bombs couldn't destroy the bunkers inside of those caves.

WP is useful in a number of ways. Aside from its excellence in creating smoke it is also good incendiary and an excellent weapon for denying a particular point to the enemy due to its ability to create a lot of heat. It can also be used like napalm to burn the oxygen out of the air in an area (say around a bunker that is impervious to direct fire), though it isn't as good as napalm at this.

[Verto]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Let me get this all processed.
Military is getting blown up on roadsides by altered munitions.
Civilians are being decapited. Suicide bombers hitting civilian as well as military. (No uniform wornby these bombers.)
Ib spite of all this, you want my main concern to be for those doing these things I described above?
I don't think so.

Your main concern? If this is true, I want you to be up in arms at the soldiers doing these acts, and the people in charge who put them there, created an environment where torture could exist, and gave the order. The armed forces of the United States, in my book, should be held to a higher standard than terrorists or religious extremists. People preach about democracy, freedom, liberty, how our veterans died to bring those things to the world, and then turn a blind eye to anything that shows the horrible dishonor being inflicted on our military from within. But I guess as long as you can dismiss the issue as, but they did it first!...

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
While we're on the subject, the U.S. military has had to admit, despite a previous denial, that we used chemical weapons in Fallujah:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4440664.stm

What the hell are we doing?

Incendiary munitions are not CW. Nor is napalm. Maybe we should shake their hands and give them daisies?