No screaming eagle shit, Kos and Steven D.:
US Army Admits Use of White Phosphorus as Weapon by Steven D
Wed Nov 09, 2005 at 02:48:58 PM PDT
(From the diaries. Let’s see them deny this shit now — kos)
That’s right. Not from Al Jazheera, or Al Arabiya, but the US fucking Army, in their very own publication, from the (WARNING: pdf file) March edition of Field Artillery Magazine in an article entitled “The Fight for Fallujah”:
“WP [i.e., white phosphorus rounds] 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.”
In other words the claim by the US Government that White Phosphorus was used only for illumination at Fallujah had been pre-emptively debunked by the Army. Indeed, the article goes on to make clear that soldiers would have liked to have saved more WP rounds to use for “lethal missions.”
It is difficult for me to imagine finding a group of people more collectively eager to villify individuals regarding subjects they do not understand than the folks peddling this idiocy. Notwithstanding the continued assertion that WP is somehow a ‘chemical weapon’ (the Kossacks even have a ‘chemical weapons’ tag), the real assertion that continues to rankle most of us is the continued insistence that these rounds were used indiscriminately to attack civilians, used carelessly and killed a number of civilians, and that the rounds are somehow banned weapons.
As I have stated repeatedly, while WP has a number of uses, the primary one is illumination and marking. It has a number of different uses, but using WP is not illegal or somehow ‘worse’ than having an HE round dumped on your head (and I have had HE rounds dumped on my head- well within ‘danger close’ in an accidental friendly fire incident), it is not a violation of international law, and no one is trying to hide anything.
Jason, an infantry officer who served in Iraq, noted this yesterday:
WP can also be used to force the enemy to abandon a ditch, to escape the burning bits of phosphorus. He can then be engaged with direct fires or DPICM.
There is nothing prohibiting a commander from using WP rounds against an armed enemy in the field, nor should there be. This idea that DPICM is somehow more humane than WP is a feel-good illusion propogated by people who lead sheltered lives.
Others are simply reaching for any argument, no matter how outlandish, with which to slander our troops with vile and ill-informed accusations in order to score cheap political points.
I avoid accusations of ‘anti-americanism’ and other crap like that, which I usually find as pointless and offensive as the ‘chickenhawk stuff,’ so I bristled with the last sentence in that quote when Jason wrote it yesterday. But that was yesterday. I really do not know what is motivating these people to continue to make these claims other than a hatred of the war in Iraq that runs so deep they are willing to say anything, including launching their own careless artillery salvos of outright falsehoods intended to bring down the evil Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld neo-con cabal, but tragically scoring only collateral damage- the reputation of this country and our military
A military composed of troops, I might add, who are only doing their jobs and using the weapons they are provided, trained, and authorized to use. Furthermore, they take pride in using those weapons carefully so as not to harm innocents, unlike Steven D. and those like him, who deploy their rhetorical bombs with no such caution.
And it galls me to no end that Kos, a former artilleryman who claims to know something about the military and claims to care about our troops, continues to support and push this nonsense. It is disgusting.
*** Update ***
And the bullshit continues in earnest. It is no longer just an accusation with no verification (and an ugly one at that), but now the ‘nuanced’ position at DKos is that we did in fact do everything that the Italian crew has accused.
These shits are making me sick.
And you can just go to hell, you ignorant twerp. While making these vile accusations and repeating the agitprop of those who neither care to tell the truth nor having any interest in recanting once their nonsense is exposed may make you feel good about yourself (Aren’t you noble- you are against the war, and to show how against the war you are you will repeat, ad nauseum, claims you neither understand nor have ANY proof of), you are smearing the good name of a lot of guys who have done nothing wrong, all in your zeal to do combat with an administration you don’t like. BTW- I never referred to anyone as anti-American (nor, for that matter, did Jason), so you might re-read this post and edit yours accordingly, but I am not counting on it. Accuracy and honesty are not strong points from some on the left regarding issues like this.
I am done discussing this issue before I explode into a real rage. I understand people are against the war, and I am willing to allow people to say their piece. But when people start accusing troops of indiscrimiinately, and worse yet, intentionally using ‘chemical weapons’ to target civilians, we have gone beyond people saying their piece. At that point, you have become nothing more than a willing mouthpiece for those who sincerely do wish to do harm to our troops, the innocent civilians of Iraq, and this country. Even worse, it is being done for little more than domestic political considerations. And I won’t excuse, forgive, or forget that.
There is a special place in hell for people like that.
Just out of curiosity- how did Jesse find someone dumber than Amanda?
*** Update ***
More here.
Also here, from another monster who indiscriminately used chemical weapons on civilians war criminal veteran:
Way back when I used to work gunnery for the big bullets – 203mm/8” artillery.
You recieve a call for fire about a battalion column of vehicles on road X, extending from grid Y to grid Z. Say it’s been spotted by an FO attached to a short company of our tanks and a couple of squads of infrantry. They are undetected, but badly outnumbered.
A slick FDO would check which way the wind was blowing on the battlefield, order a shell-mix, fuze mix mission: two or three rounds of WP to land upwind and several hundred meters on the far side of the target, and a crapload of HE/Quick and HE/VT fired as immediate suppression.
If you use illumination rounds, which are basically bazillion candle power magnesium flares, you light up EVERYTHING. Not good for the undetected friendlies close to the enemy. Selecting WP on the ground beyond the enemy combined with an immediate, uncorrected volley of HE will A) creates a glowing white wall about a hundred meters tall, backlighting everything in front of it for the observing good guys to target, B)prevents the enemy from seeing jack doodly anywhere else because they will be dazzled by the glare, C) prevents the enemy from running away in the direction of the WP smoke because they know that they’ll be cooked if they go that way, and D)panic and disorganize the column due to the huge explosions on the ground and above it, even if the first, uncorrected barrage lands a few hundred meters wide – giving the friendlies on the point a good chance to strike hard and fast first – and then the next barrage WILL be corrected and on target.
Willie Pete has many uses.
Ugly stuff, war. Thank God we still produce people who know how to do it right.
He actually knows a thing or two about this evil ‘chemical weapon, ‘ though, so best to ignore him and keep chanting that we used banned chemical weapons on innocent civilians. Because the Bush cabal must be defeated, no matter the cost, of course.
*** Update ***
Congrats, jerks. Steven D’s post is now giving international ‘exposure’ to the lie that we ‘used phosphorus on civlians.’ Then some fool like Justin Raimondo can cite it, which can then be cited on Al Jazeera, and then so on and so forth. And before you know it, more bullshit agitprop is ‘real!’
But hey- the cause has been served!
*** Update ***
Another war criminal admits to using white phosphorus in Iraq:
Sometimes, inexperienced company commanders can forget about their mortar section’s importance to the company during the counterinsurgency fight. On all raids and cordon and searches, I took a minimum of one 60 mm tube with 24 rounds of high explosive, 12 rounds of illumination and six white phosphorus rounds. They suppressed enemy personnel in the objective area, suppressed personnel attempting to escape, illuminated the battlefield and marked targets for rotary-wing air support when it was needed. Because the FOB was located on the edge of a town, I would periodically (on average, four times a week) use mortar illumination rounds as pseudo harassing and interdicting fires. My intent was not to cause any unnecessary casualties, but I wanted them to know that we were still there and alert.
Quick, Kos, before the government destroys the evidence. Get a screen capture for use at the Hague and the ICC!
Plus, harassment and interdiction is so VIETNAM! QQQQQQUAGMIRE!
*** Update ***
Post edited for language to appease the net nannies who are quick to point out that I have violated my civility rules but yet remain unfazed that people, with no evidence whatsoever, continue to claim that our troops intentionally (or, perhaps, unintentionally) fired ‘chemical weapons’ with magical properties at civilians, causing the moral equivalent of Hiroshima (seriously- someone made the comparison in the comments). All claims, of course, are ill-informed and designed for domestic political advantage.
*** Update ***
HAHAHA! Accusing American soldiers of war crimes and using chemical weapons is funny! Look how mad I have made some people! Let’s see if I can push John Cole over the deep end! Watch me go eat my own poo!
*** Update ***
More military geniuses in the comments at Pandagon:
What part of the troops were ordered to do this does he not understand? This is not about demonizing the troops, they are soldiers doing what they are told, following orders sent down by the Pentagon. Same rule applies to the Abu Grahib torture scandals, that too is not about demonizing the troops or blaming a few “bad apples,” it’s about their commanders, and ultimately it is about the Commander in Chief.
Anyone with a basic grasp of how the military works knows that the people responsible for actions like these are not the soldiers following orders.
Now they were ordered to use that evil chemical weapon known as white phosphorus on the troops. Anyone with any grasp of the military would know that!
Come on John Cole, you greasy stain on your father’s pants, the army has lowered the IQ quota so low that I’m sure even you could get in.
Because we didn’t vote for the guy who vetoed the bill to get the troops proper armor, buddy.
I will show you my DD 214 if you show me yours.
Seriously- you can not even parody these fools. Part of the reason that I just removed Pandagon from the blogroll months ago. It is a waste of bandwidth. The best part of Pandagon is named Ezra Klein, and his site is worth a daily read.
*** Update ***
More unintentional humor from the folks at Pandagon:
I never knew anybody who’d been in combat that is so seemingly casual about the use of Willy Pete, JJE. What leads you to believe this “person” has been in?
Fool #1: Our troops massacred civilians with chemical weapons!
Me: Um, no they didn’t. They used WP, which is not a chemical weapon and is approved for military use.
Fool #2: Why are you so callous about employing WP! And how do I know for sure you were in the military?
*** Update ***
Even more here.
Rick Moran
Bravo! Sing it brother,
aop
I think that pretty much sums it up. People feel so misled, angry, and paranoid about the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq (and justifiably so), that bad faith is always assumed w/r/t anything related to the war.
jg
Again, when its used as a weapon why isn’t it a chemical weapon? Its the chemicals that kill you right? Some might read ‘chemical weapon’ and leap to sky is falling WMD conclusions but its still a chemical weapon right? If the term isn’t correct what term would be approriate?
jg
Is it haterd of Bush and war that makes it easier to jump to wrong conclusions or isit being lied to consistently that makes it easier to believe shit you normally wouldn’t give 2 seconds thought to?
space
I agree that Kos is off base here. But I’d like to make a few observations regarding this entire issue.
There are really three questions involved. First, should WP be used as an anti-personnel weapon? Second, if WP is an acceptable anti-personnel weapon, what limitations should be placed on its use in dense urban environments, or other situations where civilians are at serious risk of collateral damage? Lastly, has the U.S. been sufficiently forthcoming in discussing how these weapons are used and should be used?
1. It is not entirely clear whether WP should be used as an anti-personnel weapon. On one hand, it is not necessarily more horrific than other ways that are not banned. On the other hand, getting it dumped on you sounds pretty terrible and I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t more painful than some banned chemical weapons.
One thing I do know is that being familiar with military tactics may make a person less likely to embarass themselves factually. However, military experience doesn’t make a person more qualified to render moral judgments as to what is appropriate in war.
2. Yes, the real question, is how this was used in Fallujah. Did some HP flares used to illuminate areas burn some civilians. Or was WP indiscriminately spread across large areas, with little concern of hitting innocents? I certainly can’t answer that question. But I will point out that the number of people who have responded to these allegations by saying “war is hell and bad stuff happens” makes me seriously wonder how much restraint was employed.
Our military leaders take great pains to impress upon the world how much care is taken to avoid civilian casualties. I certainly took them at their word back in March of 2003. But I am increasingly skeptical. The entire Fallujah mission demonstrated an incredible callousness towards the civilian population. I am sure that our soldiers cross their fingers before shooting in the direction of insurgents, but I don’t know what more they do. I do not ASSUME the worst, but I no longer assume the best either.
3. Whether or not you believe that WP should be used as an anti-personnel weapon, it is clear that the DoD has been caught denying its use. This comes on the heels of the DoD denying that napalm was used in Iraq.
I believe that it is healthy for a free society to have an open debate as to what methods are appropriate to use in warfare. That debate is undermined if the military lies about the tactics that are used, even if the tactics themselves could be legitimate.
Lines
John,
what about the residual from WP, HE and other weapons that is causing massive health problems in Falluja now?
Pb
Your assertion, not his, seeing as how that assertion appears nowhere in the diary proper.
You know what I find disgusting? When innocent people die. And then, when people subsequently try to excuse those deaths on legalistic and technical grounds. Did it ever occur to you that just because a given course of action might not be illegal, some might still consider it immoral, or at the least unproductive?
You’re complaining about the press this is getting on Dialy Kos of all places. Imagine how well received this news is in Europe, or in the Middle East (although I bet some of the people there already know all about Fallujah). We’re really winning their hearts and minds now!
Steve
Tags like “chemical weapons,” by the way, are completely user-generated. Kos doesn’t create some pre-set list of categories. You could give your diary a “John Cole is God” tag if you wanted.
The allegation was made that use of WP in large quantities as a weapon results in a toxic cloud similar to that which results from the use of chemical weapons. (One of the reasons chemical weapons are banned is that you don’t want a toxic cloud to float downwind and wipe out an entire city.) Is this factually accurate?
Geek, Esq.
I think the big problem is:
A) That it was used in an urban combat environment, which dramatically raises the possibility that civilians would be affected and runs afoul of international treaties; and
B) It’s really nasty shit that was documented on camera.
rilkefan
John, there does seem to be some issues concerning how broadly the army allows these munitions to be used:
The first quote above seems to indicate use in violation of this regulation.
wufnik
John, space’s comments go partway to the heart of this–do we know enough to be able to safely say, one way or the other, whether WP was used indiscriminately? At present, no. At this point, you want to fall back on giving the soldiers the benefit of the doubt–and as a veteran, I see why you might want to do that. But then we realize that we’re not dealing with just soldiers, but the pentagon, which has yet to tell the truth (it seems) during the past two and a half years. Which is why our reaction is–maybe too automatically–to not believe them. But don’t you think we have cause?
ppGaz
The “chemical weapon” moniker denotes a minor flap, AFAIC. Clearly WP is not a chemical weapon. But I am not sure how important that distinction is to whatever the larger story is seen to be here.
As for the eagerness to “villify” — well, that’s just a gratuitous characterization. The administration has made the bed it’s in, I have no sympathy for its plight at all. I sincerely hope that every potatohead spends eternity in hell.
However, if the flap is interfering with readiness and/or the ability of military in combat to do their jobs, I stick with my earlier position, which is that this is a matter best argued about when the war is over. So far the blogosphere hasn’t impressed me with its fitness for dealing with issues like this during wartime. On either side of the equation. But when it comes to what the troops need to do their jobs, I am going to have to give the nod to the people who are on the ground. If they can’t count on us to let them do their jobs, then we don’t have the right to send them there in the first place.
LBNL, DKos gets a million page views a day, and should. The gratuitous bashing is starting to wear thin. The reason for its existence …. a dishonest and corrupt government … is still there, fucking up the world with ipunity as we speak. If Kos is not 100% right on every technical issue all the time, who gives a shit?
KC
You know, I’m with John on this one. It just seems stupid to scream about something obvious, not hidden, but perhaps known only vaguely by the average non-service person. And, it’s not going to do anything to encourage service people to their cause.
Geek, Esq.
JC:
What’s your take on the use of WP in civilian areas? If there weren’t any civilians around, I’m not going to get too worked up by this. But, if there were still numerous civilians in the area, then this is a war crime, imo.
TallDave
The entire Fallujah mission demonstrated an incredible callousness towards the civilian population.
I can only shake my head when I see this kind of incredibly ignorant indictment of our troops’ behavior.
Wake up people, we are fighting what is probably the most humane major war ever fought, with more care given to avoiding civilian casualties (often at severe risk to our own troops) than has probably ever been taken in the whole history of warfare. But this war is also being examined under a microscope like no war ever has been, and unfortunately those with an ax to grind will use every last tidbit they can glean to attack our soldiers’ actions.
jg
Thr TROOPS didn’t plan the mission. They don’t choose the weapons. No one but the biggest idiots and discussion deflectors can see this as hating the troops.
TallDave
Right, because George Bush personally plans every mission.
That’s the trick: find something our troops allegedly did wrong, then claim you’re blaming Republicans not the troops. It’s hilarious to watch.
jg
Nope. Not saying that either. Keep trying.
JonBuck
Wikipedia has an article about White Phosphorus.
jg
Never said the troops did anything wrong and since I’m a registered republican I ain’t blaming me.
TallDave
Oh, and I see now our troops are not only using WMD, they committed “war crimes” with them. Hey, but we support the troops! Don’t question our patriotism! ROTFLMAO!!
Wow, you can almost feel the sanity being eroded away.
I’ll leave the rest of the thread to the lunatics. It’s only fair: this is, after all, their asylum.
Steve S
What “Chemical Weapons” tag? Hell, I removed that and the “War Crimes” tag because they were inappropriate.
Now to the point…
Ok, yesterday linking to the actual Kos diary… that I would agree was Kos’ stupidity.
But this one? It’s just on the Recommended Links. Kos ain’t got nothing to do with this. Some idiot writes up a diary, and then users of the community promote it.
It’d be like me promoting a Rush Limbaugh diatribe and claiming you were responsible for it. How would you like that? Hey, maybe you’re responsible for the Intelligent Design crap in Kansas too?
This diary is not nearly as bad as some of the shit I’ve seen come up on the recommended list, but even then I was smart enough to realize Kos had nothing to do with the idiocy. Hell, kos once went through and group banned a bunch of idiots for posting conspiracy theory diaries, as well as all of those who recommended them.
Steven D is wrong, but your wild stereotyping and trying to spread the blame onto a whole group when it’s just a vocal stupid minority… that’s out of line.
ss
Wait wait wait wait wait wait…. They’re using potentially fatal weapons in the war!? Isn’t that a war crime? Aren’t Americans limited to using rubber bullets and sticky foam against terrorists until after they’ve been tried in a court of law and found guilty by a jury of their peers? Then after they’re safely and comfortably detained, we can talk about whether the death penalty is inherently cruel and unusual (which it clearly is).
jg
Well put, ironinc as heel but well put.
Or. You defend everything this administration does by saying the opposition hates the troops. Its hilarious to watch.
stickler
This thread is a great example of what “quagmire” looks like in real time.
Starting a war of choice on the basis of lies will have the curious but entirely predictable side-affect of encouraging serious skepticism among the citizenry once those lies are exposed. This was true after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, it was true after World War I, and it’s true now.
Again, for the thousandth time, the problem here — and the heart of the criticism from most sane people — is NOT that “our soldiers” made bad or damnable decisions. The criticism is that they are in Iraq in the first place, and that they were ordered to take Fallujah using some pretty brutal tactics. The sort of tactics that make great AlQaida recruiting videos.
If you seriously believe that this is the “most humane major war ever fought,” then I have some shock and awe to sell you. The United States has never fought “humane war.” The term is contradictory and it’s not the way our armed forces have been trained or equipped. The American way of war is to bring overwhelming firepower to bear on the enemy (and then sometimes claim that we were being precise and careful … after the bombardment). Our military, before 2003, realized that counter-insurgency warfare sucked and was incompatible with this way of fighting, so they more or less tried to pretend it would never happen again. Thanks to Bush, the generals were proved wrong. We’re all paying the price.
jg
And this is why we never move forward. One side is missing the others point because they’re to busy finding new ways to make fun of them.
Concern for US soldiers using chemwems in a war based on overthrowing someone nasty enough to use chemwems is the same as thinking the US shouldn’t use force?
Gray
I don’t think Kos (or better, Steven D, in this case) is off base. Again, what’s their point?
“In other words the claim by the US Government that White Phosphorus was used only for illumination at Fallujah had been pre-emptively debunked by the Army.”
What does the army say, regarding the use of WP? “Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. U.S. forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night,not at enemy fighters.”
But what’s in the March/April edition of the US Army’s “Field Artillery Magazine? “We fired ‘shake and bake’ missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out.” And your reader Jason writes something along the same line: “WP can also be used to force the enemy to abandon a ditch, to escape the burning bits of phosphorus. ”
So, not only illumination purposes, but burning phosphor used directly against the enemy. If this is SOP, why does the army openly (and patheticly) lie about it? Neither you nor any of your readers did answer that essential question.
And why do you claim: “the real assertion that continues to rankle most of us is the continued insistence that these rounds were used indiscriminately to attack civilians, used carelessly and killed a number of civilians”. But in the same article you read, Kos cites an embedded journalist describing a mortar team in Falujah: “Bogert is a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the city Friday and Saturday, never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused”.
Sry, John, but imho you didn’t read the article very well. It says, WP wasn’t used for illumination only, it was used regularly by mortar teams without any reinsurance that civilains wouldn’t be hit, and now the army lies about all this. You don’t debunk Steven’s statements, you even provide more evidence in your blog. In fact, you argue about statements that aren’t in this article you cite. That’s spin, and normally that’s not the level of your arguments here.
ppGaz
News flash, Dave. I don’t consider you any authority on “patriotism.” Just seeing you use the word makes the word seem diminished. People who beat their chests are not patriots in my estimation.
Mr.Ortiz
If the question is “where did the idea that WP is a chemical weapon come from?”, then the answer is in the 30 minute video that started this flap. In it, a US soldier who was part of the attack on Fallujah, and who appears to believe himself to be a whistle-blower, states in the clearest possible terms that WP is a chemical weapon. To anyone without a military background (myself included), that was pretty convincing.
MN Politics Guru
What bothers me about the story is this part:
Now, I may not know what the S.O.P. is in these situations because I’ve never been in the military, but this sounds like simply firing WP somewhere and not really caring where it ends up, nor being interested in finding out. The realities of war be what they may, but this doesn’t sound like something I would be proud to hear.
ss
jg
“And this is why we never move forward”
You might also note that we never move forward because you keep repeating ad nauseum your supposed truism that Bush lied to get us into war. That he LIED by asserting the existence of WMDs in Iraq– a claim that was supported overwhelmingly by international intelligence and accepted as true by Blair, Clinton, Kerry and the entire Congress that voted to approve military action in Iraq. The fact that no weapons were found does not prove a LIE. A person would not be so dumb as to knowingly misstate the existence of WMD to justify action, knowing that the LIE would be revealed as soon as no WMD were found.
So long as you continue to support any arguments against the war on grounds of the administration’s alleged LIES and evil maliciousness, don’t expect me to even BEGIN to pretend that you’re capable of intellectual honesty.
smijer
I read this on the same day that I saw video of WP raining down over fallujah like so many 4th of July fireworks, and photos of women and children whose skin was caramelized by its effects, and I remember that this, incredibly, is the second full-scale invasion of Fallujah undertaken in as many years, for some reason the first one didn’t “take” after all the great promises of how it would be a turning point and put the resistance into its “last throes”.
Sorry, mister… I ain’t buying… Blame who you want. Field commanders are “troops” – if they authorized the use of WP against personell in urban areas, then blame the hell out of them. If it was some dirtbag in the Pentagon (as I suspect) – blame the hell out of them… And if the man who carries ultimate responsibility for this war – the man who decided that this war, like the show, “must go on” fails to fire the dirtbags at the Pentagon or insist that the Pentagon fire the field commanders… then fire him.
Legal or not, as one Kos diarist mentioned, WP melts the skin off of children. Reason enough to remove the perpetrators from power… at least if it can be done by peaceful means, like voting.
Gray
“Now, I may not know what the S.O.P. is in these situations because I’ve never been in the military, but this sounds like simply firing WP somewhere and not really caring where it ends up, nor being interested in finding out.”
I’ve been in the military, but luckily my radio set didn’t shoot grenades. However, I know that burning phosphor is nasty stuff. You can’t extinguish it, it burns even when under water. I can’t imagine the pain it must cause if it burns into flesh. And the victim has no chance to do anything against it. How would you feel if you had to watch US troops burn in an eruption of white phosphor? Does anybody think it’s a good thing to use this stuff against other human beings, when the most advanced army of the world has lots of other weaspons to use?
Slide
Kudos to space for a brilliant post. You ask a lot of pertinent questions that I have yet to hear answered. All we get is a knee jerk response from Cole defending the military which is as wrong as the knee jerk responses he is complaining about on the other side attacking the military.
Gray in his/her post asked why did the military find it necessary to lie to the American public if everything done in Falluja was entirely appropriate? Do they just lie as a matter of course?
So please John instead of just screaming and yelling at those that may not be as knowledgeable as you, why don’t you educate us all and answer the questions posed by space and Gray.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Ok after reading that, can someone tell me why are we arguing about this? Whether it is a chemical weapon or not is irrelevant. The army has admitted to using it as a weapon against personnel targets. Clearly this is a violation of the law stated above. End of story.
ppGaz
That’s horseshit. At best, the intelligence was mixed, confusing, and contradictory. The fact that some people cherry picked the intelligence, or insisted on a single interpretation, and were able to manipulate a consensus, doesn’t let them off the hook. The bottom line is THEY WERE WRONG and they only listened to one type of evidence.
Slide
New NBC poll just out says 57% think BUSH intentionally misled Americans in the run up to the Iraq war. That is a devastating number. Devastating.
Mike S
You might prefer Hunter’s diary on this.
Some people may only like that part because he then talks about the effects of these devices and makes an important point.
Remfin
We called it a chemical weapon when Saddam was allegedly making it before the war. I remember a speech saying something about “Sarin, VX, and WP”. We also have reports like this (which ironically I believe is after the Fallujah battle):
Once committed, Iraq spent large amounts of money and resources on its CW program (see Figure 1). The outbreak of war with Iran in 1980 and Iraq’s failure to attain a speedy victory appear to have been the impetus for the Ministry of Defense’s launch of its industrial-scale, comprehensive, strategic CW program—code-named Research Center 922 or Project 922—on June 8, 1981. The objective was to produce CW agents—mustard, Tabun, Sarin, and VX, chemical munitions, and white phosphorus (WP) munitions. (See Annex B.)
ss
ppgaz
“THEY WERE WRONG ”
Right. That’s not lying. You think Clinton was manipulating fact to build consensus. …
Wait. I just caught myself about to engage in debate in John Cole’s comments. What a pointless exercise in head-banging futility.
ppGaz
Snort. Fifty-seven percent, including me, according to today’s MSNBC numbers, now think that Bush deliberately misled the nation in the leadup to war. That’s approaching the 2/3 mark.
You are watching a gigantic, collossal fuckup on a historical scale. I have no use for anyone who sits around a blog and tries to put lipstick on that pig.
ss
“Fifty-seven percent, including me, according to today’s MSNBC numbers, now think that Bush deliberately misled the nation in the leadup to war.”
Yeah. And that makes it so? When dumbasses like you run around stating as fact that Bush LIED, the number of people believing that Bush lied will logically increase, regardless of whether Bush lied.
Mike S
Who knew that ppGaz had the power to influence 57% of the country.
Where the hell were you during the election, ppGaz?
ppGaz
Right, got it. The vast majority of Americans is helplessly in the thrall of “dumbasses like me” who post to rather obscure rightwing blogs.
Your grasp of the reality of this situation is something south of nonexistent. Americans are steadily, relentlessly, and slowly weighing what they have seen and coming to conclusions. They are right, and you are wrong.
ppGaz
I can’t even influence 57% of the liberal posters on this blog. Not even when TallDave and Darrell are flinging their poo at me and I am giving them the flingback. Not even when John Cole is popping a vein and calling me names they wouldn’t let him use in the Army. Not even when I am offering food, booze and money to get people to agree with me. Not even when I am channeling DougJ.
Paddy O'Shea
The confusion on this site continues unabated. John, John, John. Nobody is trying to vilify our troops. What they are trying to do is vilify the amoral incompetents who put them into this awful position in the first place. Our troops deserve far better leadership than they are getting from the likes of Bush, Blabbermouth Cheney and the increasingly bizarre Donald Rumsfeld. The chances of any of these 3 characters providing effective leadership to our fighting men and women in Iraq is about as remote as George W. Bush coming up with a plausible reason for our being there in the first place.
That is where the blame lies.
And honestly, outside of this tempest ridden teapot of a blog do you really think anybody is actually parsing these fine distinctions of what constitutes moral and immoral weaponry long enough to actually care? In the minds of most people this war is an historic disaster. Period.
Case in point:
“The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, released Wednesday night (that is, right now) finds that all five of Bush’s job approval ratings – on overall job performance, the economy, foreign policy, terrorism and Iraq – are at all-time lows in the survey. In additon, the CIA leak scandal seems to be taking a toll on the administration, with nearly 80 percent believing the indictment of Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, is a serious matter, and with Bush experiencing a 17 point drop since January in those who see him as honest and straightforward.”
“According to the poll, Bush’s approval rating stands at an all-time low of 38 percent, a one-point decline since October; in fact, this is the third consecutive NBC/Journal survey showing Bush at an all-time low on his job approval. And it doesn’t stop there: Approval for his handling of the economy (34 percent), foreign policy (35 percent, terroism (39 percent), and Iraq (32 percent) have all hit rock bottom.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9981177/
orogeny
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007530.php
Mike S
That’s the problem. You’re thinking too small. Your real influence is with the public at large.
ppGaz
[ ahem ] Mah fellow Amurricans …..
ss
Yes ppGaz. I meant you personally. But who really cares if I meant INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST people like you, whether in blogs or in the media, who continue to propogate the BUSH LIED meme, despite the well-established fact that he relied on evidence believed to be reliable by the CIA, FBI, Clinton, Kerry, Blair, and Congress.
But it proves that you throw enough shit at the walls, it starts to stick. Congratulations.
(BTW, Rove himself couldn’t have thought up a better way for you to prove your intellectual dishonesty than for you to suggest that I intended to imply that your web comments have some massive impact on national poll numbers. Nice job.)
Mike S
Ain’t that the truth. Why just a few years ago we heard about mushroom clouds over Amurican cities, alluminum tubes who’s ONLY use was for nukes. Drones with the capability to reach our cities.
Is ss worried about any of that? Of course not.
Paddy O'Shea
SS: Nothing is ever Georgie’s fault, is it …
But look at it this way: Let’s say he didn’t lie about WMD and all the rest, let’s just say he was gullible enough to believe all that nonsense and took us to war over it. A war that is proving to have some pretty awful consequences for an awful lot of people.
Does that really make him a better President? Or just a dangerous fool who took us to war over things that turned out to not even exist.
Either way, he’s a disaster.
Mike S
And to be clear. I don’t say that they lied. They misled us.
smijer
Hey, SS – What’s the difference between DISHONEST and INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST?
Under which category would you place Kevin Drum’s very pertinent comments that orogeny linked to before…
And one more time, if WP is composed mainly of air-freshener and sunscreen, why did the Pentagon lie about how it was being used in Iraq?
Darrell
Who lied about Iraq?
CaseyL
Jesus H. F. Christ. Are you a child? I hope to hell you’re a kid; I’d hate to think someone capable of such a morally idiotic statement is old enough to vote.
Let’s turn this around, OK?
How about if the insurgents were using WP against our soldiers? Would you be making fatuous remarks about it then?
How about if the war was being fought here, in the US, after some self-proclaimed War President in another country decided we needed to be “liberated”? Would you still think using WP on civilians was giggle-worthy?
Bush’s supporters gave up any pretentions to a moral high ground ages ago. Now it’s just a straightforward dive to the moral cesspool.
Mike S
Funny you should post that after the link up thread to Drum’s site.
So just in case you missed that, here is the link one more time.
Darrell
I saw it Mike. I read both. Drum only dealth with a couple of issues, and did so unpersuasively imo. Podhoretz’s article was more detailed and hammers home the case that it’s the Dems doing the lying about Iraq, not Bush
Darrell
As pointed out in Drum’s comments:
K. Drum wrote:
Yet even now Sen. Carl Levin believes that there was no denying the evidence that Iraq had nuclear weapons.
Darrell
oops. should have wrote no denying that Saddam was pursuing a nuclear weapons program
Slide
yeah, in 1991
Mike
You asshats that keep spouting the Bush lied meme. He’s our President now and will be for the next three years. Get over it. If you don’t like the way things are, vote and change it. Pissing and moaning about the President now won’t do you a damn bit of good. The election was last year and he won. MOVE ON!!
We are in a war whether you agree with it or not. That’s not going to change. The objective now is to win that war. The constant focus on trying to find things wrong won’t change the fact we are in a freakin war right now. The bad guys people are the ones trying to kill our troops, not our troops.
Lines
ss: I’m going to suggest this as nicely as possible. You appear to be one that enjoys an echo chamber where your Bush fellating comments can be encouraged and sucked up like snow off a mirror.
He lied. He took information he knew was false, and repeated it. He claimed Iraq had ties to Al Queda after the CIA reported there was no connection. His administration lied about the location of WMD’s. They lied about mobile weapons labs, they lied about drones. They lied about the fact that weapons inspectors were no longer in the country.
Yet you persist in just saying “oops” and “prove it” when there isn’t any way to prove it more than its been proven. You decline to debate the issues, instead taking a polar opposite and then baiting people that are trying to find out real information from others. You provide nothing new, you piss on everything in the thread and yet you stay. Why?
Troll much?
Now, do you have something useful to the information here? Can you tell me an answer to my earlier question which is “what about the sediment that remained in the Falluja homes?” and a further question, “how dangerous is it?”
Of course, you don’t know, and you’ll spit and fume and call people names, essentially queering a thread more than even Darrell can do.
ppGaz
Um, no, not in your case. Give it up man, nobody is buying that bullshit any more.
ppGaz
Jesus. He’s a lame duck who, right now, as they say, could not sell a piece of ass on a troop train.
Nobody believes him any more. He’s done.
Slide
Darrell the number of people that agree with you are dwindling at a startling rate. Pretty soon it’ll be you and “Big Time” Cheney as the only ones left that didn’t think Bush mislead the nation into war.
Is there anything more reprehensible than leading a country into a quagmire of a war based on lies?
Lines
Darrell, can you prove that the rest of the world thought the aluminum tubes were usable for a nuclear process? Just one more lie in a long list. IAEA officials were screaming at the top of their lungs that those tubes were too old, too thin and were not of the right type to be used for a nuke process, yet this administration never retracted their earlier claims, and in a few cases attempted to push those claims again and again.
ss
Paddy–
There’s the beginning of some clarity to your point there. If we take the unfounded allegation of LIES off the table, you’ve still got ammunition to declare the Bush administration a failure. That’s fine. Avoiding the spread of misinformation permits an actual discussion on the merits of the war and the rationale for starting it. I appreciate it. To your statements, I can concede that Bush was gullible, but so was Clinton, Blair and all the Democrats that looked at the evidence and determined that Saddam was an actual threat to us. And I’ll concede that, as it turns out, Saddam was not the direct threat to the U.S. that we thought him to be. And although the war is having bad consequences for many, (it is war, after all) there’s also sprouts of some pretty good things happening in Iraq–elections, an approved constitution, and the beginning of political freedom where there had been none. On balance, will this be successful in creating a more stable mid-East? I HOPE so. And I’m trying to have the attitude necessary to support this war through to a satisfactory resolution. Sometimes it seems that others are HOPING for U.S. humiliation and failure in Iraq. HOPING that American soldiers get caught doing something hypocritical and worthy of condemnation. HOPING Bush is a dangerous disaster that will improve the chances for a Democratic President in 2008.
And if you’ve concluded that Bush is a dangerous fool, it does you no good to exaggerate what a dangerous fool he is. Either he’s a fool on his merits or he’s not. Make an argument how things could have been done differently and better, and then prove to me that Democrats are not dangerous fools.
And Lines, I’m sorry. Did you say something? Something about Troll?
Darrell
No connection? In 1999
ppGaz
The majority of the American people have pretty much concluded that. Incomeptant, not trustworthy.
Like I said, give it up.
Lines
ss: what have you actually contributed to this thread other than invective and mis-information?
And Darrell: Ooops, that was debunked as early as 2002. Would you like to repeat the lie that Sudan tried to hand him over to Clinton, twice?
Tractarian
ppGaz, watch it here. If you’re saying the intelligence was mixed about Saddam having WMDs you are dead wrong. The intelligence was unanimous on WMDs.
Where Bush embellished and exaggerated and cherry-picked was on the extent of the threat posed by those WMDs. In other words, everyone made the honest mistake of believing Saddam had WMDs, but the Bush admin also made dishonest mistakes and it’s the latter which they should be called out on.
As for this WP issue, I say: War is war. If the military brass lied about the use of WP directly on enemies, I would be upset but far from shocked. But I would be more upset about the lie than about the act itself.
Slide
god are we even still debating this shit? No ties to Al Qaeda. No ties to Bin Laden. No connection to 911. No WMD. No nuke program. No mobile bio labs. No aluminum tubes for centrifuges. No meeting in Prague with Atta. No unmanned drones to spread chem/bio weapons. Other than that he got everything else right.
ss
Jesus, Lines. Do you even know what invective means? ‘Cause in context, your accusation looks pretty silly.
Slide
That is just not true at all. There were strong doubts by experts that the aluminum tubes were unsuitable for centrifuges. The Air Force disagreed that the unmanned drones could be used to dispense bio/chem weapons. The State Department did not believe that Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake from Niger. There was plenty of doubts on EVERYTHING and those doubts were always IGNORED and the administration CHERRY PICKED to intelligence they wanted to hear. Anyone that denies that is living in a delusional state.
Lines
Tractarian: Why did Hans Blix believe there were no programs and no stockpiles, then?
Sorry, there were plenty of people that didn’t believe Saddam had WMD’s. There were tons of people saying that if WMD’s were found, they were most likely so old that they no longer were potent enough to be used as rat poison. Just because you didn’t hear any of it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Those of us that questioned the Iraq claims from the moment Bush started to re-demonize Saddam listened to those claims and we were alarmed. A lot of those anti-war demonstrations? Organized by those that knew there were two sides of the story and America was only being presented with one.
I understand you position. It would be very easy to believe the way you do, the counter-information wasn’t easy to find, it just took digging and time.
Darrell
Senate intelligence report says the CIA, not the Bush admin, pressured others to say they were to be used in uranium centrifuges. But anyway, your assertion is nonsense in light of the Duelfer report key findings
Al Maviva
1) A treaty to which the U.S. is not a ratified signatory is not binding as law on the U.S.
2) Troops on the ground, usually within about 25 yards of the Forward Line of Troops call for the type of fire thought most appropriate.
3) John Pike of Global Security.org, one of the most respect experts on security affairs in the world, says that the “caramelized skin” distinction being made by antiwar groups is without basis in fact. He points out something consistent with Jason’s experience, and my experience from over a decade ago, that WP burns whatever it hits; you can’t burn somebody up with WP while leaving their clothing intact. Their clothes catch fire if WP hits the person.
4) For people who insist that if you aren’t currently on the front lines but you are pro-war you are a chickenhawk, we have an awful lot of people claiming to be experts on the law and military munitions, who don’t appear to have much current or former expertise in either.
5) WP is far from the nastiest munition used on the front lines. The effects of a High Energy Anti Tank round on the occupants of a tank or a building are much worse. WP burns themselves are often indistinguishable from high explosive burns, except for the persistent nature of the burning. Just like magnesium, ignited WP will keep burning until it is exhausted or the oxygen source is removed; dousing it with water has no effect.
6. WP is distinguishable from “chemical” munitions in that chemical munitions as that termin is ordinarily used consist of toxins that poison the body. WP does not poison the body but burn it instead, and the distributive method (usually a primary explosion) can cause blast and fragmentation wounds. If WP is a chemical weapon, then so are bullets, in that they are comprised of the chemicals lead, copper, and iron.
Mike S
A couple of issues? Those issues were at the heart of the case for war and each and every one of them had dissenting views by experts, dissenting views that turned out to be correct.
Detailed as in skipping over the important parts? I guess that falls under the honest catagory of the current GOP.
Lines
ss: Gee, libel and slander?
Hmmm, pretty close to libellous by calling someone a liar, without using the word.
And pointless namecalling? Hmmm
ppGaz
Actually I was talking about the nuclear threat specifically.
As for WMDs, I never believed it. First of all, he had no means of delivery over any distance from his borders. Second, he had no motive. He was clearly less a madman than just a calculating thief, out to steal the wealth of his country. If he had WMDs it would have been to support his embezzlement, not to wage war. Last, the UN inspections were coming up empty. That was intelligence, and it was ignored.
The first two points I made here were the same ones I made in 2002 so this is not hindsight on my part. By the time the war started, I also was making the third point. No hindsight there either. I am not moved by claims that Bush made an honest mistake. I didn’t make the mistake, and there’s no excuse for his making it.
Mike S
This would be funny if there weren’t 2058 dead American soldiers so far. The facts just don’t matter.
Darrell
Mike S wrote:
Correct? Here is what Drum wrote:
Here is what the Duelfer report finds:
Lines
So this answers the point about aluminum tubes how? The tubes were the point. What about them, Darrell? Your deflection doesn’t do much for the arguments at hand.
Besides, the Duelfer report section you quoted does nothing to exonerate the lies from the Administration. Seeking is not obtaining. I’m seeking a million dollars. Should everyone that has a dollar in the US be afraid of me and pre-emptively attack me for seeking to have a million dollars in the future?
Darrell
C’mon Mike, Drum tells us with BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program “fell to zero”. Yet his assertion is flatly contradicted by the facts. In other words, Drum’s assertions were blown out of the water by the Duelfer report and other findings
Slide
How about the guy on the ground leading the inspectors looking for WMD, Hans Blix? Did he believe Iraq had WMD? According to his book, he had doubts.
How about the supposed Nuke program? Did El Baradai and the IAEA believe Iraq had a nuke program? Not according to this report in Feb of 2003
So the people put in charge of seeing if Iraq had WMD or a nuke program didn’t think there was evidence of either before the war. But we derided them didn’t we? Remember all the jokes about Blix? yeah, we rather trust Chalabi, curveball and that guy we tortured Libby.
Tractarian
That doesn’t contradict what I said. “Everyone believed Saddam had WMDs” sounds like a pretty bold statement, but it’s really not – it just means everyone agreed that Saddam had some chem and bio weapons that weren’t accounted for. That doesn’t mean Saddam was an imminent threat, and it doesn’t mean the war was justified.
All I’m saying is, be careful with your words. Do NOT criticize Bush for saying “Saddam had WMDs”. If you do you’ll just get drawn into another pissing match with some Bush-worshipper who’ll say, rightly, that “Clinton said it too”.
ppGaz
“Aspiring” is not a threat to the United States. It is not a rational cause for war.
The lying potatoheads did not go on tv and announce that Saddam was “aspiring.” The world is full of despots aspiring to something. They represented an actual threat. There was no actual threat.
Rev. Gas Money
Those wackos at Kos. Don’t they understand that this is a war on terrorism. Those Iraqi terrorist babies burned all up until their skin began to melt away were the ones who flew those planes into the 9/11 buildings. Hell, as I’ve heard from Dick Cheney, these burned up babies were also the ones hiding the WMDs so that we couldn’t find them, and they were giving them to Bin Laden.
YOU FUCKING IDIOT, YOU’RE MISSING THE POINT ENTIRELY.
The images of obvious civilians (childeren in particular) having been “burned” by an obvious overuse of a certain chemical (dual use) will not win the hearts and minds of anybody but the depraved. Mark another one up in the win column for terrorist recruitment. Nobody has to try to vilify the US, this administration is doing it all by itself (and they’ve got pictures and video just in case you still had any doubts). When will you come back down to our planet and realize that the Bush administration fucks up everything it touches and as a result of their incompotent policies we will all pay the price for decades to come. You facist loving ratfuckers are unbelievable.
ppGaz
.
Scooter Libby, with time on his hands, has taken up blogging.
ss
Lines.
Your knowledge of defamation law is awe-inspiring. Are you suggesting that Bush could sue you for libel ’cause you accused him of LYING!
Lines
ss: You’re the one calling people right here liars. Thats pointless invective as they arn’t going to bring suit against you for it.
Was the word too big for you? Are you trying out for the part in Princess Bride 2 where you run around saying “I do not thing that word means what you think it means!”
Oh well, I’m done playing with the troll for now. At least Darrell can stick to the point.
Tractarian
Ha! Treaties to which the U.S. is a ratified signatory are not binding as law on the U.S., according to the Bush admin. See ABM treaty, Geneva Conventions, 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, etc.
Mike S
Really? I aspire to be a billionaire. Unless I win this Fridays lottery the chances of that are slim.
Give an honest reading to the section you highlighted.
Nowhere in that are the words did, had or any other word affirming an actual active program. And your assertion that Drum is talking in “HINDSIGHT” is further evidence of what many of us on the left are talking about. Except for the blogs none of this was discussed in real time during the run up to the war. Quite the opposite is true. We were told in positive terms that the intelligence was irrefutable. The alum tubes could ONLY be used for… The drones HAVE the ability to reach…
Lines
Can someone please tell me if the residual chemicals left over from the attacks, as documented by the video, are some level of dangerous? How dangerous? How does one clean it? I’m sure friendly fire situations have arisen in the past, how do things get cleaned up?
Defense Guy
I think the idea that we can’t use WP against enemy combatants is funny, considering that we are trying to kill the bastards in the first place. Kill em all you want, just don’t hurt them first?
Mike S
The complaints I’m seeing are about civilians being hit with them. Maybe like this one here.
Steve S
Oh come now, Cole. You went after that professor and Bitchphd without knowing what the fuck you were talking about. Yeah, people should investigate before they talk, but you certainly aren’t immune from a bit of ignorant hyperbole yourself.
And actually these diaries over there don’t look much different than wingnuts complaining about Abortion.
Hmm…
Lines
DG:
1) Was every person in Falluja an enemy?
2) Did the people in New Orleans deserve to drown and have their homes destroyed as well?
ppGaz
I don’t see any winners in this fight.
On one side, carmelized kids are just the unfortunate side effects of war, get over it.
On the other side, the US and its troops are all Satan.
Shithead vs. shithead. Gee, who to root for?
The fact is, there is not enough information for bloggers to be making gross judgments about this one way or the other.
Mouthpieces for the “right” could try making sensible statements without sounding like a bunch of bloodthirsty assholes who don’t care about the problem.
Mouthpieces on the “left” could try raising their concerns without entangling them in every political gripe in the book, or making it sound like troops in combat have to walk on eggs.
In any case, DKos is not the issue. Neither is Karl Rove. Calling upon our favorite demons is not really that helpful.
Is this me, playing the part of Rodney “can’t we all just get along” King, or is this a sensible call for reason?
You decide.
John Cole
You are scaring me, ppgaz.
Lines- I wouldn’t want to live in ANY area that had serious combat without cleaning it up first. Unexploded ordinance, hydraulic fluid and fuels everywhere, DU traces- there is ALL SORTS of shit junking up combat zones. And that doesn;t even mention the corpses and other contaminants.
Lines
I understand that Falluja was necessary, but I guess I would prefer that the people returning to their homes don’t have to deal with the pain, sickness and conditions that they would be returning to.
Maybe we should have glassed the whole city, but then the world really would have judged us poorly.. No win situation.
I thank the Administration for that.
rilkefan
John, could you please address the point I raised in my ignorance in this comment? How is “personnel targets” distinguished from “guys in a ditch”?
ppGaz
These guys are scaring me. Seriously. They all sound like a bunch of harpies, on both sides.
John Cole
Rilekfan- Unless I am wrong, and I do not believe I am, it is not illegal to use it against the enemy.
Steve S
Oh come now. Now you’re being a fucking hysterical surrender monkey.
The Iraqis already got photos of this shit, and they’re the ones who started spreading the stories.
Must be a slow news day for ya, or you’re trying to distract attention with some new outrage.
John Cole
It is not the spreading of rumors, it is the reification of the rumors, Steve.
Now, they are no longer ‘rumors,’ they are fact.
Oh come now, indeed.
stickler
Lines inadvertently stumbles on the question of the day:
Well, was it? We know, and the Joint Chiefs have known since at least 1974, that when US troops are sent to grab an objective, they do so with extreme prejudice and lots of explosions. This is useful when warding the Red Army off from the Rhine. Not so much when fighting insurgents. Carmelized babies do not win hearts and minds (except, perhaps, on LGF).
So why were we sending US troops to take Fallujah (again), given our decades-old realization that massive firepower and counterinsurgency don’t mix? Why did we allow Fallujah get to the point where a Stalingrad-like house to house and massive pounding battle were necessary?
That’s the question. It has an answer, in the form of a date. Election day, 2004.
stickler
Sorry, can’t help myself.
In the dialect my farmer ancestors spoke, this phrase translates to “quagmire.”
srv
For both sides now, the ends justify the means. Bring. It. On.
White Phosphorus is just a spectacular allegory for the corrosive affect of modern extremist politics. The future is so bright, as there are only two outcomes from this:
The rise of moderate pragmatism and ass-kicking of the each sides extremists, or the next civil war.
I really don’t care which anymore. Anything would be better than the status quo.
Candidus
Whence the controversy? I thought it was established in 1993 that using chemical weapons against civilians and their children in confined spaces was no big thing.
Jeez.
rilkefan
John Cole: “Unless I am wrong, and I do not believe I am, it is not illegal to use it against the enemy.”
I don’t feel strongly about this one way or another, but the snippet from the army manual I quoted seems to indicate you might take a softer stance. Go ahead and disagree with the napalmed-civilians crowd – but I’m getting more of a rant vibe from you here than a clear explanation of what’s ok and what’s not ok and where to draw the line (esp given that we blamed Saddam for misuse of these munitions) to those of us who sadly know more about spear and short sword tactics than modern weapons. It’s certainly not clear to me from a philosophical point of view how to determine what sort of weapon should be acceptable and what not.
Steve
John has completely lost it. Wow.
FYI, I don’t see anyone making the claim that this is an illegal substance for anyone to ever use, or the claim that it is wrong to use it as a tracer, even though John wants to pretend those are the issues for some reason.
For that matter, I don’t see many people claiming that dropping WP is “too mean” a thing to do to enemy soldiers.
The serious questions that serious people would discuss include the following:
1) Is it ever appropriate to use WP as a munition in urban warfare, given the gruesome harm that may come to civilians?
2) Assuming it is appropriate to do so under some circumstances, have we been correctly limiting ourselves to those circumstances?
3) Assuming there is nothing militarily inappropriate here, and that all collateral damage to civilians has been simply unavoidable, are there political considerations in the Arab world that counseled for a more restrained approach?
And so forth. Like I said, we can discuss the issues in serious ways, or we can just play the game of traitors vs. butchers, hurling Internet insults at each other.
Step back from the argument for a second. It’s a fact that there have been Iraqi civilians, people who didn’t ask for this war, burned to death or painfully maimed by the use of WP. That’s a pretty awful thing. There’s no getting around that.
Now, war is hell, and maybe there’s no avoiding tragedies like this. But given that this is our responsibility, you and me, our war, can we possibly take more than half a second to think about it before we glibly conclude, “I’m sure it’s all totally unavoidable”?
Can we take just a moment to consider the fact that harms like this should be an important part of the calculus when we enter into a war of choice in the first place? Because the idea that we are going to spread democracy through military means has very serious downsides, contrary to those who feel it’s all a big game of “cowboys and arabs.”
DaveC
Look at some of RedSix’s videos. The tanks see RPG rounds coming in. A WP flare illuminates the buildings showing where the fire came from, and the tanks are able to blast the bad guys. Now I suppose that isn’t “fair”, but I want our guys to win.
Theseus
“Your side, my side…your side, my side…your side, my side” to quote psycho Stark from a Farscape episode
I agree with John, you’re starting to scare me ppGaz ;)
…meanwhile George W. Bush gets to be president for 3 more years (where anything is possible), the war in Iraq and Afghanistan continues, the troops never cease to amaze and the Iraqi people, bravely and against tremendous odds, are trying to move forward and get on with their lives even while the global war against the mass murdering Islamic lunatics rages on…
*sigh*
I need a drink…
Perry Como
That sounds fun! Is it anything like Stratego, but with talking heads and politicos instead of spies and generals (not the those are mutually exclusive)?
rilkefan
Dang, should be more careful with b-tags late in the day.
The Disenfranchised Voter
I won’t make the argument that Bush lied–I don’t have to.
I’ll let them do it for me…
Colin Powell – February 2001
“[Saddam] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.”
Condoleezza Rice – July 2001
“We are able to keep arms from [Saddam]. His military forces have not been rebuilt.”
Clearly these two knew that Saddam didn’t have WMD and that he wasn’t a threat. I find it hard to believe that neither Powell, nor Rice expressed these opinions to the other members.
S.W. Anderson
A couple of thoughts from someone a bit left of center but sensibly aware war is sometimes necessary and always played for keeps.
If our troops find it necessary or advantageous to kill the enemy with phosphorous rounds or some other variation, so be it. Enemy fighters who can’t cope with that or don’t want to can try to flee or capitulate.
Our troops are innocent of using phosphorous rounds or other ammunition, or ordnance, on innocent civilians unless and until proven guilty.
John is right about some people being way, way too anxious for a My Lai moment in this conflict. It’s enough of a mess now, let’s not heap more stupidity on it.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Oh and by far, the most honest and therefore the best post in the thread is by rilkefan:
Well said.
Ancient Purple
Why are you worried? Aren’t we supposed to be in the “last throes” of the insurgency?
Peace is just around the corner, John.
rilkefan
Thanks, TDV, but I make no claim to distinctive honesty here.
Steve S
I’m wondering if maybe the Democratic wins last night didn’t effect Cole more than he’s letting on. He needs a good bottle of scotch to drown his sorrows in or something. I mean, this stuff is just standard run of the mill partisan bullshit. Run over to a pro-life blog, and you’ll get much the same level of distortion. Normally one just ignores it to stay sane.
I’m really worried about him. It appears the Republicans are now running scared. Christ, today the House of Representatives abandoned ANWR drilling. I saw that on msnbc.com, and I had to call Satan to see if Hell had frozen over.
stickler
Here we go:
I think, all snark aside, that most Americans would love to see some credible evidence that the Vice President wasn’t just talking out his ass when he said this. We could forgive the depressing aspects of the Second Battle of Fallujah if that battle had done anything — anything at all — to bring us closer to stability in Iraq.
But aside from happy talk from smiling men in air-conditioned briefing rooms, what evidence is there that we’re even one meter closer to bringing the boys home? Did the carmelization of babies in Fallujah do one God-damned thing to make the war shorter? Cite, please.
jg
I wonder…if WP rounds had been found in Iraq or used against US troops by the insurgents would the right see that as evidence of Saddams WMD program?
Do people honestly believe there is a large percentage of the population that actually hates our troops? I want to believe its just a talking point but when you read that meltdown from our host in the opening it starts to feel like they really think it. They actually think the left hates the troops and wishes them harm. I’m sure it started as just another of the many ways to avoid actual discussion. Its easy to keep your base on message if you show them how to avoid hearing the opposition. But it seems some believe its a fact now.
Mason
I can’t believe how many people have suddenly become experts on chemical weapons, white phosphorous, melting skin, intact clothing, indiscriminate fire, treaties, and the UCMJ. What a bunch of crap.
Gray
“Assholes”,”motherfuckers”,”fuck yourself”.
Your words, Mr. Cole!
I remember very well that, not long ago, you complained about Duncan black, aka Atrios, for using four letter words in his comments. Hey, you even banned commenters when they used such wordings. You want to show us now that you’re only a lousy hypocrite?
This seems to be an emotional topic for you. OK, maybe as a patriot you feel obliged to defend the troops. But you don’t discuss the evidence here, the video of the italian report, the articles in US military publications, the stories from embedded journalists about the Falujah fighting and the comments of that reader that you cited, Jason.
WP wasn’t used only for illumination, but also for shelling the town, endangering the civilians. WP is an ugly weapon when used directly against humans, there’s a controversy if it should be allowed on the battlefield. The DoD lied about the use of WP in Fallujah. These seem to be confirmed facts.
If you could stop your pathetical whining about some people improperly using the word ‘chemical weapons’, we could start discussing the facts.
Gray
Diary of a hypocrite
John Cole, November 2:
“Alright folks- time to tone it down in the comments or I am going to start knocking heads.”
“I try to be respectful of opinions that differ from mine”
“But some of you just come in here and shit all over the place, add nothing (rather, you detract) to the conversation, and then simply sit and heckle those people who you disagree with.”
“Shape up, or get out.”
“You can post your apology for your previous comments here (you know what they were), or just leave and don’t come back.”
John Cole, November 9:
“Assholes.”
“And you can just go fuck yourself, you ignorant twerp.”
“There is a special place in hell for fuckers like that.”
“Congrats, motherfuckers.”
“Then some stupid mother fucker like Justin Raimondo can cite it, which can then be cited on Al Jazeera”
JC – a role model for disciplined bloggers. Not.
Oh, and btw, this comment about Justin Raimondo makes a much stronger case for libel than that of Paul D.
Fabio
I guess the the ‘outcry’ isn’t so much about the usage of WP itself – it’s about dropping WP over a terrorist safe-haven next to where children and families live. As I read it, the WP shells used can produce a rather large “fallout”, spreading up to more than 100 metres. If you drop that shit on a populated area, as the US Army did in Fallujah, you’re very likely to ‘produce collateral damage’, or in other words, to incinerate innocent civilians.
The debate whether the use of such a weapon is APPROPRIATE in a CITY COMBAT ZONE is valid and I don’t find it to be of an ‘agitprop’ nature.
Andrei
Agreed. But good luck getting that discussion going with this crowd. Further, people also need to consider that while war is hell, this was admittedly a pre-emptive war of choice which complicates matters in a way that I have yet to see anyone on the pro-war side of the fence address.
As a sidenote, we have to recognize similar kinds of actions we have done past wars, like the utter devastation and loss of life we incurred on the Japanese with the bombing of Hirshima and Nagasaki. There was a reasonable and — purely militarily speaking — valid reason to drop the bomb as a way to end the war in the Pacific with a true sense of finality. That act, while legitimate in many ways and successful in ending the war for us on that side of the world, doesn’t exempt it from being a truly heinous action, and one we have to recognize as being something dreadul in our own history.
Cole can rail about whether WP is a chemcial weapon or not or how the Kossacks are writing about this topic or whatever… I ‘m not sure I care. War is hell. And children are dying. That war is hell and killing is a nasty pill that has to be swallowed in time of war does not mean that the way those children died from WP exposure was not heinous.
space
A few more thoughts for the day:
1. Just because something is legal does not make it right. I am sure the Nazis did many horrible things that were legal under German law and not in violation of any international treaties to which Germany was a signatory. Frankly, it does not stop me from criticizing them [note to wingnuts and pumpheads: I am NOT comparing our troops to Nazis].
2. While WP may NOT be a “chemical weapon”, it IS very interesting that the Iraq Survey Group saw fit to cite it as an example of CW. That tells me that either the administration was attempting to bolster its evidence of WMD-related program activities (aka lying), the question of whether WP qualifies as a chemical weapon is more open than John Cole and others are willing to admit, or the Iraq Survey Group (and possibly the DoD and CIA) are as ignorant about military matters as the folks at dKos. Feel free to pick one and then we can discuss how important it is.
3. Contrary to what John Cole may believe, whether or not WP is a “chemical weapon” is NOT what upsets most people about the use of WP. I, for one, never accepted that chemical weapons are inherently more immoral to use than many conventional weapons. Nor do they necessarily pose more of eithere a strategic or tactical threat than many weapons that are not banned.
4. The use of WP is part of a broader question about the morality of urban warfare. I do not fling accusations at troops willy-nilly. Nor do I under-appreciate the difficulty of the jobs of the marines in the field. But I have heard credible reports of military decisions that I have a serious problem with.
5. There were many reports, including by Western journalists embedded with the troops who were unlikely to disseminate propaganda, that men, at least of a certain age, were not even allowed to leave the city during the evacuation period. This alone raises serious issues of whether it is permissible to deem all males in a civilian population to be de facto combatants. But it also raises the question of whether the “insurgent activity” that would be likely to invite a hailstorm of WP/HE mortar fire on a cluster of buildings includes merely spotting men leaving and entering, regardless of whether it was to fight the marines or to get food and medical supplies for their families.
5. Furthermore, there seems to be little weighing of the costs versus the benefits involved. The rationale for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was NOT “war is hell”. The rationale was that the alternative (invading Japan conventionally) could result hundreds of thousands of dead U.S. troops. What was the rationale here? What was gained? Was retribution for the deaths of civilian contractors a motivating factor?
Maybe when John Cole gets over his attack of the vapors he can address some of the more difficult questions involved.
space
Andrei, you beat me to the punch on the Hiroshima comparison. Also on the difference between a war of self-defense and a war of pre-emption or even prevention.
Absent WMD, this war has essentially morphed into a humanitarian mission. Our troops are now rescuers as well as soldiers. We ordinarily ask rescuers, whether policemen or firemen, to put the lives of those they are rescuing AHEAD of their own. Doing so in Iraq means valuing the lives of civilians much higher than you ordinarily would in a combat situation because the mission itself is protecting their lives.
If we are trying to rescue the people of Iraq from violence, from insurgency, from foreign fighters, etc., we must constantly ask ourselves, “if I was a civilian in this situation, would I want to be rescued in this manner?” Probably the answer is no.
John Cole
YEs- because the legitimate use of white phosphorous is now the same as Hiroshima. A great comparison indeed.
Gray- Piss off. I rty to be reasonable, but this shit is beyond the pale. There is NO evidence anything wrong has been done, yet many of you are screaming that we ‘illegally’ used ‘chemical weapons’ to kill ‘innocent civilians.’ It is a disgusting charge being treated as fact, that will be used as agitprop against our troops, and the motivation for the charges is LITTLE MORE THAN DOMESTIC POLITICAL ADVANTAGE.
So I got salty, frothy, and volcanic. Deal with it.
Shygetz
Whoa there, space, I think you are talking about the Secret Service, not the police and firefighters, and certainly not about soldiers. It’s not a cop’s job to take a bullet for you, and not one cop would be reprimanded for refusing to die for you. It’s not a fireman’s job to die saving your life. If it is a certain death situation, firemen will regularly not enter a building to rescue people. They do bravely put themselves at risk, but not necessarily valuing other lives above their own.
What makes you think this is a humanitarian mission? This is a counter-insurgency to quell opposition in an occupied country. Like in all good counter-insurgencies, I think the troops are taking practical steps to minimize civillian casualties. However, what the hell would you have them do in Fallujah? Walk in and knock politely, door-to-door, asking “Is there a resistance fighter here that we can kill?” Dump enough HE to level the entire city? Just let everyone go, so we can have the same fight in a week 50 miles down the road? There was no alternative that would prevent heavy US casualties in a door-to-door fight, or simply leave the insurgents intact to fight another day. If you want to be pissed about WP, be pissed at the people who did not make its use illegal when they had the chance by signing on to Protocol III of the UN weapons ban agreement. But remember, if WP was illegal, what do you think would have happened? The city would probably have been leveled, I imagine. Is that any better?
I agree that the entire war was wrong. War is hell, it is heinous, and it causes human suffering around the world. No denying that. However, I also think that, since our boys are down there in it, they should use whatever legal tactics they can to get their job done and come back home. You wanna argue the strategy of the thing, fine. You wanna argue their choice of tactics? Unless you were there, I don’t think you have the standing to speak on the matter. What they did was legal. Since it was their lives on the line, what they did was moral. What they did was apparently tactically effective. Everyone, Repubs and Dems and non-affiliated alike, knew or should have known that war sucks before the whole thing started. You wanna bitch, aim your bitching at the right people for the right reasons.
Gray
“Gray- Piss off.”
Incredible. I suggest you now ban yourself.
There is NO evidence anything wrong has been done, yet many of you are screaming that we ‘illegally’ used ‘chemical weapons’ to kill ‘innocent civilians.’
There is evidence in Steven D’s story that WP was fired randomly into a town occupied by civilains (as another commenter said here, this could be against army regulations). But there is no mention of ” ‘illegally’ used ‘chemical weapons’ “. I didn’t say anything like that, either. Am I responsible for the misunderstandings of a small number of other commenters? And I am not a mindreader, I don’t know anything about their motivations (imho, neither do you).
Whatever, what’s that got to do with the fact that the DoD lied about the use of WP in Falujah? That’s the main point in Steven’s article, and you have been mum about it so far. Excuse me please, but is your comment a case of PUI (posting under influence)?
John Cole
Gray- I couldn’t care less if the DOD lied (or here is an idea- they were just wrong). I have no idea why the State Department was wrong.
It simply doesn’t matter.
And what you are not recognizing is that in order to conclude the DOD lied, you have to take it as de facto proof that the troops did in fact do what is being charged, rather than sparingly and carefully using what they are allowed to use. And in order to make that charge, they need to take the word of a proven liar and a group of foreign nationalists with an agenda.
And again, the WP wasn’t fired ‘randomly.’ Even then, random firing of the weapon would not create the toxic chemical cloud needed to do what you are suggesting (which, btw- I was unaware there was even a respiratory issue until these charges were leveled).
If some of you think I am suggesting there were no civilian casualties, I am not. I bet there were probably dozens of civilian casualties from all types of weapons. B ut the idea that we intentionally created toxic clouds of WP smoke to gas innocent civilians (or even the enemy) is a pretty appalling charge.
John S.
I’m not jumping into this discussion late in the game, but I will add that I think Gray is correct about you shattering your own expectation of civility.
The next time someone goes unhinged around here, will it be enough for them to say: “This shit is beyond the pale. I tried to be reasonable. So I got rude and abrasive. Get over it.”
I know it’s your site, but the “Do as I say, not as I do” mantra never really worked for me. Perhaps it is a byproduct of your profession to never be wrong and to lead by words rather than by example, but this isn’t a classroom and we aren’t your students (though you do like to lecture us as thus).
Sherard
I love it.
So when the polls say that the American public believes Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 the liberal left response to that is:
John S.
Oh, and I found this to be VERY illuminating:
I don’t think you are an inhumane warmonger, John, but I think this sentence points to the major dispute between opposite sides of the political spectrum over this.
My observation is that many folks to the left seem to be appalled (and greatly disturbed) by the charge that the army targeted civilians. On the other hand, many folks to the right seem to be appalled by the charge itself (and the sheer gall of criticizing our military) rather than by what that charge is – regardless of whether it is true or not.
An interesting dichotomy.
Gray
OK, let’s see if I’m summarising your statements correctly:
– WP is not a chemical Weapon
– The use of the word ‘chemical weapon’ in combination with WP is hurting the image of US troops in the world. This is irresponsible sensationalism.
– WP is a common ammunition on battlefields today.
– It may not only be used for illumination, but also for tactical use (what some call ‘shake and bake’).
– This use of WP ammunition is allowed under US Law
– Collateral damage can’t always be avoided. The troops did everything possible to keep civilian damages low.
– The environmental pollution resulting from the use of WP isn’t worse than that of several other ammunations.
– The statement from the DoD may be wrong. You don’t know if it’s an intentional lie or a communications mistake.
Why don’t you write a new column based on this framework? Imho this would help your cause more than the name calling you did recently.
Gray
John S., very good observation. I agree.
Sherard
Yes I firmly believe that. And I also believe that a great many of them are smart enough to know that they can dance around the issue without ever admitting it so they can later claim to “support the troops” when they, in fact, do no such thing at all. I frankly don’t believe even a small portion of the anti-war crew in these comments gives a SHIT about our troops.
John Cole
Fine. I heard Rush Limbaugh and several other prominent liars and a consortium of individuals whose grasp of the truth is highly debatable state that Democrats routinely rape small children and then drink their blood. Aren’t you appalled by those charges?
See? Anyone can do this!
DecidedFenceSitter
Yes, I am appalled by those charge. I think we should investigate immediately.
|Snark|It is a damn shame that the the Democrats have started taking the worst traits of the Republicans AND Catholic Priests.|/snark|
Gray
John, no misunderstimation pls, as you have certainly suspected I stand by my view that mortar fire into an civilian inhabited area is by its nature randomly and should be avoided to keep collateral damage low. Imho there should be more restraint in using WP ammo, clear orders and guidelines and training the troops in proper application might help. Discussing if the use of WP is necessary isn’t hurting America’s image in the world, but, quite to the contrary, it’s evidence that the US don’t use their awesome military power lightheartedly.
And official DoD statements should meet the highest possible standard – especially after the recent reliability fiascos (what was the name of that brave, patriotic guy – Pat Tilman?).
Slide
Cole:P
Disgraceful. Absolutely disgraceful. Here we have a supposedly intelligent individual, an American citizen, that doesn’t care if his government lies to him. It “simply doesn’t matter”. wow. John, sometime I applaud what you say as you seem to cut through a lot of partisan shit but then you say something as stupid and idiotic as that and I have to wonder if you’ve lost your mind sometimes. You don’t care if your government lies to you? How the fuck does one have a functioning democracy if we can have no confidence of knowing what the hell is going on?
More Cole nonsense:
John, you don’t want to see the proof that is obvious
What soldiers themselves have said:
what the DoD said:
Now I don’t know what a professor needs as proof that the DoD lied, but most everyday working Americans will conclude that they did in my opinion. Must be nice to be so very selective in one’s reality.
Steve
Uh, some of my colleagues on the Left lost me for a second there. I would have hoped no one believes that our troops “intentionally targeted” civilians with WP. At worst, they may have not given enough consideration to the potential harm to civilians, a serious question that I wish John was willing to discuss. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and assume this was just bad word choice.
The Disenfranchised Voter
You know what I love…it’s called irony.
You do realize that the fact that a majority of the public believed that Hussein was behind 9/11 is a direct result of being LIED TO BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION.
The poll you speak of only further solidifies the belief that is was the Bush Administration who lied to us. Thank you, Mr. Irony.
LOL.
John Cole
Slide- Of course I care if the DoD lied, so let me rephrase. In the context of these charges, I don’t care if the DOD lied (or more likely, the State Department and the DoD were wrong, or overstated their case to quell agitprop that was appearing as the mission was taking place). If you remember, charges of a massacre were made by the usual suspects before the mission even started.
Why don;t I care? Because these charges are so obviously false, whether it be the fact that WPO doesn;t caramelize skin, or the fact that the dead being pictured have unburned clothes, or the fact that our troops simply would not fire rounds indiscriminately in highly populatyed areas.
Even more obscene is that people continue to call this a chemical weapon and attribute the worst to our troops. It pisses me off, and that alone is enough for me to for now dismiss the apparent inaccuracy in the statements.
space
Shygetz: Both firefighters and policemen are expected to not put the people they are rescuing AT GREATER RISK as a result of their rescue.
If you were in a hostage situation in a bank, you would probably accept 2 possible options. A. The police negotiate with the criminals to obtain a peaceful resolution. B. The police storm the building, quickly separating you from the hostage takers, even if it means putting themselves (likely wearing paramilitary armor) between you and the armed criminals. What you would not accept would be option C: Lobbing incendiary devices into the building, aimed at the criminals, but with a high likelihood of killing you as well. And you certainly wouldn’t accept that option under the reasoning that it is safer for the police.
Hello? Why do you think the United States of America is occupying a country halfway around the world? If it isn’t to protect the U.S. from WMD and it isn’t to secure oil fields then it is to rid the Iraqi people of a brutal dictator. Now, if you VOLUNTARILY agree to fight a brutal dictator and his supporters, you can’t get there and decide that it is too dangerous to employ tactics that are safer for the people living under the rule of the dictator. If you feel that threatened don’t invade in the first place. And for the people who live there “we’re there now” is not an acceptable response.
The irony is that the house to house tactics which you ridicule are pretty much what the marines DID do in Fallujah. Is it extremely dangerous? Of course. War is dangerous. But if you can’t handle the danger, don’t fucking invade a country where the probablity of having to engage in urban warfare is extremely high. At least wait until you are attacked first.
John Cole:
You keep repeating that it is legitimate. But questions remain as to whether (a) it is legitimate to use as an anti-personnel weapon, (b) it is legitimate to use as an anti-personnel weapon in an urban environment, and (c) it was poilitically wise to use in a situation where our primary problems are political and not military. Ultimately we will NEVER succeed in Iraq until the vast majority of Iraqis are convinced that a political resolution is in their best interest. Melting Iraqi children — even if by accident — strikes me as counter-productive in the extreme.
Which brings me to a related point. This fucking moronic idea that it is liberals in America who are “publicizing” this issue or otherwise stirring the pot among muslims. Listen, occupying an Arab/muslim-majority country is exremely controversial. People are pissed off just because we are there. Arab/Muslim critics in the region are going to seize on any excuse to criticize the U.S. occupation. They are going to critique our tactics. Period. They don’t need liberal bloggers to tell them that WP was used in Fallujah. If you pay attention to the press in the region you will hear stories of a host of American atrocities. Markos commenting on the issue is not going to affect the sentiment in the region or the attitude of Iraqis one miniscule whit.
Given that the U.S. is going to face a shitstorm of criticism, we have a choice. We can either bend over backwards to avoid the appearance that we minimize the value of Iraqi’s lives by avoiding controversial tactics like mortering cities with WP or using
napalmMark 77 as an anti-personnel weapon. Or we can ignore the criticism and pursue tactics that you would use in any situation.Now, if you decide to take the second option and ignore the criticism, then shut the fuck up and don’t act surprised when you get criticized.
Thomas More
Disenfranchised Voter:
Thanks for mentioning those quotes from Powell and Rice pre-9/11 about Saddam. I was going to but you beat me to it. I think it’s important to note that even the Bush Administration was being a touch more honest about the real threat posed by Saddam (read: negligible) until 9/11 gave them the opening they needed.
John Cole
Slide- I have to run, but the only reason the US is facing a shitstorm of criticism is because people like you have chosen to believe and spread these grossly irresponsible and completely unfounded charges.
Gray
“I frankly don’t believe even a small portion of the anti-war crew in these comments gives a SHIT about our troops.”
Sherard, I did a two years tour of service. OK, this was way back then in the bad ole times of the cold war 80s, and in my job as rdf operator I would never have been in the front line. Still, we had a lot of nerve-rattling alert exercises, simulating the use of ABC weapons against us. Only after running to our bunkers and staying under the mask for 2 hours we would have been told that it isn’t the real thing. We were told that we had a life expectancy of 45 minutes if our post would have been located. We were halfway expecting that a frivolous mistake of Reagan or Gorbatchew would leed to WW III and that we would be doomed. Nice experience.
I guess many people with military experience come to the conclusion that war has to be avoided on nearly all accounts. Imho most of the guys who are crowing for unrestricted use of military force are chickenhawks.
Slide
Cole finally fesses up to the truth:
Ok, so you are pissed off that there was some criticism of a military operation and therefore you close your mind to everything else that is said. All reason and logic are dispensed with, all rational arguments about the propriety of using WP as an anti-personnel weapon not worth investigating. You’re pissed. At least we cleared that up.
Slide
Cole – I have to get going too, but the only reason the US is facing such a shitstorm around the world and a lack of credibiltiy is because people like you don,t seem to care if America lies and dissembles when evidence of their deception is painfully clear.
See how easy that is to do.
Gray
“the only reason the US is facing a shitstorm of criticism is because people like you have chosen to believe and spread these grossly irresponsible and completely unfounded charges.”
John, imho the US is facing a shitstorm of criticism because the reliability of the DoD and the Bush administration in general lies in shambles. Because you don’t get the truth from the officials, many people tuned in on the rumours networks (just like in totalitarian regimes like Cuba or China).
Many of these rumours are well founded and not all turn out to be false.
Steve
I thought the reason the US was facing criticism is because an Italian camera crew made a documentary raising these allegations. I guess it’s more fun to blame liberal blog commenters than the camera crew, though.
If the charges made by the Italian filmmakers are false, the appropriate response, believe it or not, is to debunk them. The idea that WP does not caramelize skin, for example, which John mentioned a few posts above – well, that seems like a pretty important fact to establish! But the general attitude seems to be that we don’t even have to address the factual issues, anyone who believes this stuff is obviously a hater of freedom and little kittens, blah blah blah.
Running around saying “How dare you accuse the troops of anything, obviously you don’t support the troops,” is not an answer. Unfortunately, the commendable idea that we should all support the troops has been rendered utterly meaningless by right-wing political correctness. Any time you question the war, or the way we conduct it, or whether we should bring the troops home, you get shouted down with the accusation that you don’t “support the troops.” I think a great way to support the troops would be by showing, with facts rather than insults, that the troops did nothing wrong. Wouldn’t that be a great service to our men and women in uniform?
Slide
don’t hold your breath.
Shygetz
space–Once again, soldiers are not there on a rescue mission. It is not a humanitarian mission. It is political (and it probably always was). If you think W. gave a rat’s ass about the suffering Iraqis, and that’s why we went over there, you’re delusional. We went over there to promote some stupid “domino effect” theory of democracy. Also, soldiers aren’t cops, and Fallujah wasn’t a contained hostage situation. Fallujah was an unknown number of heavily armed insurgents hiding amongst a civillian population. There was no way to flush them out safely, and they did not negotiate. Soldiers are not cops, and insurgents are not ordinary criminals.
There are no tactics that are safer that do not put our men at seriously increased risk. You have no reason to assume there were. Were you there? Do you have inside knowledge of the tactical situation? Nope–you have a visceral reminder of the horrors of war, and the fact that civillians are not immune to those horrors. Would you have had them go in with no artillery support, and no prior suppression of enemy fire? How much suppression is too much? Or we can ask the pertinent question–who the hell do you think you are to decide?
In the end, we did have to fight house-to-house, after we had suppressed resistance by various tactics, including WP bombardment. We did not attack Fallujah to kill civillians–we attacked to kill an enemy that decided to hide among civillians. What should we have done, given up and gone home? If your enemy hides behind their civillians, then civillians have to get killed. Sorry, that’s the horrors of war. Be pissed at the insurgents if you want for hiding behind innocents. Be pissed at the legislature for allowing WP to remain legal. Be pissed at Bush for starting this stupid war. Don’t be pissed at the soldiers (and this is from private to general) for using the munitions at their disposal to do their job with minimum casualties to themselves, and as few casualties to civillians as practical.
OCSteve
The one thing these threads on this topic have crystallized for me: If I take the commenters here as a representative sample (obviously they are not) or even just comments across all media and my personal interaction with people – too few people in this country have served their country. And far too many use the freedoms provided by those who do serve to cluelessly slander those very same individuals. That includes the bulk of the posters here, 99% of the MSM, and 95% of the people I know.
The fact that so many people with zero experience or knowledge of anything military feel free to spout their opinion of anything military as fact is galling.
I suppose part of the problem is that our current technology requires less in terms of bodies and boots on the ground.
While I don’t think the draft is necessarily a good thing – I do think we should have a model similar to the Israelis’ compulsive service.
Hell take it a step further and go with the ‘Starship Troopers’ model. Military service required to earn the right to vote.
Shygetz
I don’t care if WP carmelizes skin or not. HE blows off limbs and crushes people beneath rubble. We used lots of that–why aren’t you people bitching about HE rounds used? WP was legal, and the people on the ground decided that it was the most efficient tactic to use. Yes, it’s awful, as are all effective weapons.
Gray
“The idea that WP does not caramelize skin, for example, which John mentioned a few posts above – well, that seems like a pretty important fact to establish!”
Yup. And I did wonder what John is talking about since this isn’t in Steven D’s article and I didn’t see it in he comments when scrolling them down. It turns out it is in an story at The Independent, which is cited at the confederate yankee, which is cited here. If John wants to denounce sloppy journalism at UK newspapers, ok. But why doesn’t he say so and where’s the connection to this Kos column or to the commenters?
Isn’t John’s ‘one size fits all’ attitude kind of, uh, stupid?
“Stupid is as stupid blogs”. Yup, right.
Steve
Shygetz is simply assuming the conclusion of his argument, which is that whatever we happened to do, it was surely the most efficient way to accomplish the mission with minimal civilian casualties. That’s not a substitute for evidence.
I understand the argument that any less brutal method might increase the risk of harm to American soldiers. There is also an argument that using a more brutal method increases the risk of harm to Iraqi civilians. I happen to think both groups are deserving of protection. The Iraqi civilians are not the enemy, and it is not at all clear to me that 10 civilians should die so that 1 soldier may live, or whatever the calculus might happen to be.
Gray
OCSteve, I’ve read that Heinlein novel long ago, and I remember how controversial it was (the movie was too action heavy, as always). I’m still convinced that his idea would lead to a very highly militarized society, and this wouldn’t be healthy. Also don’t forget that Heinlein did show very bad judgment with the sexual relationships described in the Lazarus Long sequels…
Shygetz
Steve, the burden of proof is upon the one making the allegations. If you want to assert that their tactics were not the most effective, you better have proof and supply tactics that would be equally or more effective. Unless you were there, I doubt you do. The only “evidence” you have is that WP is a terrible weapon, which is not surprising. Therefore, you should give our soldiers the benefit of the doubt.
And the point is, the calculus cannot be made a priori; it’s those kids on the ground that are getting shot at, and I’ll be damned if I will condemn them for using legal means to ensure that they have the best chance of returning home in one piece.
And Heinlein’s proposition is silly–there are not enough dangerous non-military jobs to accomadate everyone who would want to serve but be unable or morally against military service. I don’t have a problem with mandatory civil service, but mandatory military service for all (much less as a requirement to vote) is a bad idea. And it’s certainly not the only interesting-yet-bad idea Heinlein ever had.
Slide
I find it galling that someone would suggest that unless one has military experience one has no right to an opinion of “anything military”. What an asinine comment. I have not been in the military but I have an opinion on Abu Gharib. I have not been in the military but I have an opinion on using a weapon like napalm in urban warfare. In this country we have civilian leadership of the military for a very good reason.
But you know what is really funny is that the people that are now screaming that non-military citizens have no right to even have an opinion on things military support this chicken hawk administration. Lets recap the great military experience of those making or opining on the most critical military decisions for our nation:
George W. Bush – well, we all know his military history
Dick “torture is good” Cheney: five student deferments
Steven Hadley: never served in military
Karl Rove: never served
Scooter Libby: never served
Scotty McCllelen: never served
Dough Feith: never served
Lawrence Derita: never served
John Bolton: never served
Condi Rice: never served
Don Rumsfeld: never served in combat
Paul Wolfowitz: never served
Richard Pearl: never served
Senator Frist: never served
Dennis Hasstert: never served
Rush Limbaugh: never served
Sean Hannity: never served
Bill O’reilly: never served
Mike Savage: never served
Ann Coulter: never served
Fred Barns: never served
oh… guess you get the point.
John Cole
There are tow distinct issues here, and they are:
1.) Were the Pentagon/DoD and State Department statements accurate.
2.) Did the troops carelessly or intentionally deploy chemical weapons on civilians and enemy troops.
I have provided ample evidence that the second claim is not accurate, and it is either dismissed, downplayed, or met with ‘But gee- aren’t you troubled by the accusations?’
More maddening still is that the ‘evidence’ of the first issue is being used as support for the second issue. See- THE DOD LIED. THEREFORE WE DID USE CHEMICAL WEAPONS. Notwithstanding that it is entirely possible that the DoD and the State (more likely in the latter than the former) were just wrong, but even if they were lying, which has not been established, using WP for purposes other than mere illumination is not illegal, immoral, and unethical.
In short, I see a bunch of people who do not trust the Pentagon (and in some cases, for good reason), who are then simply moving forward and accepting agitprop accusations form disreputable sources that are easily disproven as verifiable fact, and in the process accusing our troops of heinous crimes. IN fact, they more often than not put themselves in great harm simply to avoid collateral damage.
So that is why I am saying the DOD statements do not concern me. If they lied or were wrong, so be it. The uglier charge is the one you guys are willingly or unintentionally pushing despite the fact that it has been pretty soundly rebutted.
All of this is only made more amusing by the fact that all of a sudden, forensic experts, munitions specialist, legal scholars in the laws of land warfare and international treaties, and military experts are popping up all over from, shall we say, unexpected quarters to weigh in with their two cents to show that yes, our troops did do as charged.
And it honks my horn.
John Cole
Thanks slide, for the chickenhawk update. Can I feel free to call all people opposed to the war traitors and anti-american, now?
Slide
my chickenhawk statement was in response to this statement:
You can’t have it both ways guys, either having military experience is a requisite for discussing military issues or not. As usual Cole finds a problem with my response but not the initial attack.
Gray
“I don’t have a problem with mandatory civil service, but mandatory military service for all (much less as a requirement to vote) is a bad idea.”
Yup, that’s one thing we both agree on, Shygetz. I even think that mandatory service is a very good idea, if poeple have the choice between the civil and the military branch.
One year of working in supporting streetworkers, in the peace corps or the army would force people to look beyond one’s nose and to learn something about other aspects of society. This would do wonders towards a better grasp of some realities for the broad public. And it may be the only way to finance many social functions today.
Steve
John, the thing is, you have answered the second charge only in the most trivial, semantic way, which is to say that technically WP is not a chemical weapon so we don’t need to talk about anything else.
In fact, you might be wrong about this; I have seen a good argument that when a dual-use substance such as WP is used for non-approved purposes then it is, in fact, classified as a chemical weapon under applicable treaties. I don’t know if this is right or not; but more importantly, I really don’t think this is the key issue.
When we’re talking about fighting the enemy, I can accept the proposition that anything we haven’t promised not to do is fair game; when civilians enter the picture, I think we have to satisfy a higher standard. This is particularly true when our war has political objectives in the first place.
I think the charges have been documented well enough that they require a serious rebuttal as to why there is nothing of concern here. I don’t like the tone of the more shrill criticisms from the Left, either; but I don’t think we accomplish anything by cherry-picking those criticisms and saying that everyone who shoots a tracer round is now being called a war criminal. There are lots of people around here who know a great deal about military matters, modern warfare, the battle of Fallujah, etc.; let’s have a serious discussion.
Gray
“Can I feel free to call all people opposed to the war traitors and anti-american, now?” JC
Hmm, didn’t you already do that, using other words, of course?
“At that point, you have become nothing more than a willing mouthpiece for those who sincerely do wish to do harm to our troops, the innocent civilians of Iraq, and this country. Even worse, it is being done for little more than domestic political considerations.”
:P
Gray
“Let’s See If We Can’t Send John Cole Over The Deep End” Pandagon
Booh!
I don’t support personal warfare like that. Actually, I’m quite pleased that this discussion is starting to become more rational.
John Cole
Slide- You aren’t big on distinctions, are you?
There is a profound difference between stating that only people who have served should voice their support for or against a military effort and recogniing that only people who have some knowledge and understanding of a complex topic matter should be listened to. IN other words, everyone should be entitled to an opinion about abortion, but I am going to listen to people who have had an abortion or provided an abortion over people who siply feel strongly one way or another but have no technical experience.
Nonsense. WP is not a chemical weapon. Its use is not banned. It has multiple uses. It does specific things to the body. There is no evidence (some corpses which do no exhibit the type of damage WP would inflict) and the word of one soldier who has been discredited and a film crew with an agenda. I also know that the military does take very strict measures to limit civilian casuaties.
I would say I have done more than just a technical job refuing the assertions, and what I have summarized hee is only a portion of what is out there and what is known abot the issue.
No. I was very cautious not to call people anti-American, because I think those charges are as stupid and offensive as the chickenhawk stuff. I stated they have become wiling mouthpieces- not because they are ant-American, but because it serves their own domestic political goals.
But hey, everyone. Check out the new post a Pandagon. Making these charges is fun! It is cool to smear the troops, beause we might push John cole off the deep end!
OCSteve
First off – I agree with civilian control of the military. Anyone, military experience or not should be free to discuss policy. And the civilians should make the policy decisions.
What’s galling is the number of people discussing tactics as if they know what they are talking about when they obviously do not – and presenting it as fact.
Military experience is a prerequisite for discussing tactics. If you haven’t served in a line unit then you don’t have a clue – and you make it very obvious when you try.
Defense Guy
Sure, absolutely. The reason why the military overwhelmingly leans to the right is because the right does this, or at least attempts to, while the left simply does not. Clearly the whole left/right analogy does not fit everyone, as some on this thread have proven, but this shitstorm and how it has been dealt with by individuals and their blogs is another one of the reasons why the Reps can count on the military vote, and the Dems cannot.
Where is the skepticism from the left leaning blogs? There isn’t any that I can see, only the excited hope that this will somehow end up hurting this administration, even if it is based on a lie that the troops will have to bear the brunt of.
Jason Van Steenwyk
Another use for WP is as a timing/synchronization aid. You can call for an HE bombardment and arrange for the last volley to be WP. That’s the maneuver commander’s clue that he’s free to launch his assault – there will be no more rounds coming in on the position. Otherwise, he’d have to wait for 30-40 seconds to be sure the mission was over, or risk moving too early and uncovering himself and his element when another volley of HE comes screaming in.
It also helps coordinate fires. Suppose you’re coordinating helicopter, fixed wing, mortar, and artillery assets. Obviously, you can’t fly aircraft through the artillery trajectory path. But if the last volley is WP, that gives aircraft in the area a green light to make their run over the impact area. Otherwise, again, they’ll have to wait, and there will be a break in suppressive fires, which may allow the enemy to escape or reinforce himself, or get people to his key machine gun positions to replace casualties.
A company commander can also use WP to mark a target for airstrikes, or to mark his limit of advance, so that any friendly air does NOT hit to one direction of the marker, which protects US lives.
The commander on the ground can also use mark the left and right limits of the enemy position for friendly air. This allows air power to focus on actual enemy positions without having to randomly distribute firepower all over the sector.
Which is good for everyone involved except terrorists.
WP has a legitimate place on the battlefield.
It’s amazing to me to what extent people will cling to ill-informed opinions, who don’t understand doctrine, who don’t understand tactics, who don’t understand the ordnance, and who willingly cling to these ignorant opinions no matter how many times people who actually think about this stuff for a living weigh in with a reality check.
“It’s not clear to me that 10 iraqi civilians dead is worth saving the life of one US soldier.”
Well, that’s a murky area, and there is no one correct number. The results of an operation or tactic cannot be foretold in advance. US troops routinely take every reasonable precaution to protect the lives of noncombatants, and sometimes we make the unreasonable precautions, too.
But the law of war allows us to go after the combatants wherever they are, and then it comes down to a judgement call regarding proportionality. The insurgent does not get a free pass simply because he’s surrounded himself with noncombatants.
We just go in with a jigsaw rather than a chainsaw.
Here’s a whack on the head with a cluebat for you: DPICM and HE are chainsaws. WP is part of the jigsaw.
Perhaps when you get to write the letter home to the parents, or perhaps when you get to stand there at the welcome home event at the airfield hugging your family, and then get to walk across the terminal to meet some 20 year old wife with a baby standing all by herself, and hold her and apologize because you couldn’t bring Johnny back home to her, then maybe you’ll have a little more standing to proscribe the exact level of firepower and tactics within a 3% tolerance that is neccessary to take the ground.
Until then, and until you do a bit of homework on ordnance, tactics, and doctrine like some of the rest of us have over the years, don’t take it personally if I regard your opinion on this matter with a healthy measure of dismissive contempt.
You’re like a plumber someone watching a surgical operation and yelling at the surgeon because you don’t like the tools he’s using.
John S.
Yes, anyone can reduce an argument down to a ridiculous pile of chicken fat, but it would be entirely disingenuous to do so, especially when my observation was made in earnest.
Seriously, you need to take a break. You’re getting loopy again.
OCSteve
Jason Van Steenwyk:
Hear hear. Oustandingly well put.
Slide
Defense Guy:
Don’t be so sure of taking the military for granted:
Defense Guy
I don’t take anything for granted, but your poll doesn’t really address my point that there is no skepticism on reports like the WP brouhaha, coming from the left.
Slide
John, chickenhawk is a descriptive term:
Those that I listed above fall into this category don’t they? Its not a judgement but rather a description.
Now, calling somone anti-American is a bit different won’t you say? rather than being descriptive it is is often used as a pejorative by those who object to another individual or group’s stance toward the United States.
John S.
Defense Guy-
You would do well to avoid painting overly simplified generalizations with Darrell’s 2×4 of Truth®:
Please, put the piece of wood down and reach for a nice camel hair brush.
Slide
DG:
Then you haven’t read my posts very carefully. This is what I said:
.
Pb
John Cole,
Who cares about what you really said? Sure you didn’t actually *say* anyone was anti-American, but then again, Steven D. didn’t actually *say* anything about “chemical weapons” in his diary either. But that didn’t stop you, oh no…
nyrev
Well, that and Reagan’s administration authorized the first decent military payraise in decades, while Clinton’s administration closed most of the bases on the eastern seaboard.
It is entirely possible to support the troops and not support the war. Hell, there are troops who don’t support the war. But if you support the troops, then you can’t claim outrage every time you hear about troops doing what troops do. Soldiers at war kill people. It’s kind of the point. Civilians who live in warzones die in wars. It’s a bad thing. It’s one of the reasons why starting a war is such a big deal and one of the reasons why I hated Bush’s seeming determination to start this one despite the facts. But if you’re screaming about troops killing people, don’t turn around and say “but I support the troops.” Because you’re either lying or you’re nuts.
Shygetz
Slide–
Oh. My. God. Are you seriously suggesting that “chickenhawk” is not a pejorative? That’s just dishonest. I am all for the chickenhawk label–unlike John, I think it is important to point out that those most in favor of war are often those that have not experienced it. But I have never heard of the chickenhawk label used in a complimentary or neutral fashion. Let’s all at least be honest here, if nothing else.
Slide
republicans supporting the troops:
Slide
I’m not going to let the right spew pure bullshit all the time about how they support the troops and the left doesn’t. It offends me and I’ll not just sit by while these spurious lies are made.
This is an editorial in the Army Times about how much this adminstration and the Republican congress’s support for the troops:
So lets get back to arguing the issues without throwing in all this “the left doesnt’t suppport the troops” bullshit.
Slide
No, I didn’t say that. As a matter of fact my post said it is used to critcize but.. and here is the difference with “anti-american” it is objective not subjective. One could look at the definition I posted and objectively determine whether or not one fits in that category – chickenhawk. On the other hand calling someone anti-american is purely subjective. Does being a good american mean going along with the Administration no matter what? Of never saying anything negative about what is done in our name? If that was the case than John is a big anti-american because, to his credit, he has frequently criticized this administration. So it is very subjective as to when a negative comment is deemed anti-american. That is the only point I was making.
neil
WP is not illegal or somehow ‘worse’ than having an HE round dumped on your head (and I have had HE rounds dumped on my head- well within ‘danger close’ in an accidental friendly fire incident)
So you’re dead?
Tuttle
A military composed of troops, I might add, who are only doing their jobs and using the weapons they are provided, trained, and authorized to use.
Authorized is the word that matters. Stop hiding behind the troops and realize it is those authorizing actions that are a) brutal, b) stupid, c) propaganda disasters and d) quite possibly illegal that are damaging our country and its military.
Only in wingnut fantasy land is the Left as a whole dumping on the soldiers. You folks who follow their lead only come off as craven by deflecting the blame from those responsible for these actions to those ordered to carry them out.
Defense Guy
Which is why in my original comment today, I wrote:
So you see, I was already attempting to use a smaller brush. It would be nice to see a left leaning blogger say ‘wait a minute this doesn’t sound right’ or something other than the absolute willingness to believe every bad thing that comes down the pike about our troops.
ppGaz
This is called winning a battle but losing the war.
Once you train the righties to talk like Clinton, you’ve created righty Clintons.
Stop parsing and start talking about what’s really important.
“Anti-American” and “chickenhawk” are both gratuitous and they both miss the essential points.
Defense Guy
You know, it’s not about partisan political bullshit, at least from me. It’s about giving our guys the benefit of the doubt that they are not monsters and that they are, in fact, decent upstanding human beings doing a very dangerous job, for our benefit. When you hear the kind of crap about ‘intentionally targeting civilians or journalists’ then your bullshit radar should be going off full blast. That’s all.
Steve
I think DG actually has a very good point about the lack of skepticism from some quarters. It’s a problem when people say “the military is perfect and nothing they do should be questioned,” but uh, despite that I think everyone’s default assumption should be that our military doesn’t commit war crimes.
If someone walks up to me with a camera and says “Look! I have evidence of war crimes here on film!” I don’t think it’s responsible to just dismiss it out of hand. But I sure think the reasonable response would be something like “Wow, I hope there’s a good answer to this.”
Part of the problem, yes, is people who are too ready to assume bad things about our guys in the military, who really are the good guys. But part of the problem also is that there is very little evidence to suggest that this administration is exercising any oversight or that it even believes outrages like Abu Ghraib are anything other than a PR problem. As incompetently as the politicians have waged this war (no post-war plan, not enough boots on the ground, etc), it’s difficult to take for granted that the right call is being made.
There is a certain vocal segment of the Right which believes there is literally nothing we could do in the “war on terror” that would be unacceptable, including torture, internment of Muslims, nuking Mecca, etc. And it’s that vision which most of the Left is really afraid will become reality if no one opposes it.
Slide
God damnit where is it that anyone in this thread said our troops were MONSTERS or anything close to that? Jesus can you guys EVER debate an issue without distorting what the other side has said. Over and over and over and over it has been said here and elsewhere this is not about dispariging the “troops”. Jesus was Samuel Johnson ever right when he said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
John S.
I do see evidence of that, and I recognize that in forums such as this it is tempting to make hasty generalizations in order to prove a point. It’s just that sometimes, they are off the mark, and worse, don’t really get to the heart of the matter.
That said, I will wait to see what further information comes out in regards to all this. I do not think the majority of our troops are monsters, and I do not think the majority of the commanders are incompetent (although I do think the DoD leadership is completely brain-dead). But particularly in times of war, a few bad apples really do queer the bunch – and cause PR nightmares that will haunt us for years to come.
Defense Guy
Slide
Bullshit, when you read comments like ‘crimes against humanity’ or ‘intentional civilian targeting’ or ‘random strikes’, which all come from comments made here or on Kos’s site, then they fit very neatly into the idea that the author thinks the troops are acting like monsters. However, instead of calling them on it, you decide its better to decry those who are pointing it out.
BTW – that quote, used so widely by the anti-war crowd is not meant to imply that patriotism = scoundrel, not that I would expect you to acknowledge that.
Slide
no, I think chickenhawk is not gratuitous. I think it is part of the problem why we have this administration arguing to allow torture against the military’s wishes. I have a lot of respect for the uniformed members of the Pentagon. I think they understand the consequences of going down that road as do three Republican Senators, Senator Graham (ex JAG officer), Senator McCain (ex POW) and Senator Warner (ex head of the Navy). Their experience in the military are part of the reason they are so strongly against their own vice president on this and I will equally conclude that that Cheney’s lack of military experience place a part in the formation of his opinions.
so, bottom line, the lack of military experience in this Administration is a bonafide issue when we are at war and very controversial decisions are being made as to how to execute that war.
Shygetz
Alright, then Slide, who are you disparaging? The troops on the ground decided to use WP in the manner they did. So who are you blaming? Bush? He wasn’t around when Protocol III was rejected. Cheney? Him neither. Rumsfeld? He made legal tools available to the troops, and the troops decided when the appropriate time to use them was. So who are you blaming for the use of WP rounds in Fallujah? I blame the insurgents for hiding amongst a civillian population.
neil
My main concern with this post is that John is going Zell Miller-crazy over a line of argument which a few lefty nobodies are making, and which the Democratic Party’s leadership is avoiding for reasons which John would more or less agree with. The fact is that this would be a devastatingly effective political offensive, but Democrats are not the sort of short-sighted fools who would sacrifice being right on the facts for some short-term political advantage. There are all kinds of examples of Republicans going apopleptic over perfectly ordinary, defensible things Clinton did (like going to the Summit of the Americas) for short-term gain. The Democrats have refrained from doing this sort of thing to President Bush, despite his conduct which leaves him a great deal more open to the charges.
Of course, because he is so open, lefty activists like Kos -do- make these charges. This causes John Cole to conclude that the Democratic Party is just as low and dirty as the Republican Party and therefore to vote for the latter. This is why he writes silly posts like these.
Slide
DG:
Please show me where someone said the US military was intentionally targeting civilians. I will gladly denouce them. So, please show me.
Now, I can pick out some outlandish things those on the right have said, like Ann Coulter, but it would be unfair to use that against a reasoned argument from someone on the right wouldn’t it? But, go ahead, please show me where someone in here, out of these dozens and dozens of posts, has made the claim that our troops intentionally targeted civilians.
DG:
duh…. faux patriotism my dear friend, you know, like Faux news et al.
Slide
well we can start with the DoD that lied about the use of WP… that lied about using napalm… that lied about the heroics of Private Lynch… that lied about the death of Tilman…. that lied about bombing a wedding party… etc. etc.
I want to have confidence in what my DoD says. The fact that they have zero credibilty is very troubling to me. So, please excuse me if I don’t immediately belive their assurances that WP was used in a proper manner. They brought this failure of confidence on themselves. Liars always do.
But again, I have NOT concluded the military has done anything wrong here. I’ve said that over and over again, but that doesn’t mean we should not talk about it, discuss it, investigate it, etc. Like Abu Garib if things are being done in all of our names that this country finds morally wrong then we have a right to scream and yell to change policy. That is democracy my friend. Thats what TRUE patriotism is all about.
Perhaps the use of WP against combatants is perfectlly legal even in an urban setting where there are likely civillians to be injured does that make it right? Perhaps an incident like this is what causes something to become illegal or against military regulations. We should always be evaluating what we are doing, as a nation, to see if it conforms to our values as a nation.
John Cole
PB- The chemical weapons tag has now been conveniently removed, and in the post KOS refers back to a post made there that completely and totally assert that ‘chemical weapons’ were used:
Nice try, though!
A Hermit
What John Cole and the other war cheerleaders don’t seem to get is that this is a “hearts and minds” struggle. And the kind of indiscriminate “destroying the village to save it” kind of tactic used in Fallujah is the surest way to lose such a struggle.
It was a dumb approach to begin with compounded now by the questionable (at least) use of incendiaries in a dense urban environment.
Remember a few years ago when the Philly police burned down a whole neighbourhood while trying to get a couple of bad guys? If you think that was a good thing, you’ll be all for the use of WP in Fallujah.
As for teh “chemical/not chemical” argument, it’s not very informative. All explosives are chemical weapons; they create a chemical reaction, that’s why they explode. But it’s just a label. The offensive thing about this is the use of an indiscriminate weapon, the use of which is restricted by US and international law, in a manner which must inevitably have led to uneccessary civilian casualties.
That’s blood on all our hands.
Slide
Let me give you an example. I’ve been in law enforcement for over 20 years. At one point in NY’s history, the law gave police officers the right to shoot fleeing felons. So that a kid stealing a car could be shot dead by a police officer. Now if a police officer did such a thing he would be perfectly in his rights to have done so. No one could rightly attack his actions or call him a monster. He was just doing what he was trained to do. But, it would still be very very appropriate for the citizens of New york to say, hold on, we dont’ think that is a good policy. Lets look at this again. Times change. Well, after some highly publicized cases they did exactly that and changed the law. Police officers no longer are legally permitted to shoot fleeing felons (there are certain circumstances, certain crimes, in which they can of course).
That is what this debate is about. John may be 100% correct, and I suspect he is, that the use of WP is legal, and no laws or regulations were violated by its use in Falluja. Ok. Fine. But should it be? That is the question that I and others are asking. And those are questions that are rightly asked by NON-MILITARY people. We certainly dont’ want the cops making the law as to when they can use deadly physical force do we? This is not just a question of military tactics its about what, as a nation, we find acceptable or not acceptable, in combat. Its a simple as that.
jg
Nice.
Sherard, you’re an idiot. Seriously if you think there are troop haters in existence anywhere but in republican talking points you are an idiot. You’re the problem.
upstate guy
hmmm, I wonder if you’d be so cavalier if the willie pete had been used against a city filled with american children and civilians, if you’d be so willing to dismiss criticisms of it.
Sometimes I wish people would just be honest and admit, Americans are the most important humans in the world, and if keeping ourselves safe means using substances like this, even if they have side-effects of killing foreign civilians, well, so be it…
John Cole
You see- IT IS TRUE! By the power of assertion, we have definitive prove they did what we are claiming! It is like magic!
Slide
John a question, when that HE landed right on your head did you suffer any brain damage by any chance? just asking.
Defense Guy
Slide
The world community has just decided that you cannot bring your firearm to apprehend a perp if there is any likelihood of an innocent civilian being hurt or killed. I am sorry that this is going to put you and your fellow officers in greater danger, but that is a price the world community seems willing to make. While the US has not yet ratified this new standard, the civilian population now demands that you abide by it.
In addition, your boss, the elected police chief has been ‘proven’ to be an immoral man who lies to get what he wants, so we are going to take away your nightstick too. It’s not that we have anything against you, but your boss has forced us to decide that his actions are somehow indicative of what yours will likely be. Again, while this will put you, who we absolutely support without question, in greater danger, it is for the good of the country.
Lastly, since police corruption is often so widespread, we are no longer going to take you at your word when you arrest someone for a crime and will be giving the ‘supposed criminals’ statements equal weight in determining who is more believable. I’m sure you understand.
jg
I can’t believe you’re a college professor. You ignore peoples valid points in order to score ‘funny’ points with the right. Yeehaw lets ignore what they’re saying and keep yelling ‘hate the troops’ at them and make fun of ‘thier’ arguments. Its a short diversion, the administration will up the color alert or something to change the subject soon.
‘How to gain and stay in Power’ By Adolf Hitler.
Tell the people they have an enemy that is prepared to attack and declare that the pacifists are unpatriotic or treasonous. Rinse, repeat.
John Cole
I was speaking figuratively. It scared the living shit out of me, though. I was a little dazed for the while, but it is up to you to determine ifthere was any permanent damage.
Hey- Maybe that explains my inability to type!
A Hermit
Mr COle, the evidence comes from the troops themselves: “The boom kicked dust around the pit as they ran through the drill again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives they call “shake ‘n’ bake” into a cluster of buildings where insurgents have been spotted all week.
They say they have never seen what they’ve hit, nor did they talk about it as they dusted off their breakfast and continued their hilarious routine of personal insults and name-calling.”
That’s indiscriminate use of a weapon whose use is restricted by international conventions
And never mind the “chemical/not chemical” red herring,. The same objection applies to things like cluster bombs.
Take a breath, Mr Cole, and try thinking about this….
Slide
Does everyone notice that John never responds to the issues raised and that he seeks out statements that he can attack? Its rather easy to do. I can sit here all day and pick out idiotic statements made by people that support John’s position but does that really further the debate?
So let me ask John more directly.
1) do you have ANY problem with using WP other than for smoke or illumination? Any?
2) do you find it appropriate that WP would be used against combatants (shake and bake) in an urban environment where it is likely civilians would be impacted.
I’ll keep it simple and leave it to those two questions. Just curious as to where you stand on the REAL issues at hand as I dont’ think you’ve answered these questions.
jg
Again
Shygetz
I would be just as willing to criticize WP as I would HE or having an extended firefight throughout all of the streets. What kind of munitions would you LIKE to have used in an American city?
This is a fine question to ask. Let’s say that WP was outlawed at Fallujah. Then what? I would guess heavy HE and other conventional munitions bombardment. Same people dead, and you now have rubble instead of a city. Tell me, what is the humane way of slaughtering people?
Questionable only by people who weren’t there. The soldiers who were there decided it was needed, and they used it. You got any credible evidence to outweigh that, or even bring that into serious doubt? If not, then it wasn’t a questionable decision.
Name an discriminate artillery shell. Hell, I’ll do you one better. Name a discriminate weapon. One that doesn’t kill whatever it’s pointed at. They don’t exist.
This is an enemy that hides among civillians. When facing such an enemy in a situation as Fallujah, what choices do we have? We can’t just let them all go. They won’t come out and fight. We get as many civillians out of the way as we can. Then we kill the enemy. That’s all we can do. Whether we kill the enemy with HE, WP, or a hail of lead, there’s still a lot of civillians that will die. We didn’t put the civillians there. We didn’t make the insurgents hide behind them. They weren’t unnecessary civillian casualties within the context of the war (although you could argue that all casualties were unnecessary, as the entire war was unnecessary, that is not the point of this thread). They were necessary civillian casualties–regreattable, but necessary.
jg
They weren’t nescessary. They were unavoidable but you’re choice of words implies we wouldn’t have won the battle without these civilian casualties. I’m pretty sure thatsd not what you meant.
Still you seem to miss the point others are saying, whether by mistake or not I don’t know. We are in a war of hearts and minds. Its a political action now. You don’t win hearts and minds by doing shit that can be percieved as this action is perceived. Unless you have a bunch of fuckups running the war then you do this kind of shit all the time and then attack your citizens that speak up.
Slide
DG I would try to respond to your post if I knew what the fuck you were talking about, but I don’t.
The military always act under limitations of the Rules of Engagment for any particular mission. Nothing new here.
John Cole
Slide- I do my best to respond to the majority of comments. Try responding to 500 comments a day. Talk about bad faith assumptions.
No. I have no problem using it on enemy troops.
Loaded question. For one, use of WP can be used to minimize collateral damage, because it is less dangerous than dropping other kinds of rounds. Second, you are assuming that we just went into New York and started sheling civilian populations. They cordoned it off, tried to get people to evacuate, and then did their best to miinimize civilian casualties. I have no problem dropping HE (shake) and WP (bake) on the enemy, though, provided caution is exercised.
As far as this:
As far as this, this simply betrays a total ignorance of how artillery works. The minimum effective range and maximum effective range of M109’s is from 9600 to 17200 meters. Mortar rounds are significantly less, but still quite a distance.
To someone who is surprised that gun crews have no idea what they hit, I have this to say- “No shit?” Of course they don’t know what they hit. That is the job ofthe fire control officers and the grunts with eyes on target. The gun crews are supposed to simply get steel down range until they are told ‘cease fire,’ ‘check fire,’ or ‘hold fire.’
OCSteve
Substitute “myself and my family” for Americans and I agree 100%. Why would I be ashamed to admit that? I don’t care what they use to kill terrorist scum. Even with the side-effects. There are always civilian casualties in war and our military has done a fantastic job of reducing them to a minimum at increased risk to themselves.
Guess what? Some of the civilians that lived, though burned, would not have had the same round been HE.
Defense Guy
Of course you don’t, and now the ‘rules of engagement’ that limit the risk of harming civilians at the cost of an increased risk to our troops, can be applied to you in your job as well.
Slide
Then we will lose.
stickler
All this folderal about WP misses the point entirely. The tactics the US military used in Fallujah were those they were trained to use. They were bound to get a lot of civilians killed.
I blame the Administration. Why did our forces have to wait for months while the Fallujah situation spun out of control? Why did our troops sit there watching thugs take over a city which we’d already taken once?
You all know the answer to that. Election Day, 2004. George W. Bush didn’t want a nasty house-to-house battle to be in the news before Election Day 2004. That’s why the situation festered so long, and that’s why our troops had to use all the firepower at their disposal in an urban environment. Doing so was bound to make for some very nasty headlines, and obviously, one graphic Italian documentary. Any damned idiot could have predicted this. Craven, domestic, political calculation interfered with the military mission. Not for the first time, and I guaran-damn-tee you not for the last time either, with these idiots in charge.
Slide
of course they do. And they should. If I had a bad guy shooting at me from the middle of crowd I could not shoot back for fear of hitting innocents. Would you really want it some other way?
Now, I understand combat is not law enforcement and I am not so naive as to not understand that “collateral damage” is an unfortunate aspect of war that cannot be avoided. But we have an obligation to minimize it as much as possible. Not only for the obvious humanitarian reasons but because when fighting an insurgency it is in our own self interest. The more civilians you kill or maime the more enemies you make.
ppGaz
We have every concievable choice. If you doubt it, then paint the civilians in your little tableaux as Americans, and see what choices you have. You always have every choice, regardless of the nationality of the civilians.
For example, you can withdraw from that field of “battle” altogether. If our aims in Iraq requires us to incinerate civilians going forward from here, then the only moral choice is to get out. There’s no proof — there’s not even any empirical or historical evidence — that we are going to have any particular good outcome there. To believe that we are, you have to blindly trust a bunch of government crapheads who have been wrong about everything in this region for at least 30 years and have no standing to ask me to believe them now.
Pull out and pursue another policy. That’s your best choice, one that is always available.
ppGaz
Absolutely not true. “Necessary” is a function of the overriding policy, not of the tactics on the ground. The policy is the dog, not the tail. Change the policy. Criticize the policy (when you can do so without endangering the troops who are charged with carrying it out).
Your grotesque assertion can be true only if policy is fixed in the stars. It isn’t.
Pb
John Cole,
Check the latest from Kos–sounds like he actually agrees with you on the non-illegality issue, despite whatever link you might have interpreted differently. Nice try, though!
John Cole
PB- Compare and contrast the previous statements and the one today. As I note here, there is a military term for this.
You can go ahead and pretend the other posts by Kos don;t exist, though, if it makes you feel better.
Belasarius
“They say they have never seen what they’ve hit, nor did they talk about it as they dusted off their breakfast and continued their hilarious routine of personal insults and name-calling”
Jeez, its hard to address all the points in this thread so I’ll throw out a couple of things.
First, the guys who fire the weapons usually don’t know the results. The guys directing the weapons, the Forward Observers, do see the results. And, they do choose the appropriate weapon for the target. Rumsfield is not consulted as to the appropriate weapon. Lt. Fumblebutz or Staff Sergeant “Snakey” do.
Nearly the whole population of the city left before the assault. Anybody who didn’t leave made a choice or were being held hostage by the enemy.
Senior Chief Firecontrolman, USN, 73-94
Andrei
I think you missed the point of me bringing up Hiroshima at all, which was not to equate the use of the atom bomb to the use of WP. I was just trying to how that though both are a means of killing people that is pretty gruesome. My larger point was that the use of overwhleming force that results in death of anyone in the general vincinity of the conflict in a war is actually something that is reasonably legitimate given the context of war, but I think it still can be considered heinous.
There’s no judgement value on my part about the troops in this context. War brings death and destruction, and if I were sitting in a foxhole or entering a building at night, I’d do everything in my power to stay alive. Period. Parsing “ethical” actions on the part of soldiers who have to engage in war is such a slippery slope that only way to solve any problems on how men act when their lives are on the line is to not put them in precarious circumstances in the first place.
I don’t attribute anything to the troops in a conflict. Hardly ever. I rest all blame on civilian casualities and credit for keeping our soldiers alive at the hands of those making the crucial decisions way above the grunts in the field.
I’m not so sure people are attributing the accountability of this behavior to the troops so much as they are trying to assign it to the people running the war. That’s how I read most of it anyways.
Pb
John Cole,
Ok, I did. It looks like he cited The Independent, which reported that “rumors are swirling”. It seems to me that they still are, but I don’t see how Kos “completely and totally assert[s]” anything there.
In short, I’m not the one who has to pretend. Cheers.
JohnieB
John Cole
You quote my question and respond with gross distortions labeled “fool.” If you read my statement, you might be able to notice I never characterized WP as a chemical weapon. What it’s called doesn’t mean a thing. “Illumination” may be the official use, but Jason’s comment seems more like what I’m familar with: burn ’em out.
Further, I had only just picked up the thread and asked another correspondent (JJE) how he knew you’d been in, as I didn’t want to wade through the worthless diatribes I expected (and found) on your blog; I find it very upsetting. Your callousness speaks for itself, as does your “use” of evidence, handling of terms in an agrument, etc. I shall leave further comments to those who can put up with this.
Ex Spec. 5
1st Cav Div (AM)
APO 96490 4 April 68- 2May 69
ppGaz
Somehow I think the world is better served if we pretend that the posts of Darrell don’t exist.
John Cole
JohnieB- I called you a fool, because in the little Pandagon orgy of self-righteousness, cole-bashing, and general ill-informed mania, the only thing you could come up with was a personal attack on me for being ‘callous’ while questioning whether or not I was actually in the military.
WP is a horrible weapon, sure. But it is not a chemical weapon, and it is legal to use, and whether or not it offends your sensibilities or not is not the issue here. The issue is the vile rumor that our troops used chemical weapons on civilians, putting us on the same moral plane as Saddam.
BTW- I was armored cav, as well.
John S.
It seems John, that in the little Balloon-Juice orgy of self-righteousness, KOs-bashing, and general well-informed military mania, the majority of what you seem to be coming up with are personal attacks.
I guess it’s OK for you, though, since this is your blog, and of course you are always right.
Dustin
Any rumor that is detrimental to our troops, our cause, and the Administration has legs with these people. Next they’ll be complaining if our troops take out insurgen… oh, nevermind, they already are.
A Hermit
“As far as this, this simply betrays a total ignorance of how artillery works.”
And as far as that, it simply betrays an unwillingness to address the point I (and others) was making; that use of artillery in a dense urban environment must inevitably lead to civilian casualties. Instead of shaking your regretfully about this how about responding to the proposition that the utility of such action in a counerinsurgency “hearts and minds” campaign is counter to the goal of the mission and that the morality, and, yes, even legality of such action in those circumstances is questionable at best.
The fact that the Pentagon started out by first denying the whole story, than falsely claiming only to have WP for “illumination” demonstrates that they at least recognize the point, even if they’re trying to avoid answering it.
You’re not always such a pompous ass, Mr. Cole, but you’re setting some kind of record today…
A Hermit
And, yes, everybody I do understand how artillery works, that’s why I generally object to its use in urban areas, especially when (contrary to the fiction that the city was somehow “empty” of everyone but “bad guys”) attempts were made to prevent all citizens over a certain age were prevented from leaving.
In any case, if legal or even moral arguments aren;t persuasive, how about the simple utilitarian one; Fallujah made American forces look like the Red Army in Afghanistan to the same people whose “hearts and minds” those same forces are suposedly trying to win over. You want a lesson in how to lose in Iraq? Fallujah is Exhibit A.
A Hermit
That should read “all male citizens over a certain age”
Shygetz
I have no defense for the Pentagon denying the use of WP. Either they were lying, or they said something they had no reason to say. I also have no defense for the policy. I don’t think we ever should have gone to Iraq, and now that we are there, we should get out.
However, this thread started because some people were bitching and moaning over the tactic of using WP in Fallujah. They weren’t bitching that we subdued Fallujah–they were bitching that we used WP to do it. Now that it has been established that WP is not illegal and is not a chemical weapon, the original bitchers have several options. They can knock it off (which they haven’t), they can claim that WP was the wrong thing to use for tactical reasons (how the hell would they know that), or they can sneak in at night, move the goalposts, and start talking about the failed overall strategy of Iraq (as embodied in the Fallujah assault) and hope the late-comers don’t notice. I call shenanigans. I won’t defend the strategy of Iraq OR Fallujah; however, I defy someone to present credible evidence that there was a better tactic to use in the situation.
A Hermit
The better tactic would have been to continue isolating Fallujah, and not allowing American forces to be baited into launching a full scale military assault over the admittedly horrifying murder and mutilation of four security contractors.
(Not that I think that’s a particularly inspiring plan either. Bottom line is, their are no good choices to be made in Iraq, just some choices that are less likely to be as bad as others.)
And I don’t think anyone is “moving the goalposts” here. The point remains the same; the use of weapons like WP in such an environment was counterproductive to the overall mission of stabilizing Iraq because there are very real questions about the morality, if not the legality (and yes, one can quibble all day about whether violating the language of international conventions like the Hague and Geneva constitutes some definition of “illegality”) of using incendiary weapons in an urban environment.
Those are the real issues being raised; not some simple minded “American soldiers are war criminals” strawman argument. I realize that’s easier for Mr. Cole et al to deal with, but it was never the issue.
jg
He made it the issue. SOP. Don’t ask for clarification, don’t try to understand, LABEL, LABEL, LABEL. Then go home and turn on FOXNews.
John Cole
Thanks, JG. Your silly comment was a real knee-slapper right after reading shygetz’s post above.
Jason Van Steenwyk
Amazing how some people will compound their mind-boggling ignorance of things military with advocating capitulation before an inferior enemy.
Dweebs.
jg
How are they connected? Are you finding another way to avoid the issue? Just blow off my comment and move on. Typical.
There are people on the left that even the left ignores. You seek out their comments, act like they’re typical of all the left and rant about them. Real questions are being asked but you’re too busy ‘Tall Dave’ing’ your own blog.
My favorite line:
Who has become a mouthpiece?
You’re right wing readers aren’t coming back no matter how hard you channel Sean Hannity. You’re ability to be reasonable is kryptonite to them, its over.
jg
Who’s advocating capitulation? Did anyone say don’t kill the enemy? Did anyone say kill them gently? All I’ve heard is do we need to hurl WP shells if we know civilians are in the area. You can be brutal and smart at the same time.
travis
I’m conservative, but I simply cannot sit by and watch our government do these horrible things in our name. I want my grandparent’s GOP back. This disgusts me.
John Cole
JG-
Read it slowly.
Jason
jg: “Who’s advocating capitulation? Did anyone say don’t kill the enemy?”
With what? Spitballs?
Do you know what HE does to people? How about bullets?
Hermit says a better tactic would be to continue isolating Fallujah. Yeah. Seiges are so humane and efficient.
No, Hermit is essentially arguing that we should have ceded Fallujah to the terrorists and then tried to control the damage, even as it became a monstrous car bomb factory that wreaked havoc all over Baghdad.
Think maybe “isolating” Fallujah isn’t as humane or as simple as you might think? How do you disperse forces in a circle around a whole city and not make targets out of the beseiging force? All the while, you’d have media reports about the shortage of food and medical supplies in Fallujah. But just what the Hell do you think “isolating” means?
How long would it have taken? At what cost in lives?
ppGaz also called for capitulation: “Our only moral choice is to get out.”
Your own defeatist words betray you.
And you cannot claim to support the troops when you carp on and hate everything they do.
jurassicpork
Dear God, you have got to be the stupidest carbon-based life form in the solar system. Guess you never heard of My Lai (what an apt name, no?) and Lt. Calley. Lord knows our finest in uniform would *never* stoop to such barbaric tactics when facing a strange and incomprehensible enemy.
So let’s not believe the pictures and the personal accounts of those who’d witnessed WP’s use. They’re just liberal peace-mongers and we can dismiss them, anyway.
After all, we have an ideology and a rotten war that we have to continue justifying.
It only goes to show that when you have a cruel and stupid President, it’s just inevitable that you will have a cruel and stupid military only too glad to do his bidding.
jg
I.DON’T.HATE.ANYTHING.THEY.DO. Find one post anywhere on this planet by me where I said a single bad thing about any soldier. Won’t find it. You’ll find things that you’re warped little mind might bend that way but that doesn’t mean I said what you misinterpreted.
I guess I’ll leave that to the one who said it. I don’t advocate seiges.
My point is simple. Hopefuly you can follow and not somehow read into it a hatred of troops (Why would I hate troops anyway? Almost everyone I grew up with went in, if I hadn’t landed a job I was signing up too. Now I hate them because right wngers can’t argue correctly? College professors even). In a battle of hearts and minds is it smart to use a weapon that looks and acts like a chemwem? Bad enough some Iraqis will turn to terrorism based on our presence there, do we need to add to that?
I have no problems with the military using WP since I learned its not really a chemwem and its legal anyway. But is it nescessary considering our actual endeavor is much larger than just killing insurgents in Fallujah?
Still not following you JC. Are you saying you did try to understand what people were saying? Are you under the impression that through all this you took the high road and not the FOX road? Where does Shygets somewhat accurate description of some peoples reactions fit into you being a shrill FOX harpy lately?
RW
I doubt that.
Ha T. Nguyen
I’m a diehard liberal and I was shocked to hear allegations about using WP in Fallejah and its effects on people’s skins. So, I’ve been cruising the blogosphere (while at work, so I’m not hitting too many websites), looking for a reasonable place where facts about what actually happened is laid out.
D-Kos and Pandagon were too hysterical which is why I’m pleased to have found this site, where people are, actually, discussing, mostly in a reasonable manner, the possible facts about Fallujah.
Please, everyone, keep the comments from denigrating into a screamfest at each other. It’s nice having a reasonable debate about the uses of WP in urban areas.
And, I would love to see everyone take a wait and see attitude about what actually happened at Fallujah.
Or, are the supporters for the use of WP, actually feel that the pictures of the children with their skins melted off are the inevitable costs of using WP and should be acceptable? I’m not trying to be snarky or “gotcha”, here. I mean, if you think WP is less harmful compared to other tactics, then, do you think that we can ever win the “hearts and minds” of the Iraqis?
Or, should we just bag it and nuke the entire region?
Jason
Once the line of departure was crossed, the “hearts and minds” of the people of Fallujah were not particularly at issue.
The city had its chance, and the city made its choice.
Once the USMC led force crossed the LD, it was all about killing the enemy as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
Trying to look at a brute house-by-house, floor-by-floor fight through the “hearts and minds” paradigm pretty much establishes you as far, far out of touch with the reality on the ground.
Why don’t you go hand out some daisys or something?
Not that minimizing civilian casualties isn’t important. It’s always important and commanders at all levels are required to take all reasonable precautions to avoid noncombatant casualties.
But giving the enemy a free pass because he surrounds himself with human shields isn’t one of them. You go after the enemy where he is, with every weapon you have that will fire up where he is.
Period.
don surber
We won Fallujah, right?
Weapons are legal, right?
Fallujahans voted in January, right?
MB
why?
Rick
What exactly is Ballon Juice??!?!?!?!
Sir Willifer
You all seriously need to learn to type (and spell) before submitting such raucously opinionated accounts as these; I find it very hard to take anyone seriously when the only argument given is a quote of a previous post followed by a profane discrediting of that quote. Can’t we spend a little less time verbally abusing one another and a little more time enjoying things?
…Good question, Rick.