I am a fairly reliable cartoon liberal Bush-hater, and I don't like it when the Pentagon lies.
But this story is *not* one that liberals should push.  It will not accomplish any important goals for us.  It will only help the right-wing paint us as anti-troop and anti-US.  It will distract attention from bigger abuses, and abuses that reach higher up.  And when the American people decides--as it will--that this sort of tactic is lamentable but not criminal, the air of exculpation will extend more generally, to make them feel more tolerant of more serious abuses, like torture.  
In short, we have got National Guard memos on our hands here.  
Push this story, and you'll set back the whole enterprise.  Cry wolf on this one, and people will pay less attention on water-boarding, indefinite detention, and the lies and distortions that got us into the war.  When this bout of hysteria misfires and blows over, people will decide that all of our charges are overblown.
In order to undo the damage that the Bush regime has done--to our country, to our Constitution, to Iraq, and to the world--we will have to pick our battles very carefully.  My advice is: this is not a battle worth putting many resources into.  

Further to:

'b. White Phosphorous. WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider
holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired "shake and bake" missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out.'
missions.http://sill-www.army.mil/FAMAG/Previous_Editions/05/mar-apr05/PAG E24-30.pdf

Interesting, just below that, this was mentioned:

'c. Hexachloroethane Zinc (HC) Smoke and Precision-Guided Munitions.We could have used these munitions. We used improved WP for screening missions when HC smoke would have been more effective and saved our WP for lethal '
http://sill-www.army.mil/FAMAG/Previous_Editions/05/mar-apr05/PAG E24-30.pdf


I'd never heard of it, so I dug a little and found that it is nasty stuff, and known to be nasty stuff (Operation Vacuum):


http://www.exercisevacuum.com/hc_smoke.htm

Check out this site, and the video: http://www.exercisevacuum.com/


Also: http://www.exercisevacuum.com/HCsmoke.pdf


Did anyone see coalition forces use (never mind the civilians in Fallujah being issued with) gas masks when using the above?

The Sate Department Official who claimed we used WP for illumination has clearly never seen combat.

Illumination rounds do not use white phosphorus; rather, the illuminant is made up mostly of sodium nitrate and magnesium powder. Illumination rounds are used to reveal the location of enemy forces hidden by darkness. They include an illuminant "candle" which may either produce visible light or infrared light allowing the user to confirm or deny the presence of the enemy without revealing the location of friendly direct-fire weapons. Illumination rounds are often coordinated with high explosive (HE) rounds to both expose the enemy and to kill or suppress him.  

White Phosphorus rounds are used, under current US Army doctrine, to as an "obscurant" rather than an "illuminant".  They produce a dense smoke screen behind which friendlies can maneuver unseen by the enemy.

When I served in the Indochina war we used WP as an antipersonnel weapon, but US army doctrine has changed (for the better).  It remains, however, for senior leadership to encourage the forces to observe doctrine.  This seems to be happening in several other areas of military doctrine, including adherence to the Army Intelligence FM on interrogations

John Stuart Blackton

Apparently, some distinguish between the "toxic properties" of a chemical substance and other incendiary or caustic properties of the substance.  For those who take this line, even though the latter properties can cause death, the death is not do to the chemical's "toxicity", but something else.  If you die because I force you to ingest a can of gasoline, I have employed the gasoline's toxicity against you and used the gasoline as a chemical weapon.  If you die because I pour the gasoline all over you and light you on fire, I have used the gasoline as a chemical accelerant and incendiary weapon, and have killed you without employing the gasoline's toxicity.

The military claims that the white phosphorous was similarly used against enemy combattants as an incendiary, and not a chemical weapon.

    It is peculiar that, even with the admissions of the Pentagon, some would insist that progressives should not push the issue.
OF COURSE, PROGRESSIVES SHOULDN'T PUSH THE ISSUE.  WHEN YOU HAVE A WINNING CARD TO PLAY AGAINST THE EMPEROR, IT'S NOT "GETTING WITH THE PROGRAM" TO PLAY IT, AND PLAY IT BIG --

AS WITH THE COMPLETE EVASION OF THE POWERFUL DICK CLARKE INTERVIEW IN FAHRENHEIT 9/11 OR THE QUOTES OF BOTH POWELL AND RICE NOTING THAT SADDAM HAD BEEN SUCCESSFULLY CONTAINED AND WMDs KEPT FROM HIM (both accurate assessments, given by them in early 2001).

Obviously, the whole "free marketplace of ideas" in the US is a farce, a mere pretense, in which the obvious issues are simply not to be used, which is why both the media and at the astroturf roots we are steered away from using such 'counterindicated' info.

I would add that the end result of all this "serving" is horrible, although it is also true that if you get with the program and justify the lying, you are in a better position to palm the blame off on to those who did NOT get with the program, and try to vaunt your own golden parachute and reputation (the "Melville syndrome")

The Times wrote a non-article today with quotes and no substance about the use of WP framing the problem was bad pentagon response.  The one detail which did catch my eye was that the article quoted John Pike as saying that this was a nonproblem exacerbated by misleading response and information from the pentagon. 

Pike is a security consultant in DC and a former staff member at the Federation of American Scientists, which is not a pacifict organization but critical and thoughtful on issues of arms.  After leaving FAS Pike founded  a consulting firm and globalsecurity.org.  The web site there has a rather extensive technical discussion of uses of white phosphorous, but nothing as far as I can tell to provide depth to the quote from Pike. 

 I find this situation maddening.  I heard the Democracy Now play of the piece from the Italian documentary.  It immediately impressed me as thin.  Engelhardt was the primary source, but he was not there at Fallujah, was repeating whathe heard allegedly over the radio, and clearly has a bias against the war (as do I, but I am saying his credibility as a source is not the highest).  What did capture my attention however was that the pentagon spokesperson brought on to rebut the charges was totally ineffectual.  Apart from trashing Engelhardt's credentials he did little else but issue a nondenial about the use of the napalm substitute, and indicate that WP was useful as an illuminating device (something flatly contradicted on the GlobalSecurity.org web site).  It seems something is up, but it is far from clear what.

 I am left with the impression that this is one best left to axe grinding Italian journalists, Amy Goodman, and incompetent political flacks.  It seems to me that there is a general lack of clarity on all fronts and without something more solid to hold onto the reality based community ought to step aside and await more solid evidence. 

I am unhappy about the use of WP in Fallujah at a time when we have made such use a violation of Army doctrine.

But let us keep things in proportion.

With or without WP, war is a lethal activity.  Both sides are organized to "kill people and break things".

But we  need to stick with the facts.  The WP used in Fallujah wasn't a device "the size of a tank".

What was being fired in Fallujah was 105 MM artillery rounds in alternating sequences of WP and HE (high explosive).  

The business end of a 105 round is closer to the size of a football than a tank.

Artillery rounds aren't warm and fuzzy, but they have been a rather conventional element of the lethality of war since the 18th century.

White Phosphorus artillery rounds came into general use in WWI.  The British were actually the first to use them in significant numbers.

In subsequent wars the US regularly used WP artillery rounds and we received them as incoing as our enemies made haste to return the favor.

In Indochina, where I served for several years, our side had more (and better)  vehicles to deliver WP against enemy personnel than did the other side, but their side was very effective in delivering accurately directed WP mortar fire on American positions.

Again.  Let us preserve perspective.  What happened at Fallujah wasn't nice and it violated our doctrine but not international law.

As with a number of other dimensions of our conduct of this war, we should seek to set a higher standard than our opponents, something that our civilian leadership does not always understand.

But the central horror of this war resides in the fundamental lethality of war itself.

Our ability to "kill people and break things" is considerable.  Their ability to do the same is also quite formidable.

Rather than focus on which tools we use for the killing and the breaking. perhaps we should  invest the larger share of our energies  into examining the reasons for using these tools in the first place.

Do the reasons for this war meet the test of "vital national interests"?

If so, is our response proportional to the threat?

Have we defined our war aims in a manner that is  both achievable and moral?

These are the important questions. And the answers are not simple.  Readers at TPM will disagree on the answers.  

But are these not the questions we should be examining?

John Stuart Blackton

I don't think that Pascal in the original post asked whether WP was illegal or whether it was an issue that "liberals should push."

He is correct that this story didn't get much play in the U.S MSM. However, while in Brussels last week, I did see some very in-depth coverage by CNN International. CNN quoted text from, and showed an image of, the US Army's Field Artillery Magazine . They also showed footage from the Italian news report alleging the use of WP. The Italian footage showing alleged WP victims is questionable at best. However, I believe the Italian footage does document some large-scale use of WP.

I think the issue here is hypocrisy. The counter-spin on the State Department's "Identifying Misinformation" website is horrible. The statement that "white phosphorous shells...were used in Fallujah not for illumination but for screening purposes" clearly doesn't square with the account in the US Army's Field Artillery Magazine. The "shake and bake" missions described in the Magazine clearly involved directing WP shells into the positions held by insurgents. The article even mentions that the artillery crews saved WP for "leathal" missions.

I'm somewhat conflicted about how to respond to Tad Brennan's assessment of what this issue means to "liberals". Liberals certainly shouldn't push the story that "illegal weapons were used in Fallujah," because that does not appear to be true. On the other hand, opponents to the current administration (liberals or conservative) shouldn't hesitate to speak candidly about the facts surrounding WP use in Fallujah (not against international law, but against published U.S. military doctrine) and to point out the administration's handling of the incident and the State Department's website as further evidence of the administration's tendency to resort to delay, spin, and lies when faced with explaining difficult issues.

Why does this matter? Having the PR spin and inaccuracies on a page intended to target foreign sources of disinformation is unacceptable. We have to begin restoring U.S. credibility as some point. This is the issue to push and push vigorously!

Are we focused on the right questions?

Like some of the writers above,  I, too,  am unhappy about the use of WP in Fallujah at a time when we have made such use a violation of Army doctrine.

But let us keep things in proportion.

With or without WP, war is a lethal activity.  Both sides are organized to "kill people and break things".

We should, however, stick with the facts.  The WP used in Fallujah wasn't (as one reader in this thread has said) a device "the size of a tank".

What was being fired in Fallujah was 105 MM artillery rounds in alternating sequences of WP and HE (high explosive).  

The business end of a 105 round is closer to the size of a football than a tank.

Artillery rounds aren't warm and fuzzy, but they have been a rather conventional element of the lethality of war since the 18th century.  They are not weapons that fall beyond the bounds of civilization (except to the degree that war, itself, may be seen to fall beyond the bounds of civilization.  But I am afraid we are too late to settle that debate!).

White Phosphorus artillery rounds  have been with us for about a century.  They came into general use in WWI.  The British were actually the first to use them in significant numbers.

In subsequent wars the US regularly used WP artillery rounds and we received them as incoing as our enemies made haste to return the favor.

In Indochina, where I served for several years, our side had more (and better)  vehicles to deliver WP against enemy personnel than did the other side, but their side was very effective in delivering accurately directed WP mortar fire on American positions.

We should give credit where credit is due.  We have, based on our Vietnam experience, ruled Napalm off the table as an American anti-personnel weapon.

So, let us maintain perspective.  What happened at Fallujah wasn't nice and it violated our doctrine but not international law.  It was offensive to our sensibilities, but it was not the humanitarian crime-of-the-century.

As with a number of other dimensions of our conduct of the war in Iraq , we should seek to set a higher standard than our opponents, something that our civilian leadership does not always understand.

It may be mean-spirited to say so, but I cannot avoid the suspicion that the indifference on the part of our seniormost civilian leaders to the importance of maintaining standards in the conduct of war has something to do with their having evaded wartime service.

Combat produces a number of emotions, and empathy for the enemy is almost always one of them.  Seeing an enemy soldier charred to a crisp is an unescapable reminder that we, too, might be charred to a crisp in the tomorrow's engagment.   The President and the Vice President have never had that experience.  Their sense of war was shaped by movies (or perhaps cartoons).  

The central horror of this war resides in the fundamental lethality of war itself.

Our ability to "kill people and break things" is considerable.  Their ability to do the same is also quite formidable.

Rather than focus on which tools we use for the killing and the breaking.

Perhaps we should  invest the larger share of our energies  into examining the reasons for using these tools in the first place.

Do the reasons for this war meet the test of "vital national interests"?

If so, is our response proportional to the threat?

Have we defined our war aims in a manner that is  both achievable and moral?

These are the important questions. And the answers are not simple.

Readers at TPM will disagree on the answers.  

But,  are these not the questions we should be examining?

John Stuart Blackton

White phosphorus? Its worse than that.

I heard the American were using guns.

Nazi's used guns.

We're through the looking glass here people. 

Pascal,



Why oh why ? Why, when much more serious stories like torture on prisoners and secret jails barely get any traction, why on Earth would you want something like WP to get any serious play?



This story is pivoting on a very legalistic reading of a very technical clause of an international protocol the USA did not even sign. White phosphorus is just a slightly more disgusting way of killing people than the usual and "highly humane" combination of explosive blast effect, fuel-air-induced lethal anoxia and mortal wounds inflicted by high velocity shrapnel. Ok, war is ugly and just became a bit uglier. So what? News at 11?



I'm very much against this war. And yet, frankly, I couldn't care less about this white phosphorus story. War is about killing people, you know, and that what US troops are supposed to do and are doing. If the folks on the front line think WP is an efficient way of dispatching the people they want to kill, so be it. Their call. Not mine. I'm not on the ground and I'm not gonna second guess them.

Using WP/HE on insurgents is not only reasonable, but necessary.

Vann's implied point -- and I don't recall him ever stating it -- would be that if you can't fight an insurgency with rifles, then, you have no business fighting it at all -- because, in the end, indiscriminate firepower will lose it for you, and killing people in a losing cause is monstruous.

But Vann is a type who's too brave for his own good and certainly too brave to be an exemplar for others.  The rest of us say pour it on when it's our hides and the hides of our friends being risked.

And so it goes. 

The "worst is an airplane" line was what Vann was saying early on in the war, when people like Halberstam and Sheehan started picking him out as a renegade genius who understood what Gen. Harkin and Gen. Westmoreland didn't. But by the end of the US involvement, in '72, Vann was flying around in an observation plane over battlefields in the central highlands, calling in massive "Arc Light" airstrikes from massed formations of B-52s to destroy NVA units trying to overwhelm US/ARVN positions around Pleiku (if I recall correctly). The Arc Lights would lay down carpet bombing over an area of about a square kilometer at a time, essentially destroying everything inside the box. As a way to keep the NVA from overwhelming South Vietnam, it worked, but it worked because by that point in the war, the "hearts and minds" campaign was already lost; the entire civilian population of the highland villages had pretty much cleared out because it was too dangerous, so the US could bomb at will without worrying about civilian casualties.

The "hearts and minds" campaign in Iraq is lost by now, too. We lost it with the white phosphorus in Fallujah, and a lot of other places.

White Phosphorous
Building Block of Life
Steve Bell

JMACSF is a SPAM artist. Notice the way he always tags his link posts on to whatever thread is near the top?

He used to be a conservative troll and then switched suddenly to liberal fringe disinfo artist. His technique is to make wild left left sounding allegations, and then provide a link which is often to unsupportive or unsubstantiated source. Just wasted time reading one of JMACSF's links only to find nothing there? Then, you've just been baited by a disinfo artist.