Chemical burns? WP is an incendiary, not a chemical weapon.
hey Wildfire, what’s holding up the return of those two Israeli soldiers ?
hey, maybe I missed that.
http://www.un.org/millennium/law/xxvi-18-19.htm Heres your flat out lie,. How could you think there were treaties against these things.
If there were none ,or you refused to sign ,woild that make it ethically and morally proper to use them? If we dont sign we can do whatever we want is a reprehensible stance.
A lot of people look at that as legalistic weaselwording. Burns are burns, after all. The same goes for napalm, as well; I remember quite a few references to our use of napalm in Fallujah as “chemical warfare”.
A lot of people look at that as a technique of propaganda. Bullets are propelled by the hot and expanding gases produced by a chemical reaction. Shall they also be called chemical weapons?
From your cite:
[quote]
Protocol III on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons prohibits, in all circumstances, making the civilian population as such, individual civilians or civilian objects, the object of attack by any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat or a combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target.
[quote]
The use of incendiary weapons is not prohibited by Protocol III, except against “the civilian population”.
Learn to read. The claim that incendiary weapons are “chemical weapons” is a flat lie.
Mainly, Americans and others who want to burn people and feel self righteous about it; the same sort who claimed to have not used napalm in Iraq, then were later forced to admit they used a different formula, so it wasn’t really napalm.
No, neither should napalm or WP, but that misses the point. The point is, that most people who aren’t looking for legalistic excuses are concerned with the actual effects of the weapons; they are concerned with people being burned alive, and don’t really care if it’s a fire or a corrosive that does so.
Or sloppy language, by people who don’t care about trivia, or by people who don’t know better.
I regard this ranting and raving over how napalm/white phosphorus/incendiaries are “not chemical weapons” as nothing more than an attempt to divert attention from the fact that people have been burned alive. It’s an attempt to get people to argue over trivial definitions, and ignore the fact that people have been gruesomely killed; even more gruesomely than normal in a war.
So if people are trapped inside vehicles or buildings and burned alive (as they routinely are after use of normal high explosive ordnance), or if they are eviscerated by shrapnel or gunfire and left to die in agony in a ditch, then that’s just A-OK and dandy-fine, but using WP and napalm is the embodiment of pure evil?
In armed conflicts, many people get killed horribly. Most of these people will be civilians. Despite of the propaganda about precision bombing, smart weapons or whatever, that will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. Either an issue is worth fighting over (with the resulting casualties, misery and devastation), or it’s not. The exact mechanism by which a hideously painful and drawn-out death is inflicted is a bit of a red herring, in my opinion.
The more people realise that wars wil inevitably result in this kind of shit, the fewer wars we will have. Although given how much care is taken to ensure images of the carnage are kept out of western media, a cynic could conclude that we arent supposed to see war as anything more than an exercise in statistics. :mad:
Both are rather evil, but at least high explosives aren’t designed to do so. Using incendiaries on people is like using a gun with a magic targeting system that makes the bullet always hit in the most painful place possible.
http://zzpat.bravehost.com/nov_2005/saddam_used_chemical_weapons_so_did_bush.html
leasr Allow me into your cartoon universe 866. Your grasping at some kind of justification that these weapons are not chemical is childish. It goes along with the “flat out lie” talk you spout like a child. I read a bunch of sources in the net discussing this. Some people,you obviously included, are trying to define a crime away. Perhaps phosphoric weapons can be defined as food.
The chemicals get on your skin and burn through to the bone. They burn and because of chemical jelly like chemical composition stick to skin. You are looking for justification for these actions. Is your love of Israel so strong that you can clumbsily justify anything they do.
Do you define them as an explosive .Or do you just put fingers in your ears and scream.
While white phosphorus shells have a secondary incendiary effect, their primary purpose is to provide smoke screens. Is there any evidence that the Israeli WP was intentionally used as an incendiary weapon, or was this just a side effect of its primary effect?
Other than the fact that they didnt need smoke screens to bomb since Lebanon could offer no resistance to them.They dropped them all the place which means it was simply antipersonel.
What are you talking about? Smoke screens are used to conceal troops/vehicles/vessels from hostile forces so they can move about without being targeted.
As far as I am aware smoke has never been used to screen aircraft from ground forces. Using smoke to conceal an aircraft moving around at 500 knots makes no sense, never mind that dropping a smoke bomb on someone so you can then go and drop a real bomb on them is an unnecessary step.
Maybe its primary purpose is burning and secondary purpose is smoke screen. Does it really matter?
If Lebanon could offer no resistance to them, how did those Israeli soldiers get killed? Hezbollah is a military group. They shoot back when Israeli soldiers shoot at them. That’s offering resistance.
And no matter how you wish it were, white phosphorus is not a chemical weapon. I know, I know, it’s an article of faith on all the lefty websites you visit that it is. But they’re just plain wrong. White phosphorus has never been considered a chemical weapon, neither is gunpowder. Under your definition a sword could be a chemical weapon since it it composed of the chemical “iron”.
If you wish to tell a poster that he or she “spouts” something “like a child,” take it to the Pit.
You need to ratchet back your personal expression of hostility.
[ /Moderating ]
U.S. may cite Israel for use of cluster arms: report
The NYTimes sunday article doesn’t appear to be online yet.
This is incomprehensible. I can only think of two possibilities. First, is that this is intentional. That cluster bombs were used as a way to prevent the Lebanese people from repopulating a particular patch of land. The other possibility, which is probably more to the truth, is that Israel just has poor military sense combined with slipshod intelligence and fear of their Arab neighbors.
As much as I hate it when we (America) go to war, at least I am somewhat comforted by the fact that our military has a track record for making surgical strikes. And that we make concerted efforts to minimize civilian causalties. When we attacked Iraq, at least we left the city’s infrastructure intact. Israel reduced Beirut into rubble.
I don’t know much about this Middle Eastern politics, but I have a feeling that there is deep, white-hot hatred between Israel and her Arab neighbors. Each go after each other with such zeal, such malice, that it’s frightening. My fear is that this crap is going to drag the world into another world war. I am starting to think that Israel and her Middle Eastern neighbors will never get along. In the next 100 years, I believe Israel will either move to a be more secure place like Utah or that it’ll just systematically occupy neighboring Arab countries with military might - “Israeli Union” sounds catchy.
- Honesty
Israel gets on just fine with Jordan and Egypt.
It looks as if there is an outbreak of peace with Syria, they are planning turning the Golan Heights into a national park.
Israel does not get on very well with about 25% of the Lebanese population who are Hezbollah fanatics, mostly live in South Lebanon and shot thousands of Iranian made rockets at Israel in ‘retalliation’ for a Hezbollah raid into Israel (? odd logic).
Use of cluster bombs that do not explode is not very pleasant, but use of explosives to push along a ceasefire that might or might not have occurred, is pretty rational.
Since we know that Hezbollah are adept at getting World sympathy by providing photo opportunities of atrocities, it might be an idea to get an impartial organization to locate and count the unexploded bomblets before jumping to conclusions.
As for using White Phosphorous
By the time Israel used it, the South Lebanese had mostly shuffled off to visit their Northern neighbours - Israel could, and should have turned S. Lebanon into a bonfire.
The place was pretty well devoid of civillians, but was a nest of Hezbollah rocketeers.
Those gentlemen are now repaying the hospitality of their Northern neighbours, by trying to stage some sort of coup. Incidentally, historically Christian and Druze Lebanese have been allies of Israel.
The other people that don’t get on well with Israel are sections of the ‘palestinians’, mainly the supporters of Hamas - another bunch who like shooting rockets at civilian targets. Interestingly, the ‘palestinians’ seem to be working up to a civil war, some of them don’t like Hamas digging tunnels under their houses and planting explosives.