Letters to the Editor
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WP and Napalm are chemical weapons? NO.
Chemical weapons kill by inhalation or exposure to nerve or blistering agents. The chemical itself kills you, not concussive force, shrapnel, or heat/fire from the weapon. Napalm is gasoline mixed with soap and WP is flaming particles of shrapnel, and both are considered by most soldiers to be legitimate and useful tools (unlike gas). I don't know how these can be interpreted as chemical weapons unless you also say TNT is a chemical weapon.
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Who said these were chemical weapons?
Your headline is rather inflammatory and misleading. Who decided that white phosphorus and napalm were chemical weapons? Per Wikipedia, chemical weapons are defined as follows:
Chemical warfare is warfare (and associated military operations) using the toxic properties of chemical substances to kill, injure or incapacitate the enemy.
The fact that WP and napalm are chemicals does not mean that their use constitutes chemical warfare. Bullets are made of lead, and are propelled by a burning mixture of compounds. Does that mean that if US forces shoot someone, they're guilty of "chemical warfare"? White phosphorus and napalm damage human bodies by burning them, not by toxicity.
While use of these substances may have been unwarranted, to conflate them with weapons such as nerve agents trivializes the horror of true chemical warfare, and diminishes your credibility in reporting on this issue.
Sean Peters
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Following up
A couple of readers have raised questions about the use of the term "chemical weapons" in the post above. While white phosphorus may not fit within the traditional definition of a "chemical weapon" when it is used as an illuminating device, the RAI report alleges that the use of white phosphorus against people amounts to the illegal use of chemical" weapons, according to reports from the BBC and the Independent and now United Press International and the Christian Science Monitor.
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Another take on the chemical weapons story
Posted this on my blog last night: http://wooleyswamp.blogspot.com/2005/11/chemical-weapons-for-breakfast-no.html
Carl Bergquist
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Chempics
Newsletters from Dahr Jamail over a year ago
brought us a photo journal not easy to look at.
Ten photos of men women and children burned to
death in Fallujah with clear discriptions of what and
how this occured.
One of the only un-embedded journalists in Iraq at the
time, his work was both superb and appalling.
We need to give credit to him, and to Journalists like
AMY GOODMAN, who bring us un-filtered news.
More people must be watching and reading as their
information is getting through to the mass media
more quickly.
Last week Dana Priest brought us a story on hidden prisons
through-out Eastern Europe, grateful as I was, we could have
read that story many months ago on Truthout as I did.