In addition your “expert commentary” from the NSC, emedicine and wikipedia, is about commercial grade (mostly diluted) WP, not military-grade (more pure) WP.

If you bothered to do some basic research and read the entire Field Artillery magazine piece Steve D at kos selectively quotes from, you’d also see where the Marines stated that in Fallujah, contact with civilians was rare, as they had evacuated well before the battle. They weren’t killing “innocent people”, but terrorists, who don’t wear uniforms.

How you can manage to get dressed in the morning without assistance amazes me.

Of should we simply start with the immutable physical properties of white phosphorous (WP) itself. WP in artillery shells is a solid, not a gas, and when these shells explode, they release small batches of burning solids that burn at approximately 2400 degrees and release dense amounts of smoke.

Thanks for the lesson, Dr. Science, but would you mind explaining where the hell you got the idea that WP in question was burning at 2400 degrees? Since you’re so keen on patronizing the rest of us with your insight into the chemical properties of white phosporus, let me point out a few things you might have missed.

First, here’s what the National Safety Council has to say about white phosphorus :

White phosphorus has a garlic-like smell. It is soluble in alkali, ether, chloroform, benzene, and toluene. In air, it catches fire at temperatures 10 to 15 degrees above room temperature, and ignites spontaneously in moist air. Because of its high reactivity with oxygen in air, white phosphorus is generally stored under water. It is also incompatible or reactive with oxidizers, including elemental sulfur and strong caustics. It is considered a dangerous disaster hazard because it emits highly toxic fumes….White phosphorus is a poison which can be absorbed through skin contact, ingestion, or breathing. If its combustion occurs in a confined space, white phosphorus will remove the oxygen from the air and render the air unfit to support life.

As far as the conditions of the burns and your contention that WP would also burn through clothing, eMedicine has a little more on that :

White phosphorus results in painful chemical burn injuries. The resultant burn typically appears as a necrotic area with a yellowish color and characteristic garliclike odor. White phosphorus is highly lipid soluble and as such, is believed to have rapid dermal penetration once particles are embedded under the skin…..Burns usually are limited to areas of exposed skin (upper extremities, face). Burns frequently are second and third degree because of the rapid ignition and highly lipophilic properties of white phosphorus.

Finally, this Wikipedia article has even more about the temperature at which WP burns :

It is commonly believed that white phosphorus ignites spontaneously on contact with air at room temperature. This is not quite true; the autoignition temperature is actually about 30°C in humid air, and slightly higher in dry air. However at slightly lower temperatures WP will slowly surface oxidise, effectively smouldering, and will often warm up to the point where it will ignite. At any rate, the slightest degree of friction will easily ignite it, and it is practically guaranteed to be ignited by a burster charge, so for all intents and purposes it is pyrophoric.

Because of this, WP has long had a secondary role as an incendiary, either directly or more usually as a “first fire” material. Contrary to another popular myth, it does not burn particularly fiercely, especially in comparison to other incendiaries like thermite. As an incendiary, it is most effective against highly flammable targets like very dry vegetation or petrol, oils and lubricants.

If that’s not enough, you can always consult the photo gallery that accompanies the RAI story. Note the stream of photos of chemically-charred bodies with their clothing intact. Do you think someone went around dressing corpses?

More importantly, you seem to have willfully ignored the last two paragraphs of this post in an effort to obscure the real question I posed here. Putting aside the whether WP is technically a chemical or incendiary weapon or whether or not its use is banned, I want to know why the hell they’re killing innocent people.

while your childhood friends, the same smiling kids went to camp with, and knew your whole life, joined the military and suddenly became genocidal murderers that would gleefully murder civilians

…and others that are all too willing to turn against your neighbors because of your hatred for one man.

And with that, you can go fuck yourself. I’ve written multiple posts about my admiration of men and women in uniform, such as “The Death of a Hero” and “Hate The War, Love The Warrior”. I refuse to take a backset to anyone when it comes to respecting our troops. My step-brother in particular served honorably in Afghanistan. Despite my feelings about that conflict, I’m humbled by the sacrifices that he was willing to make for this country.

Unlike you, however, I think respecting the troops and loving this country involves a lot more than reactionary support for a morally-bankrupt leadership or immediately defending every action by any member the military. I don’t think our friends and family members are best served by finding justifications for the deaths of civilians. Our men in uniform shouldn’t be put in a situation where they’re responsible for those deaths, their commanders shouldn’t put such a low value on “collateral damage” as to make those deaths inevitable, and the civilian leaders in charge of the military shouldn’t take such a dim view of human rights.

Despite being non-religious, I’m a hate the sin and love the sinner kinda guy. That’s why I’ve never attacked the troops directly on these pages. My complaints are always addressed from the top down towards the men who actually have to power to change these circumstances. If you can’t understand that and reconcile the fact that an attack on the President and support of the armed forces aren’t mutually exclusive, you’re either willfully obtuse or a fucking idiot.

the only sane responses are to either explode with rage or cry your eyes out

Or you could, like many folks have already done, try to verify facts in the story.

There are many facts to check in this story.

Let’s start with a simple one: Popham claims that the assault on Fallujah was “unreported.” This was a clear lie. Simply do Google search on “fallujah” or a Google Image search on “fallujah marines.” The famous “Marlboro man” picture came out of this “unreported” battle, as did the infamous Kevin Sites video of a Marine killing a wounded terrorist in a Fallujah mosque.

Of should we simply start with the immutable physical properties of white phosphorous (WP) itself. WP in artillery shells is a solid, not a gas, and when these shells explode, they release small batches of burning solids that burn at approximately 2400 degrees and release dense amounts of smoke. This smoke is not a poisonous gas, any more than wood smoke or the smoke from high explosives is a poisonous gas. You shouldn’t make a habit of breathing it, but it will not cause immediate harm. If it did release a poison gas, don’t you think that all those Marines would have chemical protective gear? They do not, and were running through this smoke (the primary use of WP is to obscure the line of site from a specific enemy position) and in close contact with it throughout the battle.

Going back to the burning properties of WP, it is again, not magical. It burns through light steel and iron (2400 degrees, remember?), and will certainly burn through cloth.

The “former American solder” in this story, Jeff Enghardt, did not fight in Fallujah, but was stationed outside of it, and he misstates the chemical properties of WP (chemistry books are available to anyone, folks) from a position of ignorance. He is not a weapons expert, but he is a far left wing blogger (though not a very good one).

Going back to the Italian “crockumentary” that spawned this issue, it claims that:

clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved or caramelised or turned the consistency of leather by the shells.

Again, basic, immutable laws of physics still apply. Clothes, and even steel, do not remain “largely intact” when exposed to burning WP. They are burned through, or they aren’t touched. Like a certain web site says, you are “hot,” or not. WP leaves no middle ground.

White phosphorous does not leave skin “dissolved or caramelised” It either leaves a horrific burn or it does nothing. “Carmelised” skin is very common, however, with the use of high explosives. White phosphorous does not leave skin ”turned the consistency of leather.” But a dead body in the hot dry air of a middle eastern desert does precisely that. . Leave any kind of flesh in hot dry air, and it become leathery.
It is desiccation, a completely natural process.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this story is you.

You easily jump to the conclusion that communist anti-war Italian journalists with no expert support for their story by a recognized source are correct, while your childhood friends, the same smiling kids went to camp with, and knew your whole life, joined the military and suddenly became genocidal murderers that would gleefully murder civilians when Bush became President instead of Gore.

There are clearly some disturbing elements being revealed by this story, but the disgusting elements are people like Hunter, Kos himself (who as a reputed former artillerymen, ignores the facts in the pursuit of his political “truth”), and others that are all too willing to turn against your neighbors because of your hatred for one man.

You think you seem “anti-American” to some? It could be that you seem that way, because you are.