Whiskey Pete
“’Willy Peter,’ make you a believer.”
In the passage above, war correspondent Michael Herr was quoting a soldier in Vietnam. Today, soldiers call it Whiskey Pete; but it still means the same thing. “W.P.” White phosphorus. And it will make you a believer.
Below are stills from the Italian documentary, Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre. showing white phosphorus fired from helicopters over Fallujah on November 8, 2004:
White phosphorus is a white or yellowish waxy solid which reacts strongly with water and oxygen. It may land on your clothes with little effect; but if it lands on your skin, it will ignite and burn at a ferociously high temperature. It can char your flesh; it can burn you down to the bone. You can extinguish it by plunging the affected area under water. But take the affected area out of the water and the phosphorus will relight. If you inhale it, it will burn inside you.
Photos of the victims are horrific. Men, women, and children, often with their clothes largely intact, are turned into hideous masks of scorched leather. Others look as though they have melted. By comparison, the dead dogs in the street look peaceful. Dogs don’t have sweat glands, so their skin is naturally drier than human skin; and dogs are also protected by fur. But they can still inhale Whiskey Pete, and it will make them believers.
The U.S. initially claimed that white phosphorus was used only for illumination or camouflage. But the video of those helicopters over Fallujah is hard to argue away, and the U.S. has now admitted using white phosphorus against “enemy combatants.”
Whiskey Pete, unfortunately, doesn’t appreciate the subtle differences between an enemy combatant and a bird or a baby.
In Vietnam, we used napalm — jellied gasoline. In Iraq, we use MK 77 — jellied aviation fuel with added oxidizers for enhanced combustion. Clearly, aviation fuel is not gasoline; so reports of napalm in Iraq are obviously unfounded. Besides, we only use MK 77 against enemy combatants.
We have abandoned whatever moral high ground we might have held years ago. We took over Saddam Hussein’s torture chambers and made them ours. We have murdered prisoners in our custody, in violation of international conventions which we ignore anyway and in violation of U.S. law. Four contract mercenaries were killed in Fallujah, and the U.S. took revenge on the entire city. We have irradiated Iraq with depleted uranium as surely as if we had used dirty bombs. And now, we have found chemical weapons in Iraq. They are located in U.S. munitions, and we are using them to save the Iraqis from the threat of chemical weapons.
____________________
In the passage above, war correspondent Michael Herr was quoting a soldier in Vietnam. Today, soldiers call it Whiskey Pete; but it still means the same thing. “W.P.” White phosphorus. And it will make you a believer.
Below are stills from the Italian documentary, Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre. showing white phosphorus fired from helicopters over Fallujah on November 8, 2004:
White phosphorus is a white or yellowish waxy solid which reacts strongly with water and oxygen. It may land on your clothes with little effect; but if it lands on your skin, it will ignite and burn at a ferociously high temperature. It can char your flesh; it can burn you down to the bone. You can extinguish it by plunging the affected area under water. But take the affected area out of the water and the phosphorus will relight. If you inhale it, it will burn inside you.
Photos of the victims are horrific. Men, women, and children, often with their clothes largely intact, are turned into hideous masks of scorched leather. Others look as though they have melted. By comparison, the dead dogs in the street look peaceful. Dogs don’t have sweat glands, so their skin is naturally drier than human skin; and dogs are also protected by fur. But they can still inhale Whiskey Pete, and it will make them believers.
The U.S. initially claimed that white phosphorus was used only for illumination or camouflage. But the video of those helicopters over Fallujah is hard to argue away, and the U.S. has now admitted using white phosphorus against “enemy combatants.”
Whiskey Pete, unfortunately, doesn’t appreciate the subtle differences between an enemy combatant and a bird or a baby.
In Vietnam, we used napalm — jellied gasoline. In Iraq, we use MK 77 — jellied aviation fuel with added oxidizers for enhanced combustion. Clearly, aviation fuel is not gasoline; so reports of napalm in Iraq are obviously unfounded. Besides, we only use MK 77 against enemy combatants.
We have abandoned whatever moral high ground we might have held years ago. We took over Saddam Hussein’s torture chambers and made them ours. We have murdered prisoners in our custody, in violation of international conventions which we ignore anyway and in violation of U.S. law. Four contract mercenaries were killed in Fallujah, and the U.S. took revenge on the entire city. We have irradiated Iraq with depleted uranium as surely as if we had used dirty bombs. And now, we have found chemical weapons in Iraq. They are located in U.S. munitions, and we are using them to save the Iraqis from the threat of chemical weapons.
____________________
posted by Jerrold Smith at 10:25 AM
