OrlandoMary
04-23-2005, 10:55 AM
Excerpts:
“Most of the world understands that napalm and incendiaries are a horrible, horrible weapon,” said Robert Musil, director of the organisation Physicians for Social Responsibility. “It takes up an awful lot of medical resources. It creates horrible wounds.”
Use of incendiary weapons is restricted under the 1980 UN Convention on Weapons Which May Be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects. Protocol III of this Convention makes it "prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons"
Despite this and other eyewitness accounts, US officials initially denied claims that napalm weapons were being deployed[4]. However, as military personnel and journalists in Iraq persistently presented evidence of their use, by August 2003 Pentagon spokesmen were forced to admit that MK-77 firebombs had been dropped[5]. This has since been confirmed by the State Department, in direct contradiction to UK government statements[6].
However, the Pentagon admits that the MK-77 is an incendiary with a function ‘remarkably similar’ to that of napalm[7].
Military personnel routinely refer to MK-77 incendiaries as ‘napalm’:
‘We napalmed both those [bridge] approaches’, said Colonel Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11. ‘Unfortunately, there were people there because you could see them in the [cockpit] video. They were Iraqi soldiers there. It’s no great way to die’. He added, ‘The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect.’[9]
[much more]
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5825
OrlandoMary
www.maryschneider.us
“Most of the world understands that napalm and incendiaries are a horrible, horrible weapon,” said Robert Musil, director of the organisation Physicians for Social Responsibility. “It takes up an awful lot of medical resources. It creates horrible wounds.”
Use of incendiary weapons is restricted under the 1980 UN Convention on Weapons Which May Be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects. Protocol III of this Convention makes it "prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons"
Despite this and other eyewitness accounts, US officials initially denied claims that napalm weapons were being deployed[4]. However, as military personnel and journalists in Iraq persistently presented evidence of their use, by August 2003 Pentagon spokesmen were forced to admit that MK-77 firebombs had been dropped[5]. This has since been confirmed by the State Department, in direct contradiction to UK government statements[6].
However, the Pentagon admits that the MK-77 is an incendiary with a function ‘remarkably similar’ to that of napalm[7].
Military personnel routinely refer to MK-77 incendiaries as ‘napalm’:
‘We napalmed both those [bridge] approaches’, said Colonel Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11. ‘Unfortunately, there were people there because you could see them in the [cockpit] video. They were Iraqi soldiers there. It’s no great way to die’. He added, ‘The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect.’[9]
[much more]
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5825
OrlandoMary
www.maryschneider.us