Shake & Bake

Kos has some first hand accounts of chemical weapons used by the U.S. military. And just an F.Y.I., there are some web sites out there that have photos and video of what this stuff does. I won't click on it, or link it - it's just too much.

"WP [i.e., white phosphorus rounds] proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."

. . . there is no way you can use white phosphorus like that without forming a deadly chemical cloud that kills everything within a tenth of a mile in all directions from where it hits. Obviously, the effect of such deadly clouds weren't just psychological in nature.

Fighting from a distance

After pounding parts of the city for days, many Marines say the recent combat escalated into more than they had planned for, but not more than they could handle.

"It's a war," said Cpl. Nicholas Bogert, 22, of Morris, N.Y.

Bogert is a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the city Friday and Saturday, never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused.

"We had all this SASO (security and stabilization operations) training back home," he said. "And then this turns into a real goddamned war."

Just as his team started to eat a breakfast of packaged rations Saturday, Bogert got a fire mission over the radio.

"Stand by!" he yelled, sending Lance Cpls. Jonathan Alexander and Jonathan Millikin scrambling to their feet.

Shake 'n' bake

Joking and rousting each other like boys just seconds before, the men were instantly all business. With fellow Marines between them and their targets, a lot was at stake.

Bogert received coordinates of the target, plotted them on a map and called out the settings for the gun they call "Sarah Lee."

Millikin, 21, from Reno, Nev., and Alexander, 23, from Wetumpka, Ala., quickly made the adjustments. They are good at what they do.

"Gun up!" Millikin yelled when they finished a few seconds later, grabbing a white phosphorus round from a nearby ammo can and holding it over the tube.

"Fire!" Bogert yelled, as Millikin dropped it.

The boom kicked dust around the pit as they ran through the drill again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives they call "shake 'n' bake" into a cluster of buildings where insurgents have been spotted all week.

They say they have never seen what they've hit, nor did they talk about it as they dusted off their breakfast and continued their hilarious routine of personal insults and name-calling.

I don't think most people view the Iraq war as a real war. It's just that, a war - and the United States is far more proficient at using chemical and nuclear weapons then any other nation. That's just a fact.

What is interesting is that the Department of Defense is denying that white phosphorus was used, which is clearly not accurate. Okay... they're just lying.

The discussion should be about the validity of using such weapons, and making sure the American public, and the rest of the world, knows exactly what is going on.

And again, white phosphorus dissolves human beings into goo on contact, and while they do want to kill the enemy, the US Military is using chemical weapons that kill indiscriminately, and they are killing civilians.

But, does that matter? The United States Military has always been the highest performers at killing civilians. We've killed them hundreds of thousands at a time with nuclear weapons, and we've fire bombed large German cities, and gassed large swaths of Vietnam.

In fact, firebombing cities was probably far worse then nuking them. At least with the nukes, a majority of those affected were instantly vaporized. The firebombing merely set entire cities on fire, which consumed everyone rather slowly by comparison.

The argument really isn't about the use of nuclear or chemical weapons per se. There have been many arguments made for and against dropping not one, but two nuclear weapons in WWII, as well as the intentional firebombing of hundreds of thousands of German civilians.

The argument is about Iraq, and the evolving standards of humanity that we've all hoped to have achieved having witnessed mass death in the past.

Would Americans be shocked that our Military continues to use chemical weapons? Would Americans be upset that the military is killing areas rather than specific combatants?

Why is the military lying about it?

They just need to be honest and say "we would suffer too many casualties fighting up close, so we're just going to kill everything in certain zones".

Then show the American public the pictures of the dissolved human beings.. and ask if it is really all worth it in order to "free the Iraqi people".

And while I'm at it.. Americablog ran down the list of the ever-evolving reasons we're killing all these people..


1. War On Terror

2. WMD

3. Denied Access to Inspectors

4. Regime Change

5. Saddam Hussein is Evil

6. Curry Favor with the Middle East

7. Set an Example for Nations that Sponsor Terrorism

8. Liberate Iraqis

9. Iraq's Broken Promises

10. Revenge

11. Threat To the Region

12. Because We Can

13. Unfinished Business

14. For the Sake of History

15. Disarmament

16. Commitment to Our Children

17. Imminent Threat

18. Preserve Peace

19. Threat To Freedom

20. Link to al Qaeda

21. Iraq is Unique

22. Relevance of the United Nations

23. International Law

24. Saddam had an insatiable appetite for WMD