'Dead bodies are everywhere' ... Saddam's first martyrs lost

SMH.com ^ | March 22 2003 | Lindsay Murdoch

[Uncle Jaque]

Re: "I wish the Iraqis would adopt the French flag. Plain,no pattern,color of diapers.

Would that be with or without the single transecting brown stripe?

[nhbob1]

Crispy Critters!

[Billthedrill]

When dawn broke on Safwan Hill, all that could be seen on top of it was a single antenna amid the smoke.

There's an antenna left? Heck...call in another strike...

[wardaddy]

A legal expert at the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva said the use of napalm or fuel air bombs was not illegal "per se" because the US was not a signatory to the 1980 weapons convention which prohibits and restricts certain weapons. "But the US has to apply the basic principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and take all precautions to protect civilians. In the case of napalm and fuel air bombs, these are special precautions because these are area weapons, not specific weapons," said Dominique Loye, the committee's adviser on weapons and IHL.

Oh please, just STFU!!!! (not you Veronica)

[Psycho_Bunny]

One of the first encounters of the ground war was more like a massacre than a fight.

-------------------------------

"I pity anybody who's in there," a marine sergeant said. "We told them to surrender."

If an armed force is fairly ordered to surrender, and refuses, then the word "massacre" has no context in the situation.

[atomic conspiracy]

I would have to see some kind of clear, undeniable, multiply verified proof of napalm being used before I would believe it, and such proof should be forthcoming if the stuff has indeed been revived (it's pretty hard to conceal). Murdoch is clearly a lefty of the Fisk school ("massacre" indeed!). I smell a planted myth and another conspiracy theory in the making here.

[algol]

I can think of a few tricks you can do with artillery shells -- some of which have been tested -- that would both give them a non-ballistic trajectory (messing up counterbattery calculations) and possibly improving range and/or accuracy.

On the other hand, probably the best cure for enemy counterbattery radars is a couple of ARM missiles or the like.

[Timesink]

The Sydney Morning Herald has been caught lying so many times - including the intentional alteration of wire service articles to change their meaning - that it should NEVER be trusted on anything.

The following was subsquented tacked onto the end of this story:

The Pentagon subsequently issued a statement to the Herald:

Your story ('Dead bodies everywhere', by Lindsay Murdoch, March 22, 2003) claiming US forces are using napalm in Iraq, is patently false. The US took napalm out of service in the early 1970s. We completed destruction of our last batch of napalm on April 4, 2001, and no longer maintain any stocks of napalm. - Jeff A. Davis, Lieutenant Commander, US Navy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense.

The SMH lies. ALWAYS.

[Timesink]

Also:

Pentagon denies report on napalm

March 24 2003

The Pentagon has a denied a report in The Age on Saturday that napalm was used in an attack by US Navy planes on an Iraqi position at Safwan Hill in southern Iraq.

A navy official in Washington, Lieutenant-Commander Danny Hernandez, said: "We don't even have that in our arsenal." The US military says it last used napalm in 1993 and destroyed its last batch of the weapon in 2001.

The report was filed by Age correspondent Lindsay Murdoch, who is attached to units of the First US Marine Division.

Murdoch's report was based on information from two marine officers, who said napalm was used in the air strike on the hill. One of the officers repeated that napalm was used when Murdoch was asked by The Age foreign editor to confirm the story on Friday.

[oyez]

Napalm is Pablum compaired to what we have now.

[MEG33]

Good find!