"Troubling," but don't be deterred, "Phosphorus bombs are not considered to be chemical weapons and they are not illegal."

As Emily Litella would say, "Never mind!"

Oh, well. Just fill them with water, then.

Same thing came up on US forces in Iraq. IIRC, "phosphorus bombs" are basically smoke bombs.

FAS factsheet on white phosphorus weapons:

http://www.fas.org/biosecurity/resource/factsheets/whitephosphorus.htm

They are not supposed to be used against civilians, but then again, no weapon is, even in war. The problem is, how do you tell a Hizby from a civilian. You can't.

This was a very badly fought war.

I suppose in a pinch they could use napalm instead.

Black smoke instead of white.

All these trumped-up armaments controversies remind me of the strategy that brought us the "assault weapon" ban (that is, the scary looking gun ban) for a short time here.

Depleted uranium! Phosphorus! Cluster bombs!

There is nothing at all troubling about the use of White Phosphorous.

They can cause horrible wounds? And can be used against civilians? That goes for any weapon.

Now, we all know that enemy forces, be they Al Queda, Hezbollah, whatever, would use a weapon strictly BECAUSE it could cause horrible wounds to civilians, but let's review, from the point of view of a western commander, the circumstances under which white phosphorous is used.

One- marking. Thick, persistent white smoke. The US and other western militaries use this routinely to make high visibility markings on the battlefield. White phosporous is better than a regular smoke round for this purpose because the regular smoke will blanket a large area, obscuring more than marking. You use markings to improve control, thereby reducing the total amount of firepower you have to put out. White Phosphorpous, then, SAVES civilian lives. That's why the enemy does not use it. You'll never see, for example, a WP round being used to mark the target prior to the suicide bomber exploding.

Two- flushing. Again, a control measure. You could cause more casualties to the enemy with high explosives, bringing down the whole building, than you can with a WP round. But that would kill everyone in the building, and you don't want to do that. So you put in a few WP rounds, and that building becomes a very uncomfortable place to stay. The bad guys- and any civilians- leave. Once in the open, you have a much better chance of telling them apart and picking off the bad guys. Again,WP saves civilian lives. Yes, your WP rounds might kill or maim- but less than they would have done if you fired HE and bought the whole building down.

Three- concealment. WP is used as a protective screen because it rapidly creates a white smoke. This smoke is not as thick as that from an ordinary smoke barrage, but its fast. For this reason, it is often used in a withdrawal situation, to cover a quick retreat. When you do this, you fire in between the friendlies and the enemy. Unless things are pretty badly screwed up, no civilians should be there anyway.

Four- Incendiary. You can use it to start fires, by firing WP into flammable targets. This isn't done any more, generally. Fire has proven to be a very uncontrollable, unpredictable element on the battlefield and unpredictability works against us. That's not how the modern, high tech western army wants to fight. You want control. You want to know when, how and where every event on the battlefield will take place. Control good, fire bad. Except in very specific circumstances where targets where carefully chosen with the intent of lighting them on fire, I doubt anyone could find examples of this in recent fighting by any western army. An example of a specific circumstance would be the fire traps prepared by Saddam's forces in 1991- instead of allowing Sadam to ignite oil-filled trenches on HIS timetable, allied forces set them on fire on OUR timetable, turning Saddam's asset into OUR asset. The objective here was not "burn the town to ashes" it was to set a very specific object- an enemy fire trap- on fire.

One thing you don't use WP for: causing casualties. Why not, you ask, because the wounds are too nasty? No. Because your HE (High Explosive) rounds will do it much better. That's why you have so many of them.

There you have it. As used in the West, WP SAVES civilian lives.

Ben

Thanks Ben, that's really quite an informative tractate!

Thanks, Ben. That's really quite an informative tractate.

"We should not take spear and lance and go out singly in pursuit of bears; we would organize a large and active hunting party, drive the animals together, and throw a melinite bomb into their midst." Theodor Herzl "The Jewish State" 1896

How about partitioning them out of their country, concentrating them in barbed wire and erecting high concrete walls. Put up lots of checkpoints, kill this one and that one and so on and so on. You know, a "Jewish State."

You have it Alan, a description of our precise utopian vision.

What's yours?

BTW, I love it when liberals are so "liberal" that they can't deal with gritty reality at all. Better no homeland for the Jews at all, then that they have to fight for it with all the messy reality that entails. Better that Palestinians blow up Israeli civilians with their nail and rat poison filled high explosive bombs than that Jews set up checkpoints or a fence to protect themselves from that.

Alcibiades- if you say so. I think you worship the fight just as you worship the land.

Does that make me a "liberal" or a "conservative?"

Does it get you closer to God, or does it just satisfy a need to get your materialist, worldly jollies? It's mine, it's mine, it's mine,.....

Israel should have used every weapon in its arsenal short of nukes to have totally annihilated its Islamofascist jihadi enemy in Lebanon. This self flagellation is ludicorus. This was a war forced upon Israel by an enemy who had no problems with trying to kill civiliains. Wake up and ditch that Jewish guilt already!
Anyone opposed to the security barrier and checkpoints is a jackass plain and simple. I tell you what - if Israel were to get rid of the fence and checkpoints and I gave you an unlimited bus pass for a month of riding Jerusalem's buses, would you take it and use it? I think not. Finish the fence already and make it 50 feet high.

One wonders, Ripper, one wonders.

Israel hears the howling chorus when they use white phosphorous- Israel also hears it when they build a concrete wall, which is a curious thing when you consider that the one is a weapon with a reputation for causing serious injuries, and the other an inanimate block of lime, gravel, and sand, that has a reputation for preventing serious injuries. (Even Alan Goldstein would appreciate the value if he should ever find himself in need of a large and inanimate block of concrete to place between himself and a sniper's bullet.) The fact that any action by Israel which promotes their own survival is frowned upon leads me suspect that should they ever ditch their sense of humanity and follow your suggested route (ie, adopt the Arab goal of genocide, a policy gleefully invoked by Arabs as evidenced by the monotonous drone of "Death To (Fill in people to be killed here)!" then the resultant indignant cries might be no worse than those already received. After all, only so much anger can remain in the cup!

Tis a pity Darfur doesn't rate 1% of the sympathy of the Palestinians. But that's how it works- if it's not Jews, who cares, if its Jews, rant and rave, even if the wall they are building is but a fraction of the size of the concrete wall the Saudis are building on the Yemen border. Worthy of note: Yemen protested the barrier, but hey, the Jews didn't build it, so Alan and the rest of the world really couldn't care less.

Something to think about: Criticism of Israel is not antisemetic. Grossly unbalanced criticism of any group, on the other hand, is bigotry.

Ben

Alan, love of Zion is not merely an intellectual nor an abstract concept in Judaism. (Even Reform Judaism eventually returned love of Zion to their denominational prayer books, after removing it in the 19th century.) And, yes, Israel is of the world. And, yes I do love Israel.

That does not make it an idolatry, which is what you seem to be implying. It is a religion - like many others - in which a place is vested with holiness.

As for your other argument, that's silly. Being prepared to fight to defend Israel is not the same as wanting to have to fight to defend it.

That horrible fence is a visual scar on the land. It defaces it, and you can't forget it when you are there, because you see it all the time and it is ugly. But better the fence than all the horrible deaths and the horrendous maimings.

What about Palestinian responsibility to produce a society that is not in love with its own death and martyrdom? Had they normalized by now, they would have had their settlement already. OTOH, now they've left the very strong impression that they simply don't understand the notion of political compromise. They consider that every concession Israel makes is a sign of weakness, which shows them they must continue the fight until Israel is destroyed, because the compromise is a sign of Israel weakening her political will.