[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.

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.

[Natural Law]

I've had my bacon saved by napalm in close air support from F4's. I have no problem with it's use and don't consider it any different from any other lethal ordinance.

[atomic conspiracy]

I wrote to John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org and asked him about this. I received the following response:

Our information is that napalm was withdrawn from US inventory two years ago http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/mk77.htm @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ John Pike www.globalsecurity.org

Pike is the former spokesman on defense and military issues for the Federation of American Scientists. He is a recognized authority on weapons of mass destruction and weapons proliferation, as well as a top proponent of logic, critical thinking, and rational skepticism. If napalm had been re-introduced, he would know.