Victory!
Posted on 08/09/2003 1:08:58 PM PDT by Pokey78
Edited on 11/10/2004 4:21:39 PM PST by Jim Robinson. [history]
American pilots dropped the controversial incendiary agent napalm on Iraqi troops during the advance on Baghdad. The attacks caused massive fireballs that obliterated several Iraqi positions.
The Pentagon denied using napalm at the time, but Marine pilots and their commanders have confirmed that they used an upgraded version of the weapon against dug-in positions. They said napalm, which has a distinctive smell, was used because of its psychological effect on an enemy.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.independent.co.uk ...
Actually not, another lie of the paid Communist supporters of the Vietnam era. The original was actually invented at Harvard of all places. However "Dow Chemical was responsible for the manufacture of napalm for the US military between 1965 and 1969."
From Global Security
During the early months of World War II, the US Chemical Warfare Service used latex from the Para rubber tree to jell gasoline. This jelled gasoline shot further from flamethrowers, stuck to the target better, and burned longer. But when the US entered the war in the Pacific, natural rubber was in short supply. Research teams at Harvard University, Du Pont and Standard Oil engaged in a Government competition to develop a replacement.
Napalm was developed at Harvard University in 1942-43 by a team of chemists led by chemistry professor Louis F. Fieser, who was best known for his research at Harvard University in organic chemistry which led to the synthesis of the hormone cortisone. Napalm was formulated for use in bombs and flame throwers by mixing a powdered aluminium soap of naphthalene with palmitate (a 16-carbon saturated fatty acid) -- hence napalm [another story suggests that the term napalm derives from a recipe of Naptha and palm oil]. The aluminum soap of naphtenic and palmitic acids turns gasoline into a sticky syrup that carries further from projectors and burns more slowly but at a higher temperature. Naphthenic acids are corrosives found in crude oil; palmitic acids are fatty acids that occur naturally in coconut oil. On their own, naphthalene and palmitate are relatively harmless substances. Napalm itself, is a jelly obtained from the salts of aluminium, palmitic or other fatty acids, and naphthenic acids. Compared to previous incendiary weapons, napalm spread further, stuck to the target, burned longer, and was safer to its dispenser because it was dropped and detonated far below the airplane. It was also cheap to manufacture.
Modern day napalm uses no Napalm (naphthalene or palmitate) -- instead using a mixture of polystyrene, gasoline and benzene]. The official Department of Defense definition of napalm is "1. Powdered aluminum soap or similar compound used to gelatinize oil or gasoline for use in napalm bombs or flame throwers. 2. The resultant gelatinized substance." Modern napalm is typically a mixture of benzene (21%), gasoline (33%), and polystyrene (46%). Benzene is a normal component of gasoline (about 2%), while the gasoline used in napalm is the same leaded or unleaded gas that is used in automobiles.
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Aparently even more modern version of (small n) naplam no longer use gasoline because the page also says:
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The fuel gelling system consists of a fuel gelling unit, drums of gelling solution, and aviation gas, mogas, JP-4, or JP-5 fuels.
The page also indicates that the Iraqie used napalm on both the Kurds and the Shiites after the first Gulf war.
Ummm. No. They dropped a different incendiary weapon that had similar effects. The press basically asked if the U.S. was using muskets, and was told "no" (they were using M-16s).
As far as the further arguments: Using incendiaries to block access to a bridge results in fewer Iraqi dead as well, since the fire obstructs their advance. People aren't as a fraid of bullets as things they can see.
I am surprised it was 50 posts into this thread that someone called notice to that line. Say what you will about Viet Nam- but civilians were never "targeted" in Viet Nam with any weapon much less napalm. In fact- US pilots often exposed themselves to danger in order to avoid causing civilian casualites.
| .... every word I just spoke to you is not just a reflection of my heart and my faith, it is the American heart and the American faith. This is articulated very clinically when this Nation began. In the great documents that our Founders used to justify their willingness even to go to war in order to assert their independence. I think we ought to take that very seriously because – at least in those days, I don't know about now, I think we're kind of … we've gotten really careless about wars these days, as some events, I think, even in recent times have proven. And we go to war maybe without understanding what we ought to understand. Every time you go to war, you know -- a people like ourselves -- even if that war is conducted by others, even when it's conducted by a means where you're flying high up in the air and dropping bombs on people you don't even see and folks die as a result … I hope we still understand that each and every one of us who has an opportunity to participate as part of the sovereign body of the people in this country: we are responsible for every life that is taken by America in war. And we had better be awfully sure that what we're doing has a solid moral ground or we will stand before God bearing the stain and weight of every life taken in injustice that we did not oppose. And I think that it's why our founders, being that they were – many of them, most of them, almost all of them, in fact – people of conscience and faith, felt that before you risked war, you better justify what you're doing in moral terms. You've got to state the moral premises and the moral principles that inform your heart. And that's what they did in our Declaration of Independence. It's a statement of the moral justification of that assertion of independence at the risk of war. And, in doing what they did, they set forth the basic moral principles that then informed the later deliberations that led to our Constitution and are the practical foundation of our liberty. And so those words in the Declaration of Independence – "All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" -- are the basic premise of everything that, as a people, we claim to hold dear. Self-government and rights and due process and liberty and all these other unique hallmarks of the American way of life, they rest on that premise and that premise alone. |
And who cares if the UN banned it. The US didn't sign the convention; thus, nape's okay with me.
save some for the US!!
Flamethrowers....gotta work great in spider-holes!
Dead or maimed is dead or maimed, IMHO. The only big difference is how discreet the weapon is.
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