Just another Reality-based bubble in the foam of the multiverse.

Sunday, June 19, 2005

More on Bringing Good Things to Life with Prickly Heat

Awhile back there was a post here on the use of napalm in the Iraq war.

The main$stream media, among the French Englishmen anyway, has picked up on the fact that Bu$hCo lied about this to the British government.

American officials lied to British ministers over the use of "internationally reviled" napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.

Yesterday's disclosure led to calls by MPs for a full statement to the Commons and opened ministers to allegations that they held back the facts until after the general election.

Despite persistent rumours of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm, Adam Ingram, the Defence minister, assured Labour MPs in January that US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.

But Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter obtained by The Independent that he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. "The US confirmed to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of my response to you," he told Mr Cohen. "I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position."

Mr Ingram said 30 MK77 firebombs were used by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in the invasion of Iraq between 31 March and 2 April 2003. They were used against military targets "away from civilian targets", he said. This avoids breaching the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which permits their use only against military targets...


Hope that link works; they've changed it once since it first came out.

More on their use in the war here.

More on the difference between the MK-77 and the original napalm here.

The orignal napalm was kerosene and polystyrene; the new improved stuff is benzene, gasoline, and polystyrene.

Thanks again to Melissa McEwan for the heads up.

No comments: