Crap Throwing Monkey

That was YOU this morning!

What birthday?

Yeah..."eating a teaspoon". Because most WP rounds force the people in the immediate target area to eat WP in teaspoon-sized quantities. Again...lead is as toxic. Nobody bitches about bullets being toxic. There's a difference between elemental toxicity and toxicity of application.

I've read plenty of articles saying the same thing. Then I looked at the chemistry. While WP (phosphorus tetride) MAY damage your internal organs via toxicity, you'd have a hell of a time ingesting or aspirating it, as it oxidizes quickly in air to phosphorus pentoxide, which itself combines fairly quickly with moisture to form phosphoric acid...neither of which is particularly healthy, mind you, but in the concentrations you'd inhale or ingest from WP smoke, it's an irritant - uncomfortable, but no more damaging than tear gas. As for getting hit by a piece of WP...it'll burn you badly, and keep burning as long as it has air. But the burning itself (which is the chemical reaction of phosphorus tetride to phosphorus pentoxide) isn't going to introduce many toxins into the system for the simple reason that the surrounding tissue's already too destroyed from thermal effects to accept the toxins. Basically, WP in either form (smoke or incendiary), though it's theoretically toxic, isn't designed so that toxicity is "deliverable", so to speak. Much like how, even though lead is toxic, you don't get lead poisoning from a bullet. And if WP were a chemical weapon, you'd be right. Only the Russians classify it as such, and then only because smoke (i.e. concealment) and incendiary weapons are technically in the realm of their chemical corps. In the western definition, since its effects are not toxic but thermal, it's not a chemical weapon. Again, it's akin to calling a bullet a chemical weapon because its made of a toxic alloy. Neither is it any more illegal than a bullet from an M16. Which is not to say it's not a horrible weapon; it is a horrible weapon. Given a choice, it's one of the last things I'd like to be hit by. It's painful, scarring, and debilitating. So's a bullet. So's a JDAM. War is a messy business...and attempts to sanitize it by saying "This weapon is 'bad', but this one is 'good'" are ludicrous.

Week before last. Last week it was about dad.

As opposed to dropping bombs on them or shooting them. WP is horrible, it causes terrible and very painful burns (though it does not poison the internal organs, as you stated earlier)...but it's no more "criminal" than any other sh-- that goes on in battle.

Based on what? Again, what do you think is the correct OB for invading and occupying Iraq?

Thanks. Now I have a clearer understanding of why that decision is bull sh--. Christ...the court all but admits that the parents weren't fully informed and couldn't give proper consent...then whitewashes it by saying they didn't have the right to grant or withhold consent. Great court...they decide that no parent can interfere with a school exposing their children to sexual information, while they decide that one parent can keep all schools from exposing any children to the phrase "under God". There's some consistent rulings, the friggin' lunatics...

No, they were manufactured by Iraqi industry bought mostly from the French and Germans. Which is why they have a shelf-life of less than 10 years; Iraqi QC wasn't all that great.

You're not an idealist; you're just wrong. The difference between "good guys" and "bad guys" is in the perception of the historian, which is why the bombing of downtown Tripoli is 'a sad necessity" but the bombing of lower Manhattan is a criminal act. Is "use chemicals as weapons" a reference to this bull sh-- WP story that's bouncing around the news now?

To you and ONLY you. Funny how you're the only one that doesn't remember it.

No, not the Socialist Republic of Berkeley. Smaller town, farther north.

YOU are the one that told everyone how HARM-armed Predator drones killed bin Laden...

In Oklahoma, it is illegal to give liquor to a fish. In some town in CA (now pay attention here BiB), detonating a nuclear weapon within the town lines is illegal and punishable by up to a $500 fine - but no jail time. Apparently, it's only a misdemeanor. A good many towns scattered throughout the country have weird statutes like "It is illegal to eat an ice cream cone on Sunday while walking backward in front of the town hall" or "it is illegal to eat peanuts while walking backwards when the circus is in town". It kind of scares me to think of what sorts of situations prompted the establishment of those laws.

Fine...they are generally, but not overgenerally, leftist loons.

And that's why it's bad. If it wasn't, it would be good. Just like Somalia: that was a good war while only Somalis were dying. Then Americans died. Then it was bad. Perhaps you can share with us, instead, what the proper OB is for a force occupying Iraq. Since you're the one making the assumption, not myself, I think it's only natural the burden of proof should fall to you first. Ah...so when is a war not a war? 1) When Americans don't die, and 2) When there's no invasion. So what was Clinton doing when he bombed Iraq? And Afghanistan? And Serbia? And Sudan? For that matter, what was Nixon doing when he bombed the sh-- out of North Vietnam and Cambodia...last I checked, we didn't invade them, either. Ditto Reagan and Libya (with whom we fought four battles in the '80s) and Iran (who we also fought battles with in the '80s - USS Vincennes ring a bell?) Panama and Grenada, on the other hand, were wars...but they were "good" wars, since Americans didn't die, I imagine...as opposed to Beirut and Mogadishu, which were "bad" wars... "But the other guy..." is never a reasonable argument...but this isn't about "the other guy", it's about the BS attitude that "war" is something that's only fought from the ground. This country has been at war pretty constantly since 1979 (which, conicidentally, is when US soil - for that's what an embassy legally is - was invaded by radical Islamists in Iran and Pakistan). Libya, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Iran, Iraq...see a pattern yet? Hell, bombing Libya in the '80s isn't even manifestly different from invading Iraq today...they only seem different because people can't relate the video-game nature of dropping a GBU to the sheer terror of patrolling some back alley in Nasiriyah or Mazar-i-Sharif.

There is that. But I still pity you.

Retired from the navy with your 7100 wrestling tapes. I pity you.

Sorry...war's only bad if it kills our people. And the key is to win. No decent military commander at any level in history has approached war from the perspective of "everyone must come home safely". The paradox of the only way to save lives in war being to fight it quickly, meaning you must be willing to accept the deaths of some of your soldiers to fight the war, I suspect is beyond your comprehension. It's beyond most peoples. It sure as hell was beyond Clinton's, as sure as it's NOT beyond al Zarqawi's.

I'm having a really hard time with this...I mean, I understand why it's important who starts, I even understand why it's important when the decision is made who starts. But why does anyone give two ***** when it's announced?

Or maybe the morons who wrote the control program. Last I checked, MS Windows is not designed to operate a heavy-lifting robot off-the-shelf.

So war's only bad if it kills people?

Really? I recall lots of bitching and creebing over Clinton's repeated "acts of aggression" over Iraq. Oh, but that was invading their air space and bombing them. Big difference...

I just re-read this. Wait a minute... When I was in school, my parents could write a note to excuse me from damn near anything they didn't agree with. Do mine eyes decieve me, or did the Ninth Circus Court just strip even that?

No, it wasn't.