Don't Know Much About Chem-istry

Think Progress believes it has evidence that the DOD categorizes white phosphorus munitions as "chemical weapons" and therefore is talking out of both sides of its mouth. They're referencing a GulfLINK document dated April 1991 that discusses Saddam Hussein's use of WP against the Kurds in northern Iraq during February 1991.

DURING THE BRUTAL CRACKDOWN THAT FOLLOWED THE KURDISH UPRISING, IRAQI FORCES LOYAL TO PRESIDENT SADDAM ((HUSSEIN)) MAY HAVE POSSIBLY USED WHITE PHOSPHOROUS (WP) CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGAINST KURDISH REBELS AND THE POPULACE IN ERBIL ...

I've also seen comments that point out the Chemical Warfare Service had a WP munitions plant in Huntsville, Alabama, during World War II, and that the Army Green Books discussing the CWS legacy in WWII lists WP along with mustard and phosgene as chemical munitions. Is this more evidence that the Army really does tacitly see WP as a chemical weapon?

Okay, I am going to lay it out for you all one last time and then that's all I'm going to say about this subject (which has gone on too long now). Many Army officers don't like chemistry. They don't understand it at all. Hell, that probably goes to a good percentage of the total population. Whenever I told my military boss (while I was in the Army) that I had a chemistry degree, he would invariably wince and say, "gee, I never liked chemistry. Chemistry was HARD." You're probably nodding your head right now, saying "me, too." So when you see military guys that don't understand the difference between chemical warfare and munitions that use chemical reactions, you have to give them some slack, because they really don't know better. It's sad, I know, but it's true. Other than the Army lawyers and the Chemical Corps, all they know is that they have WP munitions and they're allowed to use them as marking and smoke munitions, and using them against enemy combatants is not frowned upon during wartime.

My liberal brethern don't like how the military and those supporting the use of WP munitions on combatants dance on the letter of the law in this subject. You know, there's a reason for laws of war, and it's not just to protect the noncombatants during combat. I was trying to find the right phrase in Schelling's "Arms and Influence", can't immediately find it, but he notes this: "In warfare the dialogue between adversaries is often confined to the restrictive language of action and a dictionary of common perceptions and precedents." And this: "Gas was not used in the Second World War. Any "understanding" about gas was voluntary and reciprocal - enforceable only by the threat of reciprocal force."

My point being, we have laws of war to set the rules and conditions of retaliation prior to conflicts so that the participating nations understand and anticipate the reactions of the enemy when they do certain things. Using incendiary munitions on noncombatants - bad, must be punished. Incendiary munitions on combatants - not good, but not punishable. The Hauge Conventions initially outlawed incendiary munitions, but then when the fighter planes of World War I needed to pop those Zepplin bombers, the world powers changed the rules to allow munitions that have incendiary qualities. The rules change not because of morality but also because of practicality. Everyone wants to know the rules so they can fight the battles and understand (within reason) what to expect. That's why we have lawyers involved in war.

UPDATE: One last thought (promise) - some liberals think that there is no difference between Hussain's forces using WP on Kurd civilians and US forces using WP on enemy combatants. Note the key differences - civilian targets versus enemy combatants. That's what makes us legal and them not legal, although (admittedly) it's still a nasty way to go.

Comments

[CKR]

The whole thing is complicated in the popular press by the use of the word "chemical" to mean "bad chemical." Thus, pesticides are "chemicals" when they cause cancer and are ignored when they keep rat feces out of your flour. Phosphorus is a "chemical" weapon, but bursting charges are not, even though explosives are chemicals too.

If more people had paid attention in their junior high general science courses, they would know that the keyboards they are typing on are made of a chemical, some sort of plastic. That tree outside the window is made of chemicals--lignins, sugars, proteins, and, yes, water. Even your body (yiicch!) is made of DNA, proteins, more sugars, fats, all chemicals! Everything you can touch is chemical.

But "chemical" has become a term of opprobrium, which is part of what's been happening in the white phosphorus argument. I suspect that it is a part of this latest quote.

[J.]

Isaac Asimov had a quote, which I can paraphrase - he thought that scientists prior to 1918 had a very good profile in the community, and that it was a respected position. After World War I, due to the threat of poison gases and other technological advances in war, the public's view of a scientist shifted to "science, bad. Chemistry, bad." Not sure I agree with him 100 percent but one can understand that simplistic public view and its changing.

[CKR]

DuPont did pretty well with its slogan, "Better Living Through Chemistry" into the sixties...

[J.]

Yeah, until they got caught with Agent Orange and napalm, which kinda hurt the chemist field again. Although I, while in the Chemical Corps, always liked that slogan. Go figure.

[John Cole]

Armchair- Not to mention as has been pointed out repeatedly by me and others, this is not proof the Pentagon classifying it as a chemical weapon, as what Think Progress really only has a declassified transcription of a consversation between two Kurds on a phone WHO CALLED IT A CHEMICAL WEAPON.

By the logic of Think Progress, if the two brothers talking on the phone had said 'Saddam is dropping water as a chemical weapon,' then ipso facto the Pentagon classifies water as a chemical weapon.

[Joseph]

This has gotten out of hand. At least you have been a voice of reason. I just wanna sum up how I feel about this issue. I would start off letting you know I oppose this war and have since day one, however I don't feel that it does anygood to nitpick every action that our forces take to see if it's agianst this law or that one. The use of these weapons is unfortunate and nasty, thats tragic but I am not gonna damn the Army for trying to find a better way to flush out fighters and give a advantage to our troops.. Thats the best I can sum it up.

[J Thomas]

"Note the key differences - civilian targets versus enemy combatants."

Some estimates have it that there were 50,000 to 100,000 civilians in Fallujah who hadn't managed to leave. The US forces were not allowing military-age men to leave, on the assumption that they were insurgents. That would be a big fraction of the population right there, if we assume that most of them were not insurgents.

And we had the estimate that there were 2,000 to 5,000 insurgents in the city.

I'd be interested in how many civilians we rescued from Fallujah during and after the fighting. A web search that lasted a couple of hours didn't find any useful information about that.

These numbers don't sound real, but of course probably they aren't real. A third of the city wasn't evacuated? And then we used weapons with mass effects to get 2,000 insurgents? Some of the marines said there were no civilians in Fallujah at all. Maybe they were right? Or maybe they were told that so they wouldn't worry about what they were doing to civilians? And maybe the 2,000 number was just propaganda for one reason or another. Maybe everybody in Fallujah did support the insurgents and all the military-age men were insurgents, and we were right to kill them all. If we did kill very many of them. I can't find any decent numbers, and the numbers that get tossed around don't match up.

I think we need new rules about city warfare when the civilians are still there. I guess we'd need one set of rules to cover times when we're strong enough to restore order (We could for example intern everybody who'll leave and then gas the uninhabited city, and sort out the insurgents in the internment camps. Let the good guys go home to their mostly-undamaged city). And a different set of rules for when we're by far the stronger side but still too weak to bring order. (Accept that lots of civilian casualties are inevitable, let the obvious noncombatants leave, and then do whatever it takes to kill everybody we lack the resources to take prisoner.) And a third set of rules for when it's more evenly matched. (Maybe invite the city's population to have some kind of vote? Amnesty and parole if they agree to stop fighting? Bargain with them about their special desires, and try to neutralise them, get the fighting to happen somewhere else....

[Bulldog]

AG,

The problem comes in when you are fighting a non-conventional war against non-conventional forces. It is extremely unfortunate what happened to the civilians in Fallujah, but it raises the question "How do you properly identify who's the enemy and who's not?" The answer, of course, is that you can't. This is not WWII, or Korea where we could fairly easily identify "who" the enemy is. That being said, I disagree with the use of WP in the way it was used in Fallujah. In an era of smart bombs, TOW missiles and other such munitions, there were other ways to flush the insurgents out, however, since I'm not a commander in the field, I don't get to make that call. All I can say is this debate over WP is getting into a matter of semantics. If only there were some way to discern who the bad guy is, perhaps things wouldn't be as bad as they are in Iraq.

[J Thomas]

Bulldog, the Fallujah situation was that way because of our own choice.

We tried to make sure the Fallujah civilians knew what was coming, and we wanted them to evacuate themselves. But then we chose not to let any military-age men leave. And given the unsettled conditions a fair number of them didn't send their wives and children off to live as refugees without their protection. I can understand that reasoning, the wives and daughters might have been raped by -- whoever. Not just US troops, whoever else had the opportunity.

We didn't give military-age men all that much chance to surrender. I get the impression we were in "no worse enemy" mode.

If we had had the resources, we could have let anybody who wanted evacuate into internment camps that we controlled, and then decide which of the men to detain longer. We might have gotten many moe civilians out that way. But we'd still have had a mostly-deserted city to explore looking for arms caches and finding boobytraps and insurgents. And the insurgents who slipped through the internment camps would have gotten away, and the ones who didn't would be a continual problem -- much simpler to just kill them. And given the iraqi rumors about Abu Ghraib and Camp Victory and Camp Bucca etc, we might not get that many civilians out after all.

I dunno. It would all be a lot easier if the civilians completely trusted us. But somehow it's gone the other way.

[Bulldog]

"Our own doing" is exactly what allowed Fallujah to become what it is/was. But that again goes back to the fact we are attempting to use conventional military tactics against an unconventional foe. I really don't think commanders on the ground nor top advisors at the Pentagon really understand our enemy here and that's going to get a lot more troops and civilians killed or wounded. Unfortunately I don't have a remedy to the situation either; I wish I did.

[Caleb]

"Some estimates have it that there were 50,000 to 100,000 civilians in Fallujah who hadn't managed to leave. The US forces were not allowing military-age men to leave, on the assumption that they were insurgents. That would be a big fraction of the population right there, if we assume that most of them were not insurgents.

And we had the estimate that there were 2,000 to 5,000 insurgents in the city."

J Thomas, at the risk of getting snapped at, here goes: First things first, I would really like to know where you get your numbers. I'm not saying that I doubt you, I'm just saying that the internet if virtually filled to capacity with B.S., and it sounds like that's where you got most of your figures. If we are to take anything seriously, we will need reliable, reputable sources. Secondly, can we all try to deal in something a little more solid than what "impression" we get? I mean, I know that's hard, since many higher military decisions are no doubt classified. All I'm trying to point out here is that some people look at a painting and get the impression that the artist was sad, others get the impression that he was having the time of his life.

[J Thomas]

Caleb, that's a reasonable request. However, I don't have good estimates.

I don't have a good estimate of the population of Fallujah before the occupation. Estimates of the whole population range from 250,000 to 350,000.

Here's a claim there were 210,000 refugees.
tp://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/2004/12/us-attack-on-fallujah-leaves-210600.html

If that's correct then we have a maximum of 40,000 to 90,000 left behind in the city. Not good, but it's a start at a maximum figure.

http://anthony.gnn.tv/headlines/164/6_500_American_G_I_s_and_2_000_Iraqis_on_Attack
"The number of insurgents in the city is estimated at 3,000, although some guerrillas, terrorist fighters and their leaders escaped the city before the attack. American military officials estimated that of a usual population of 300,000, 70 percent to 90 percent of civilians had fled."

According to this widely-reported quote, some US military officials believed that there were 30,000 to 90,000 civilians in Fallujah.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/813419D5-CC95-4505-9367-05140111C618.htm
A sunni muslim official estimated the number of civilians in Fallujah at 60,000, precisely in line with the american estimate.

http://electroniciraq.net/news/1719.shtml
"Estimates of civilians remaining in Fallujah on 7 Nov. varied from 100,000 (US military, FT, 9 Nov., p. 10) to 60,000 (Sunni group, Independent, 10 Nov., p. 5). Estimates for the number of fighters left in Falluja before the assault varied 'from 600 to 6,000,' meaning that the overwhelming majority of people in Fallujah were thought to be non-combatants. It was reported that 'Anyone still in the city will be regarded as a potential insurgent.' (Observer, 7 Nov., p. 18) A threat to kill every human being in Fallujah."

Now about casualties.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1116-04.htm
An early estimate of 800 casualties by the Red Cross was not at all reliable, but might be considered an unreliable minimum estimate.

Red Crescent estimated 6000 casualties as of November 25. I don't include a reference since every quote I find of that is in articles expressing an antiwar position. It isn't obvious how Red Crescent would know, since at that time they had not been allowed in the city to do humanitarian work. Marines bombed clinics and detained doctors, they did not allow medical supplies in. Civilians in Fallujah were allowed no medical care.

http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-kelly151105.htm
Jeff Englehart described the rules of engagement he was issued before the November attack. “I was personally involved with escorting a commander to Fallujah for Operation Phantom Fury,” he told RAI. “We were told [before] going into Fallujah, into the combat area, that every single person that was walking, talking, breathing was an enemy combatant. As such, every single person that was walking down the street or in a house was a target.”

Does this seem plausible? There had been a lot of talk that the civilians in Fallujah were being oppressed by the insurgents, that they'd help us free them. Our pinpoint bombing campaign had depended on Fallujah residents telling us where to bomb. But it does look like the majority of the residents were against us, probably the large majority. And there were the unopposed cheering crowds when those 4 contractors got dismembered. Doesn't it make sense to suppose that everybody left in Fallujah was against us? There had been a lot of criticism of Marine snipers back in April for shooting women and chilren. But some of the most celebrated insurgent snipers were children, one of them a 12-year-old who was small for his age. If a civilian sees you, she could get you killed. It's silly to expect Marine snipers to spare civilians when the large majority of them are enemy civilians. Similarly, the safest way to take out an insurgent sniper is to demolish the building he's in. It isn't safe to check first whether there are civilians cowering in the basement.

I haven't found any reliable data about civilian casualties. Maybe somebody else could provide some. Here's a quick estimate. Somewhere between 60% and 70% of the buildings in Fallujah were destroyed. With no medicine and no aid, with attacks on people who dig for survivors, it seems plausible that this would translate to roughly 60% to 70% of the civilians dying. This is only a rough estimate. Some people survive having concrete buildings collapse on them, but then some people die after drinking sewage for a couple of weeks. So if there were 10,000 civilians in Fallujah that would translate to about 6,000 dead. If it was 30,000, the low estimate, that's about 18,000. But I've seen no reliable estimate. Mostly it simply doesn't get reported at all.

http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=2762
"One striking feature of the military operation in Fallujah is the paucity of reliable information relating to the full impact of the violence on civilians."

I think that's a fair statement.

"If we are to take anything seriously, we will need reliable, reputable sources."

I'm sorry. I couldn't find any. I guess we'll have to settle for not taking anything seriously.

[Caleb Pearson]

Like I figured, it is going to be hard, at least in the meantime to sort the good numbers from the out and out fabrications, but I thank you for trying. I just get a little wary of anyone that uses numbers to back his/her positions without feeling any kind of need to explain where the numbers come from. Thanks again for the references.

[J Thomas]

Caleb, the reason it's hard to get good numbers is that the US military is not allowing anyone to get good numbers. There is strong reason to believe that the US military is taking forceful action to prevent anyone from getting good numbers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1366349,00.html

But we have US military numbers for the civilians in Fallujah at the start of the attack -- 30,000 to 100,000.

And we have US military numbers for the number of civilians in Fallujah in mid-January -- roughly 12,000, which includes refugees who returned. I don't remember the exact number but it is one of the hardest numbers around -- we did extensive ID on those people.

There was a swell in the number of detainees in November/December, and that might include most of the survivors. But I haven't found any number for how many survivors in Fallujah were detained, or how many survivors in Fallujah were counted, or how many of them died in the first weeks or months after the fighting mostly died down while conditions were so bad.

My best guess at the number of civilian casualties is somewhere in the range 20,000 to 70,000, probably on the low side of that since there may not have been 70,000 to start with. (The civilians in Fallujah had well over a week to evacuate the city, and likely 70% or more of them got out -- our own experience with New Orleans etc shows how quickly that can be done.)

So Caleb, yes, we don't have very good numbers because the US military won't let us have good numbers. But I'd like to suggest a bet. Suppose that in 10 years or so the iraqis get organised enough to actually figure out how many people who were in Fallujah before the attack were permanently missing after the attack. At even odds, would you bet $1000 adjusted for inflation since 2005 that the number will come out to less than 20,000? What number seems to you like a fair bet?

So anyway, I don't want to make a big point abour our Marines being baby-killers and all that. In urban warfare they are, they kill lots of women and children, that's a given. But compare them to the russians doing urban warfare, or the israelis, or the indonesians. Or -- well, anyone. It does nobody any real good to turn it into a moral issue. What we need is a methodology that works better, or a way to generally avoid MOUT.

We mostly won the propaganda battle this time around, in the USA if nowhere else. But what if the next time we have to get 3000 heavily-armed terrorists out of a city full of civilians, it isn't Fallujah but Watts?

We need a better way.

[J Thomas]

This has gotten away from the question of whether lethal use of WP should be labeled chemical warfare or something else.

But does anybody have anything to say to the idea that we probably killed ten times as many civilians as combatants, using airstrikes and artillery and so on, WP and napalm, etc etc?

And there's reason to believe our attack did not catch the core of the insurgents in Fallujah. (Things got hotter other places right away. But was that because the insurgents left Fallujah and moved elsewhere to cause trouble, or was it that insurgents elsewhere stepped up their efforts hoping to take pressure off Fallujah? We said it was the former, but at that time we officially believed there were only a few insurgents and we were attacking their nerve center. So that result would logically follow from that wrong premise.)

Can we find a better way to do warfare in a city that starts out with a lot of civilians in it?