On Mon, 10 Apr 2017 17:28:59 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

wrote:
On Sun, 9 Apr 2017 14:41:09 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:


Agent Orange is in the same category as napalm. It's not technically a
"weapon". Both are defoliants. Not saying they don't cause harm to
people. The difference between them and the purpose of nerve gas is
what makes the latter illegal according to international law.


I guess "ordinance" was not your forte in the Navy.
Napalm was developed in WWII to incinerate Japanese cities and in the
next 2 Asian wars it was used as an anti personnel weapon.
WP was purely a terror weapon, meant to cause wounds by chunks of
flaming phosphorus that would not go out. It simply has to be exposed
to air, at room temperature to burn.
I understand they were able to lie to themselves in Geneva in the 20s
and not outlaw WP but Napalm did not exist the last time this protocol
was updated. In the 60s they revisited it, there were some attempts to
include other things but it slipped away.


Napalm was not developed to incinerate Japanese cities. Neighbor growing
up was army in the South Pacific. He said when they got it, they first did
not realize how nasty it was, as they added the powder to gasoline and
mixed it in open barrels. They used it to root out Japanese in caves.

It was developed to burn German cities. Then LeMay figured out
Japanese cities were far more flammable and he used it by the ton.
If we had lost that war the Army Air force leaders would have been
hanged for war crimes. They had to spare 3 Japanese cities, just so
they would have a decent test of the atomic bombs. The rest of them
were already burned out shadows of their former selves. We killed a
lot more people in the fire bomb raids than the nukes killed. They
were virtually all civilians.