Reports coming out of Great Britain this weekend indicate that the US government used napalm-type weaponry during the Iraq War and then lied to the British Government about it:

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."

In other words, Mr. Ingram was lied to by US officials.

At least the Bush team is consistent. As long as their lips are moving, there's a good chance they're lying to your face, eh?

The morality of using weaponry like MK77s is highly questionable given the fact that it's banned by the the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) for use on anything but strictly military targets. The US has not signed on to the Convention. Britain has.

Reports of US use of such incendiary weaponry are readily available:

"Dead Bodies Are Everywhere":

Marine Cobra helicopter gunships firing Hellfire missiles swept in low from the south. Then the marine howitzers, with a range of 30 kilometres, opened a sustained barrage over the next eight hours. They were supported by US Navy aircraft which dropped 40,000 pounds of explosives and napalm, a US officer told the Herald. But a navy spokesman in Washington, Lieutenant Commander Danny Hernandez, denied that napalm - which was banned by a United Nations convention in 1980 - was used.

Oops..guess the US officer didn't get the memo.

Officials confirm dropping firebombs on Iraqi troops--Results are 'remarkably similar' to using napalm:

American jets killed Iraqi troops with firebombs – similar to the controversial napalm used in the Vietnam War – in March and April as Marines battled toward Baghdad.

"We napalmed both those (bridge) approaches," said Col. James Alles in a recent interview. He commanded Marine Air Group 11, based at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, during the war. "Unfortunately, there were people there because you could see them in the (cockpit) video.

Using this material against military targets is clearly legal, even under the CCW protocol. This begs the question: why would the Bush Administration lie to the British about the use of these devices?

Further, if Bush lied to the British government about intelligence regarding Iraq's WMD and about the use of napalm-type weaponry in Iraq..what else are they lying to the British about?

(x-posted at PK)

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Posted by: zencomix at June 20, 2005 12:52 PM