Okay folks. I'm in the land of the plywood window covering and working the bottom half of a fifth of Dewars when I stumble on CNN (I'm not sure of the cable channels yet) and become transfixed.
Knowing that I'm drinking and hoping to critique non-imaginary faux pas the media and those who believe them verbatim make, I take notes so I can't POSSIBLY think this happened in a dream or was delivered by a big white rabbit named Harvey.
Hangover gone, I read my notes.
Apparently, CNN has "discovered" (broadcast 11-16-05 on some little skinny guy's show) our military has been using white phosphorous. Since this stuff has been around since God knows how long, the words, "how dumb are you?" don't begin to express what I think about this "revelation."
This wasn't just a scroll across the bottom of the screen. Nooooooo. This was full five minute piece.
Whatever the hell CNN was talking about -- and they WILL try to make our use of this substance some kind of "US Flouts Geneva Convention" riff -- it had NOTHING to do with reality.
Now, those of us who have actually BEEN in combat know this stuff as WP, willie pete, Wilson Pickett (the Brothers were big on that version in Nam; don;t know about Iraq and Afghanistan), etc.
We -- myself as a LRRP and just about anyone else who has been under fire and in a tight spot -- love WP. In my day and situation we carried them in grenade form (at least two per four-man team) and when things went south -- which, with a four-man team was often -- WPs ALWAYS saved the day. Forward Air Controllers (FACs) used them to make targets for jets, artillery used them to market initial rounds for Forward Observers (FOs) to adjust from, and of course everyone used them to kill people.
You throw a WP grenade like a football rather than like the apropriately named baseball grenade, and everybody runs. I mean everybody and I mean run, 'cause you do NOT want this stuff on your skin. The chemical burns on exposure to oxygen. It can be underwater for months, and if you step on it and come out of the water, it'll activate again.
Unlike throwing frags (pull the pin, count one-two-three, then throw) throwing WP grenades was sort of oh shit, oh shit, pull the pin and throw the thing as far as possible. Not something you want to have thrown at you and explode close up if you can avoid it. You might get your frag returned if you don't short fuse it, but you'll NEVER get your willie pete back at ya.
I hope that CNN's discovery that those bad American soldiers are using a weapon (I actually heard something equating it with chemical weapons in this report, but whatever I heard made me drop my pen, so I can't swear it wasn't a stroke I was having) that will kill the hell out of the enemy in one of the more excruciatingly painful ways imaginable doesn't result in kneejerk complaints about Geneva Convention violations of the rights of enemy combatant by those illustrious people who "support the troops."
Just remember: There ain't NOTHING finer than having the only WP in a firefight.
No comments:
Post a Comment