God said a fire, not a flood next time. - “Well Well Well,” The Seekers.

Yet another story I’ve been meaning to write about, but someone over at Kos beat me to it. It’s about the gruesome fact that we’re using napalm in Iraq.

The U.S. military denied its use, sliding through on a technicality. They say they already destroyed all our stockpiles. Well, why not? Because they knew the new, improved edition was coming along.

Now they admit it, but say napalm was made with gasoline; this new version is made with kerosene.

It’s more environmentally sensitive than the original napalm. Practically green, really.

Napalm is jellied fuel, made to better stick to the humans it’s used upon. In addition to critically burning them, it literally sucks away the oxygen and sears the victim’s lungs.

It also rendered the Vietnamese farmland unusable, which is the accusation I suppose we’re trying to avoid in Iraq.

Because of napalm’s horrific effects, virtually every country in the civilized world has already agreed not to use it. Except us, of course.

The new version is called Mark 77. Coincidentally, here’s the Bible reading from Mark 7:7.

“In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”

From Aljazeera:

Residents of neighbouring Saqlawiya village have told Aljazeera that they helped bury the bodies of 73 women and children who were burned beyond recognition.

“We buried them here, but we could not identify them because they were charred by the use of napalm bombs used by the Americans,” said one Saqlawiya resident in footage aired on Sunday. There have been no reports of the US military using napalm in Falluja and no independent verification of the above statements.

No, it’s just as likely they were burned from the white phosphorus rounds we were firing.

“Usually we keep the gloves on,” said Army Capt. Erik Krivda, of Gaithersburg, Md., the senior officer in charge of the 1st Infantry Division’s Task Force 2-2 tactical operations command center. “For this operation, we took the gloves off.”

Some artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water. Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns.

Kamal Hadeethi, a physician at a regional hospital, said, “The corpses of the mujahedeen which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted.”

Now, ask yourself this question. In our quest for “democracy” in the Middle East, when it comes to the charred bodies of women and children, does it really matter what we used?