Talk:White phosphorus munitions/Archives/2020/January

Recent mass reversion

A large number of edits was recently reverted with reason "We don't need all this excessive detail and random people who don't matter saying things". As the reason does not seem to relate to all the additions I have re-added the edits and have asked the reverting editor to revert each edit separately for clarity. I think each edit needs to be discussed separately. I have listed the edits below and included the reason why each one is useful in the article:

1. Change of title from "Use in Iraq" to “Use by US forces in Iraq” which is more accurate. Who else used WP in Iraq?

2. Replacement of the dead source by the live source . This was done for obvious reasons.

3. Addition of the phrase

"while never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused" 

to the sentence

“In April 2004, during the First Battle of Fallujah, Darrin Mortenson of California's North County Times reported that US forces had used white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon while "never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused". 

This is an important point especially regarding the point of whether US forces made an effort to avoid civilians casualties.

4. Addition of:

"The March/April 2005 issue of an official Army publication called Field Artillery magazine reported that "White phosphorus proved to be an effective and versatile munition and a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes. ... We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents using W.P. [white phosphorus] to flush them out and H.E. [high explosives] to take them out"."

This account has been mentioned by a number of reliable sources. It is a creditable first hand account of how the WP was used. I hope its value to the article will be clear to editors.

4. Addition of

“Professor Paul Rodgers from the University of Bradford department of peace studies said that white phosphorus would probably fall into the category of chemical weapons if it was used directly against people. George Monbiot stated that he believed the firing of white phosphorous by US forces directly at the combatants in Fallujah in order to flush them out so they could then be killed was in contravention of the Chemical Weapons Convention and, therefore, a war crime”.

These are not random opinions. Paul Rodgers is a specialist and Monbiot a well known journalist who reported on Falluja.

5. Addition of

“In November 2005, the US ambassador to the United Kingdom, Robert Tuttle, wrote to The Independent denying that the United States used white phosphorus as a weapon in Fallujah”

This is obviously not a random opinion. Its inclusion will help readers decide on the credibility of US statements about the use of WP.

7. Addition of

“The documentary Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre, produced by RAI TV, claimed that Iraqi civilians, including women and children, had died of burns caused by white phosphorus during the assault on Fallujah”.   

Its relevance to the section I hope will be obvious. It is a notable documentary with a wiki page of its own. Burrobert (talk) 07:01, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

References

Ok, let's see:

• 1. No other section refers to who is using it, they refer to the name of the conflict and nothing else. Needless emphasis.
• 2. Fixed.
• 3. Saying "US Forces" used WP "while never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused" is an improper way of parsing that source. Of course a member of the mortar team itself didn't know that, they were using indirect fire, long-range weapons. It does not follow that the entire US force did not know. Your justification for including this (that it "relates" to whether or not the US forces attempted to avoid civilian casualties) is your personal opinion not supported at all by one USMC mortar team leader (ie, a man in charge of one mortar crew: "US Forces" amounts to about four people) saying they personally "have never seen what they’ve hit" (same source). The correct context would be "Cpl. Nicholas Bogert, a USMC mortar crewman, said that his team had never seen what their targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused." Which is entirely unremarkable: that's the nature of a mortar. Operators of crew-served support weapons rarely see where their shots land.
• 4. The use of combined WP and HE fire missions is already described in that same paragraph, it doesn't need to be re-stated.
• also 4. Monbiot is not an expert on international law, nor do his qualifications make him an authoritative voice in its proper interpretation. His views are his own, and not relevant to a discussion of the prevailing consensus on whether or not WP use is legal within the framework of the CWC. No war crimes prosecution has ever proceeded for general WP usage against personnel as a CWC violation, and the prevailing consensus from relevant legal scholars is that it is not one barring very specific and unlikely circumstances.

The writer of the Independent article is misrepresenting what Rodgers actually said in that quote you use, which is the reporter, not him. Quote Rodgers:

Prof Rodgers said white phosphorus would be considered as a chemical weapon under international conventions if it was "deliberately aimed at people to have a chemical effect". (Emphasis mine)

This agrees with the summary of CWC's applicability by Peter Kaiser later. In general the mechanism of WP injuries is thermal, with the chemical effects only incidental. You have to be trying to poison people with it to have it fall under the CWC. His second statement...

"It is not counted under the chemical weapons convention in its normal use but, although it is a matter of legal niceties, it probably does fall into the category of chemical weapons if it is used for this kind of purpose directly against people." (Emphasis mine again)

...seems to be a follow-on from the first: contextually "this kind of purpose" relates to his previous quote of "deliberately aimed at people to have a chemical effect." The Independent reporter misses the important distinction of "to have a chemical effect" in their summary of his statement.

• 5. Tuttle's statement is not important to describing the history of the use of white phosphorous as a weapon. It clearly was used. We are not dealing with "the credibility of US statements" here, we are describing when and how it was employed. Your description frankly seems more like an attempt at poisoning the well.
• 7. Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre is a highly criticised piece which makes a number of claims which are dubious or outright impossible (for example, it claims WP was delivered by rockets launched from helicopters, but no such system exists in the US inventory). Monbiot himself criticised its claims, and spoke to a professional regarding its claims of burned bodies, concluding they had merely decayed. It really has no place here as its fanciful allegations were not treated seriously by any international body or investigated further. The documentary is notable in its own right, but not notable at all as regards the use of WP in combat.

Also at least one of your changes is outright incorrect, the US DoD's proper-noun name is "Department of Defense," you can't change that to British English. Bones Jones (talk) 07:46, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

• I have restored the edits. As the are sourced and were added with appropriate edit summaries, each edit should be addressed individually or a consensus on how a set of edits should be revised should be reached. A consensus here should be reached before undoing a series of edits. The discussion should be based on WP policies and guidelines driven by sources. Thanks to all for working to improve the encyclopedia. MrBill3 (talk) 11:05, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Um, that's not how it works, WP:BRD is pretty clear on this. If edits are contentious, particularly with regard to possible misinterpretations of source material (per the claimed statement from Rodgers which is actually an inaccurate paraphrasing by a journalist and the misleading quotation of a mortar crewman as if he is the entire US military) they are removed from the page while they are being discussed, not kept up to potentially mislead people. Potentially, quoting Rodgers saying something he demonstrably did not say is a BLP violation and that in particular should not stay up without discussion. Bones Jones (talk) 11:09, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

The article cited fully supports the Rodgers statement. This is not a BLP issue if you think the article cited is not a reliable source there is a notice board for that. A number of your assertions do not cite or reflect policy and guidelines. Some of your analysis seems original research. WP represents the facts as published in reliable sources. You boldly removed content, you were reverted, the person reverting you has provided explanation, you redid your removal of content, you were reverted again and further discussion occurred, re-instating your preferred version repeatedly without consensus is edit warring. MrBill3 (talk) 11:33, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

No, the article absolutely does not support it, the quoted statement is from the writer of the article, a journalist, attempting to paraphrase Rodgers' position, which is quoted later and says something else. The writer of the article is not an expert and cannot hijack Rodgers' credentials to make a statement on his behalf. I outlined the nature of their error and how Rodgers' actual statement fundamentally differs from what he's claimed to have said in my points above. And no, I did not boldly remove content, he boldly added content. He now needs to justify these additions. Bones Jones (talk) 11:40, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at each edit individually. We now have a lot more information with which to work. I’ll renumber the points as I duplicated one of the numbers in my initial post.

• 1. Change of title from "Use in Iraq" to “Use by US forces in Iraq” which is more accurate. Who else used WP in Iraq?

My preference is for specificity in a section title so adding the extra information is an improvement from my point of view and the section title is still quite short. Admittedly this is a matter of taste so other editors may look at things differently. There is a certain amount of consistency in the section titles though some display dates and some don’t.

• 2. Replacement of the dead source by the live source. It seems we both agree that this is a good thing.

• 3. Addition of the phrase

"while never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused”. This comes from a quote contained in the linked source (“Bogert is a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the city Friday and Saturday, never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused”). The source doesn’t mention the “entire US force” so I don’t see the relevance of mentioning what they knew or didn’t know. The term “US forces” could be changed to “US mortar teams” if you think it will make the meaning clearer. If you find a source that mentions what the rest of the US army knew about this you could add the information.

• 4. Addition of:

"The March/April 2005 issue of an official Army publication called Field Artillery magazine reported that "White phosphorus proved to be an effective and versatile munition and a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes. ... We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents using W.P. [white phosphorus] to flush them out and H.E. [high explosives] to take them out".

Here are the points that this addition makes that are not available in the original paragraph:

• (a) that WP is an effective and versatile munition
• (b) that WP is a potent psychological weapon
• (c) that it was used against insurgents in trench lines and spider holes.
• (d) a description of the ’shake and bake' method that US forces applied: namely white phosphorus is used to flush the insurgents out and high explosives are then used to kill them.

• 5. Addition of

“Professor Paul Rodgers from the University of Bradford department of peace studies said that white phosphorus would probably fall into the category of chemical weapons if it was used directly against people. George Monbiot stated that he believed the firing of white phosphorous by US forces directly at the combatants in Fallujah in order to flush them out so they could then be killed was in contravention of the Chemical Weapons Convention and, therefore, a war crime”.

Monbiot is a journalist who wrote a number of articles on the US use of WP in Iraq including ones where he explained why he believed that the particular use that the US made of them in Iraq was a war crime. His views have been appropriately attributed. Rodgers’ quote is almost verbatim from the source. You can expand the quote, using the source, to include the missing words if you think it will make his meaning clearer. I think his opinion as well as Monbiot’s are worth including in the article.

• 6. Addition of

“In November 2005, the US ambassador to the United Kingdom, Robert Tuttle, wrote to The Independent denying that the United States used white phosphorus as a weapon in Fallujah”

I included this to show the history of US denials leading up the the admission by Venable. There are other examples of the US denying the use of WP that are mentioned in sources. One source says that there was a year of denials leading up to the admission by Venable. I think it is an important part of the story of the use of WP in Iraq but its relevance to this particular article is less clear so I am happy for it to be removed if you think it does not belong.

• 7. Addition of

“The documentary Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre, produced by RAI TV, claimed that Iraqi civilians, including women and children, had died of burns caused by white phosphorus during the assault on Fallujah”.

This is a reasonable summary of the quote from both the Independent source and the CBC source which said “An unknown number of Iraqi women and children died of phosphorus burns during the hostilities, Italian documentary makers covering the battle for Fallujah have claimed”. Neither source went on to criticise the documentary. The denial by Venable follows the claim and the claim is appropriately attributed. If there are criticisms of the documentary specifically related to the claim that is included here then they can be added to the page with an appropriate reference.

Burrobert (talk) 13:32, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

• 1. I'd argue that it places an over-emphasis on who's using it rather than when it was used, which is the subject. The only real reason to say "US use" specifically would be if someone else had used it and you needed to follow on with another section particular to them. Also, while I'm not sure about the second case, the "Afghanistan (2009)" heading is kind of important to establish you're not talking about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
• 3. The problem here is you are extracting a generalisation from a specific: "US Forces" not knowing is different from one team leader of one USMC mortar team not knowing, when it would be unusual for him to know due to the nature of the weapon his team were using. Mortars are often fired completely blind from behind earth embankments with no line-of-sight to their target (it's the main benefit of this type of weapon), but that doesn't mean they're indiscriminate, it means they rely on outside data to know where to place their shots. I'll note I'm particularly leery about this addition with how you initially justified it as relating to whether or not the entire US force tried to avoid casualties, which it is entirely inapplicable to.
• 4. I don't think the first two points you list belong in a specific statement about use in Iraq, they should really be in a distinct section describing general attributes of WP munitions. After all, there's nothing about those statements specific to that war. The reference to "shake and bake" should probably follow on directly from the statement about the mortar team, since it's also talking about mixed HE and WP use. Also, it's a quote with an ugly undefined pronoun that ought to be fixed: who are "we" after the break? Did the magazine do that itself?
• 5. The problem with quoting Monbiot is that he isn't an expert in the matter: his opinion on international law is that of a well-read layman rather than a professional, and so not really relevant as anything other than "what some guy thinks might be true." Rodgers' full opinion should probably be down in the "international law" section with Kaiser's, as they are both essentially making the same point: CWC applies if and only if the primary mechanism of damage is through poisonous effects, not if poisoning is an incidental effect. There's an important distinction between something that is a chemical weapon and something that can be used as a chemical weapon. This applies to all potentially toxic chemicals used in combat.

(As a casual example, consider another smoke-producing chemical, HC, hexachloroethane-zinc. This produces potentially deadly zinc chloride as a byproduct of the reaction that makes the smoke: smoke grenades using HC aren't chemical weapons because they're not designed to produce poisonous concentrations under normal battlefield conditions, but if you, say, threw a bunch of them into a building's ventilation system while blocking the doors, you would be using them as a chemical weapon. That's how the law works here)

• 6. The thing I'm trying to preserve here is to avoid this article spiralling off-topic as it had done: at one point it was almost entirely dominated by NGOs complaining about Israel. Tuttle's denial was, according to Venable, just a result of the embassy being given outdated information, and a diplomat not knowing every detail of what's going on in a warzone isn't exactly incredible. It doesn't really seem all that relevant to the article which is about how it was used.
• 7. I don't see how someone making a claim in a documentary that resulted in absolutely no action being taken by anyone is relevant to the article. If it had been picked up on and investigated by some official body then maybe, but it was just a sizzle and nothing.

Bones Jones (talk) 14:10, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Looks like we are developing solid ideas for improving the encyclopedia.

• 3 I would agree with Bones Jones that going from a quote from an individual to "US Forces" is not valid. I would disagree that mortar teams don't know about their targeting and effects. Despite a lack of line sight, mortar teams are given detailed information about targets and the effects of their fire. They also are aware of the type of munition they are firing. It is an usual situation for the team leader to continue firing without evaluation, making the comment notable. It must be made clear this comes from a single individual. Also what level of detail is appropriate in this article? If there are not sub articles the detail goes here until it gets to the level of a new article. If this is covered in other articles, why here too?
• 5 Attribution should be clear. A more accurate summarization of Rodgers might be possible with a careful reading of the cited article. However we do have a source that is RS that has precisely stated the content added. Monbiot is not speaking as an expert on international law, he is speaking as a reporter who has interviewed and summarized the statements of Rodgers and others. I don't know how the assessment of a WP editor stacks up to the editorial standards of the source, not a snide comment, some sources need to be evaluated. We can evaluate the content of the article, and the reliability of the source, and discuss appropriate summarization/paraphrasing. What we can't do is use the material in the cited source to produce original research.

I hope this input is helpful. MrBill3 (talk)

• 3. Actually that's not true, it would be the officer in charge of a mortar battery that might be getting information on what precisely his targets are. Our guy here is just in charge of one mortar crew, he's most likely going to just be getting orders from the FDC (fire direction centre) strictly in terms of what they need his mortar to do. Potentially, all he'd know about the target could be summarised along the lines of "Section, HE quick, number two, one round, deflection two eight hundred, charge eight and four eighths, elevation nine hundred." Actual sighting and requests for additional shots or adjustments are handed by a guy called a forward observer (FO) in such cases.

See here, 1.2, section III "Indirect Fire Team," p.13 in the PDF. Data on fire commands is 2-43 which is page 72 in the PDF. You'll notice the FDC doesn't tell the mortar teams anything about what the target is, only how to shoot at it and what to shoot at it. Neither is it clear to the mortar crews if they have hit or destroyed their target, since the only feedback is to fire again, adjust, cease fire or fire at something else.

• 5. Yeah, but that's a journalist stating it, not Rodgers stating it. When we have his exact quote which says something else, I'm not really sure why we're quoting someone other than him instead. And as noted, why are we quoting a reporter speaking as himself on a matter of international law? He doesn't have any particular expertise in that field. Bones Jones (talk) 17:38, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestions MrBill3.

• 3. I see your point about making the assertion too general by using the term US forces. I think the sentence could be altered to make clear that it is only talking about the particular unit being observed by Darrin Mortenson. The point I think Mortenson is making is that someone, somewhere knows about the targets and damage but those who do the shooting are not told what they are firing at nor are they told what damage they are doing. Perhaps the sentence could be rewritten to make that clear and to bring out that it refers to a particular unit being observed by Mortenson.
• 4. The article in Field Artillery magazine was written by the three artillery men so perhaps this should preface the quote so that it is clear who the "We" are. I think the quote is best left in the Iraq section as it is about the way WP was used there. Perhaps this needs to be mentioned prior to the quote. Something like "In the March/April 2005 issue of an official Army publication called Field Artillery magazine, three artillery men reported on their experience of using WP in Iraq by saying ..."
• 5. The actual quote by Rodgers would fit just as well as the summary provided earlier in the article. I don't see the problem in including Monbiot's assessment.
• 7 The source doesn't mention what action resulted from the documentary and I haven't investigated further. If it was "just a sizzle and nothing" this would pretty much describe what happened with the reporting on the whole Iraq war. (In one source the use of WP was described as a "war crime within a war crime within a war crime" referring to the Iraq war and the attack on Falluja as well). There were a lot of reports about the illegality of the war but as far I know no action was taken against anyone (excluding of course the various attempts to make a citizens arrest of Blair and the fact that I believe there are some places - possibly Spain - where Blair cannot travel because of the risk of arrest). This should not stop us including reports about the nature of the war or what happened in the various battles, with appropriate attribution.

Burrobert (talk) 02:30, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

• 3. Yeah, but at that point...that's normal for a mortar battery conducting indirect fire missions with FDC coordination. "one USMC mortar crewman said his team had experiences common for mortar crews" isn't really all that notable, neither does it really have anything to do with WP munitions specifically.
• 4. That wording is a little clunky, it would probably work better as "Three US Army artillerymen (perhaps we could have their names or at least "of [their unit]" here) wrote an article in the March/April 2005 edition of Field Artillery, the official magazine of the United States Army Field Artillery Corps, in which they stated..." "Artillerymen" is one word, btw.
• 5. Well, as said, because Monbiot is just some guy giving his opinion. "Some journalist thinks international law works this way" isn't really notable. And I do think comments strictly relating to legality should be in the legality section.
• 7. Yeah, but adding that particular documentary is like adding a reference to Loose Change to the article on 9/11: it's not exactly a source that's widely taken seriously for its allegations, even if those allegations are popular in some circles.

Bones Jones (talk) 08:44, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

• 3. I don't know what is normal for a mortar battery, never having seen one in action or read about them. The source itself doesn't discuss this. It seems reasonable to assume that a large proportion of our readers are like me and have no knowledge of the way a mortar battery works so telling them about Mortenson's experience would be useful. I don't think the addition of the phrase "while never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused" is critical to the article so won't complain if it is removed.
• 4. I am happy to leave you to reword that part along the lines already discussed.
• 5. I am happy for you to expand the quote from Rodgers based on the source.
• Other points. Looks as though we disagree on the section title, inclusion of Monbiot's assessment and mention of the claims made in Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre. Perhaps we could wait to see what other editors think and then start an RfC if necessary.

Burrobert (talk) 14:12, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

As regards point 3, the PDF source I linked a few posts back is US Army Field Manual 23-90 "Mortars," which is the official procedure soldiers and Marines are trained to follow. While it sounds rather sinister on its face, the military doesn't make a habit of telling soldiers things they don't need to know to do their job (keeps soldiers focused, keeps radio communications short and clear, means a captured soldier can't give away a lot of critical information, etc). In the case of a mortar firing indirectly, all you're doing is setting the angle of the tube according to some dials and then dropping a particular type of ammo with a particular amount of charge into it: think about it, why would you personally need to know what it's going to land on in order to do that?

(Equally, the enemy, if they intercept transmissions, would rather like to know what you're firing at and will have a much easier time with a target ID than they will with a fire command that they'd need the battery's exact location, armament and current point of aim to make sense of)

As said, we largely seem to either be in agreement on the minor ones with the points of contention as you mention. Bones Jones (talk) 17:03, 25 January 2020 (UTC)