The Telegraph: Parliament misled over firebomb use

Ministers misled MPs about the use of a napalm-style firebomb in Iraq, John Reid admitted yesterday.

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Claiming it was a “cock-up” rather than a conspiracy, he also sought to play down the significance of the Americans using MK77s.

“First of all, they didn’t use napalm. They used a firebomb. It doesn’t stick to your skin like napalm, it doesn’t have the horrible effects of that,” Mr Reid told ITV’s Jonathan Dimbleby programme.

Notice the use of words. “They used a firebomb”. A firebomb. Just the one then. That’s not too bad. The Americans, in actual fact, used at least 30.

Not wishing to dwell on the workings of a mind that can peform the moral contortions over whether firebombs are better than napalm and whether you can really regard being burned to death by a firebomb rather than napalm as being less “horrible”, Reid is wrong it seems on the facts on the different “effects” of napalm and MK77s.

San Diego Trubune, August 2003: Officials confirm dropping firebombs on Iraqi troops

During the war, Pentagon spokesmen disputed reports that napalm was being used, saying the Pentagon’s stockpile had been destroyed two years ago.

Apparently the spokesmen were drawing a distinction between the terms “firebomb” and “napalm.” If reporters had asked about firebombs, officials said yesterday they would have confirmed their use.

What the Marines dropped, the spokesmen said yesterday, were “Mark 77 firebombs.” They acknowledged those are incendiary devices with a function “remarkably similar” to napalm weapons.

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“You can call it something other than napalm, but it’s napalm,” said John Pike, defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, a nonpartisan research group in Alexandria, Va.

Although many human rights groups consider incendiary bombs to be inhumane, international law does not prohibit their use against military forces. The United States has not agreed to a ban against possible civilian targets.

“Incendiaries create burns that are difficult to treat,” said Robert Musil, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a Washington group that opposes the use of weapons of mass destruction.

Musil described the Pentagon’s distinction between napalm and Mark 77 firebombs as “pretty outrageous.”

“That’s clearly Orwellian,” he added.

No doubt somebody misinformed the Secretary of State which allowed him to go on to mislead the British public yesterday lunchtime (”more cock-up than conspiracy” and other hackneyed chestnuts, no doubt). It’s quite a significant error though, maintaining that MK77 firebombs don’t have the same “horrible effects” on human flesh as napalm when they do. Still, the impression is now sown in the minds of the people who watched Reid being interviewed: firebombs are not as bad as napalm and there’s no need to dwell on what exactly firebombs do.

(File under: Iraq, napalm, mk77, John Reid)