napalm update

Seth Kulick skulick at linc.cis.upenn.edu
Mon Mar 24 14:34:34 PST 2003


The article at http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/21/1047749944836.html has now been updated to include a denial of the use of napalm. --------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

"We don't even have that in our arsenal," he said.

The navy admitted to using napalm as late as 1993 in training

exercises on the island of Vieques in Puerto Rico, but the last

cannister of a vast US naval stockpile was reportedly destroyed in a

public ceremony in April 2001.

....

The Pentagon subsequently issued a statement to the Herald:

Your story ('Dead bodies everywhere', by Lindsay Murdoch, March 22,

2003) claiming US forces are using napalm in Iraq, is patently false.

The US took napalm out of service in the early 1970s. We completed

destruction of our last batch of napalm on April 4, 2001, and no

longer maintain any stocks of napalm. - Jeff A. Davis, Lieutenant

Commander, US Navy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense.



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