you can't distinguish between poison gas and a smoke screen.

or perhaps you're trying to create a smoke screen of your own.

Burning phosphorus is not only used in napalm but also in smoke grenades when it produces very dense clouds of phosporus oxide. This can combine with water in the lungs to produce phosphoric acid which is quite corrosive. I certainly wouldn't want to inhale it and would definitely describe it as poisonous though it's nothing like say - a nerve agent. However, it's toxicity is almost certainly NOT what it is being used for here. Smoke grenades are, surprise surprise, used for creating smoke screens but the squaddies using them are supposed to be careful to always stay upwind of the toxic smoke.

Please, what is happening in Fallujah is bad enough. To home in on smokegrenades or tear gas as being chemical weapons detracts from the simple fact that the US are quite happily using artillery shells and aerial bombardment to massacre thousands of people.
What is more damaging, phosphorous smoke in your eyes, or an artillery shell on your family?

Please keep your eye on the ball.

sez you're right and wrong.

Cos napalm doesn't contain phosphorus. It is a hydrocarbon [petrol/kerosene], mixed witha thickening agent.

"In 1942, researchers at Harvard University and the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Service found a rubber-less solution: mixing an aluminum soap powder of naphthene and palmitate (napthenic and palmitic acids) with gasoline"

it's not "gassing" by any means of the imagination.

you'd be right to say white phosphorous used at fallujah - but come on - this is not what you are saying is it - you're implying that highly toxic deadly gas or nerve agents are being used against people - but that's not the case is it.

fully agree with the above post - and has even been commented upon by many corp news journos - that the arial bombing of fallujah has been intense, prolonged and brutal.

90% petrol 10% diesel or used motor oil and a squirt of Fairy Liquid ... INNIT septic ?

By the way, while the US are still fighting to win Fallujah, and commiting massacres, the insurgents have taken Ramadi. I'd like to put forward this question. Just who is winning in Iraq?



Rebels 'stage show of strength'

Iraqi rebels seized the centre of the city of Ramadi and attacked police stations elsewhere as US-led troops continued their Falluja assault.
Armed insurgents in Ramadi moved in when US troops withdrew from the Sunni city, a former rebel stronghold.

Iraqi police and national guard stations in Baquba, Kirkuk and Baghdad were also targeted - reports speak of a number of casualties.

The US military said it "associated" the attacks with the Falluja assault.


"The enemy is concentrating on Iraqi security forces " to intimidate them, US Lieutenant General Thomas Metz told reporters at a Pentagon briefing.

Show of force

In Ramadi, about 113km (70 miles) west of Baghdad, hundreds of armed insurgents massed to the heart of the city after US troops had withdrawn.

Rebels - who have recently been fighting US troops in the city - are reported to have been dancing and shooting into the air in a show of force, the BBC's Caroline Hawley in Iraq reports.

"The residents of Ramadi condemn the attack against Falluja and we appeal to the inhabitants of Ramadi to wage jihad [holy war] against the American occupants who want to eradicate Islam," one city resident was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

On Tuesday, rebels also targeted several police stations in and around Baquba, about 60km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said.

A number of police officers were injured in the attacks and at least one attacker killed, reports say.

In the oil-rich Kurdish town of Kirkuk - about 250km (155 miles) north of Baghdad - a suspected car bomb outside an Iraqi national guard based killed at least two people, officials said.

In a separate incident, a group of armed men attacked a police station in south-western Doura neighbourhood in Baghdad, police said.

A police source said he believed there were casualties, but gave no details, Reuters news agency reported.