I asked this question because yesterday on the Ed Norris show, a guest whose name I forget made the claim that the Japanese were detered from invading the U.S. because of the high-rate of private gun ownership. Supposedly, after the war, that was the reason given by many high ranking Japanese military officers for refusing to invade the United States.

It smelled like bullshit then, and it still does today.

During the Second World War, did the Japanese have either the desire, or the capability, to invade the continental United States? Discuss.

Big news story: white phosphorus, used in Iraq? And isn’t the use of chemical weapons a big no-no since the invasion was precipated on stopping the use of similar?

Listening to NPR tonight at work, a repeat of the Mark Steiner show, a guest was defending white phosphorus as a non-chemical weapon. His defense was that guns and grenades are also powered by chemical reactions, and they’re not considered chemical weapons. I wish I’d gotten his name, but I was heading into Hazzard County and I lost the station shortly after he stopped talking.

Interesting defense, except he never went into exactly what white phosphorus is. I mean, when you shoot someone, yes, expanding gas is what propells the bullet, but it isn’t the gas itself which kills a person — it’s a flying piece of metal. Does his defense hold water?

First, I decided to try to find out what people are usually speaking about when they’re talking about chemical weapons. A Google search turned up these definitions:

chemical substances that can be delivered using munitions and dispersal devices to cause death or severe harm to people and animals and plants

and …

Chemical warfare is warfare (and associated military operations) using the toxic properties of chemical substances to kill, injure or incapacitate the enemy.

In other words, as best as I can tell, a weapon which utilizes chemicals in its operation (i.e., a gun) is not defined as a “chemical weapon.” What makes a weapon a chemical weapon is a delivery system’s payload if it is the chemical itself which does the damage (i.e., not the shrapnel from an explosion caused by a chemical reaction when a grenade goes off, but say a poison gas which kills when inhaled pouring out of a gas-filled missile).

I then looked up white phosphorus on the internet. According to ATSDR, a government website, white phosphorus is “…a waxy solid which burns easily and is used in chemical manufacturing and smoke munitions. Exposure to white phosphorus may cause burns and irritation, liver, kidney, heart, lung, or bone damage, and death.”

My verdit? White phosphorus is a chemical weapon, shame on those spin doctors — particularly the guy on the Mark Steiner show — for dancing around the subject.