December 08, 2005

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

A while back I posted about the immedia's unmasking of a leftist antiwar fabulist named Micah Wright who assumed the persona of a former Green Beret who had participated in the invasion of Panama, and used this stolen valor to berate and belittle pro-war bloggers. Turned out, the extent of Mr. Wright's service was kinda being in ROTC in college.

Over at Big Lizards, Sachi and Dafydd ab Hugh might have scented another Micah Wright. Watching the RAI crockumentary purporting to detail U.S. "atrocities" in Fallujah, their hackles were raised by the testimony of one Spc. Jeff Engelhardt, who says he served with "3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division in Baquba, Iraq" and who claimed to be an eyewitness to the use of White Phosphorus weapons to massacre civilians in the assault on Fallujah. (The documentary is linked from BL's post; I should point out that I haven't yet watched the whole thing and won't have time to do so until at least tomorrow night, so I'm relying on their description of Englehardt's evidence.)

The Lizards noticed several inconsistencies, both between different accounts by Engelhardt (some of which are on his antiwar milblog) and also in his misuse of military terminology. Some of the whoppers are things that even moderately informed civilians might catch, like calling Bradley Fighting Vehicles "tanks" and describing Apache helicopters armed with "chain gun missile launchers". (They're armed with Hughes chain guns, yes, and they're armed with missile launchers, but there's no such thing as a "chain gun missile launcher.")

But one of the strangest flubs he makes is hearing an order over the radio to use the WP--he tells the RAI crockumentarians:

And as they'd say, “In five [inaudible], we're going drop some Whiskey Pete.� “Roger. Commence bombing.� I mean, it just comes across the radio, and like, when you hear “Whiskey Pete,� that's the military slang.

Bullshit. Even I know it's called Willie Pete, or sometimes Willie Peter. But just to make sure, I googled "Whiskey Pete" and found two sorts of hits---

1. Clubs and hotels in Nevada called "Whiskey Pete's", or a few odds and ends completely unrelated to White Phosphorus, and
2. Descriptions of the horrors of Fallujah on leftist sites, ALL DATED NOVEMBER 2005 or later, and obviously incorporating the Engelhardt/RAI interview's mistake.

Oh, and I also found this entry on Wikipedia, as a moderator there obviously ran exactly the same search I did in trying to authenticate the new inclusion of the term "Whiskey Pete" into the entry for White Phosphorus!

Without having seen the whole video myself, I will jump to no more conclusions for now other than to say that the bona fides of Spc. Engelhardt deserves some very close scrutiny, especially since he is accusing his fellow soldiers of the hideous and intentional massacre of huge numbers of Iraqi civilians. There are already serious problems with his story; a thorough look into his background is becoming overdue.