But the notion of the magnesium bomb made a very strong impression on me. It was uncanny to think of humans designing and dropping on other humans a flaming substance that couldn’t easily be extinguished, a particle of which, we were told, would burn through flesh to the bone and wouldn’t stop burning even then. It was hard for me to understand people who were willing to burn children like that. It still is.

Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers