U.S. Admits Using Chemical Weapons

Uh?? Didn’t we invade Iraq because Hussein did this very sort of thing?

Reversing numerous prior denials, Pentagon officials said yesterday that white phosphorous was in fact "used as a weapon against insurgent strongholds during the battle of Fallujah last November." After first categorically denying any use of phosphorous, the Pentagon said months ago that the chemical was "fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night," but "not at enemy fighters." But in the March 2005 edition of the Army’s official Field Artillery Magazine, three Army artillerymen describe using phosphorous in Fallujah "for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE [high explosives].  We fired ‘shake and bake’ missions at the insurgents, using WP [white phosphorous] to flush them out and HE to take them out." The use of phosphorous was uncovered in part by a new Italian documentary which depicts "a series of photographs from Fallujah of corpses with the flesh burnt off but clothes still intact," which is reportedly "consistent with the effects of white phosphorus on humans." Washington Post defense analyst William Arkin said yesterday, "What I’m sure of is that the use of white phosphorous is not just some insensitive act. It is not just bad P.R.  It is the ill thought out and panicked use of a weapon in an illegitimate way. It is a representation of a losing strategy."