because we used chemical weapons on civilians. Why exactly did we overthrow Hussein again?
Defense of Phosphorus Use Turns Into Damage Control - New York Times:
On Nov. 8, Italian public television showed a documentary renewing persistent charges that the United States had used white phosphorus rounds, incendiary munitions that the film incorrectly called chemical weapons, against Iraqis in Falluja last year. Many civilians died of burns, the report said.The half-hour film was riddled with errors and exaggerations, according to United States officials and independent military experts. But the State Department and Pentagon have so bungled their response - making and then withdrawing incorrect statements about what American troops really did when they fought a pitched battle against insurgents in the rebellious city - that the charges have produced dozens of stories in the foreign news media and on Web sites suggesting that the Americans used banned weapons and tried to cover it up.
...Military veterans familiar with white phosphorus, known to soldiers as “W. P.” or “Willie Pete,” said it could deliver terrible burns, since an exploding round scatters bits of the compound that burst into flames on exposure to air and can burn into flesh, penetrating to the bone.
...
Firsthand accounts by American officers in two military journals note that white phosphorus munitions had been aimed directly at insurgents in Falluja to flush them out. War critics and journalists soon discovered those articles.
In the face of such evidence, the Bush administration made an embarrassing public reversal last week. Pentagon spokesmen admitted that white phosphorus had been used directly against Iraqi insurgents. “It's perfectly legitimate to use this stuff against enemy combatants,” Colonel Venable said Friday.
While he said he could not rule out that white phosphorus hit some civilians, “U.S. and coalition forces took extraordinary measures to prevent civilian casualties in Falluja.”
The Times of course stops well short of making any accusations against the military, using all sorts of weasel words to make this seem like a minor transgression. It isn't.
Technorati Tags: Impeachment, Iraq
