Tell Me It Is Not So

It's just after 4am here in the West Coast and I am obviously still on East Coast time. It's not so bad because it does give me a chance to wander around and see what is going on. The bad thing is it allows me to stumble upon things like this.

While this is only one report I distinctly remember seeing something about white posphorous earlier in the Iraq debacle. I probably discounted it back then as some wild rambling and so over the top that it had to be just a bad rumor.

This is the Independent and it is not to be grouped into the National Enquirer crowd. If this is true and, I am sad to say, I am finding it harder and harder to disbelieve anything I see around our war crimes in Iraq then we will be paying for these crimes until the end of time.

The quote from the American soldier sure has the ring of truth...

"I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete.

"Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for."

A telling paragraph in the article is the following:

In December the US government formally denied the reports, describing them as "widespread myths". "Some news accounts have claimed that US forces have used 'outlawed' phosphorus shells in Fallujah," the USinfo website said. "Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes.

This kind of double talk is typical of Pentagon misinformation. It admits that white phosphorus was used but for illunination which will discount any direct evidence of its use in theatre. If evidence of its use against combatants or civilians is presented then they can use the old collateral damage dodge.
I don't want to even think that we used this horrible weapon against other human beings. I'll reserve my judgement until I see more independent verification but somehow I get the sense that there is some flavor of the truth here.
How sad.