A Pilgrim’s Digression

Judge for yourself. The Pentagon has admitted to using an incendiary chemical, white phosphorous, during the siege of Falluja, as reported by CNN. If you go to Google News, the story does not even rank a presentation on the front page, however.

Search on “white phosphorous” at Google News and you get about 375 hits, the vast majority of them European news sources. I’ll quote from a Swiss news source:

ISN Security Watch - US confirms use of white phosphorus in Iraq

ISN SECURITY WATCH (Wednesday, 16 November: 13.40 CET) - The US military has admitted that it used white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon during a 2004 offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja.

Pentagon spokesman Colonel Barry Venable said the military fired a “white phosphorous round or rounds into the position, because the combined effects of the fire and smoke will drive them out of the holes so that you can kill them with high explosives”.

Venable defended the tactic, saying that the use of phosphorus was not illegal, as it was not classified as a chemical weapon.

However, the Pentagon had previously stated that white phosphorus was used only for the purposes of creating smokescreens and illumination.

Under normal circumstances, white phosphorus is released high in the air as a way to illuminate dark enemy positions. But if it is released at a low enough altitude, it will still be active when it reaches the ground, where it can melt human flesh on contact. In large quantities, it can dissolve flesh to the bone.

The Pentagon statement comes in the wake of a Italian documentary alleging that US forces used chemical weapons in Iraq.

According to an earlier report from ISN Security Watch, the documentary was based in large part on comments from former US soldier Jeff Englehart.

“I received an order to use caution in Falluja, because we had used white phosphorus on the city,” Englehart told Ranucci. “We all knew that phosphorus kills, burns the body on contact, and eventually melts right down to the bone.”

Reuters is reporting that we also used “a firebomb similar to napalm.” No doubt the Pentagon considers such a bomb appropriate because we didn’t agree to classify it as a chemical weapon, either. It’s rather funny, when you think about it: because men make laws, we can choose to obey or disregard them at our pleasure. Interesting that no one at the Pentagon seems to feel it necessary to refer to a higher ethic of right or wrong than man-made laws and treaties.

The Reuters story also presents more testimony from an American soldier who was there, Jeff Englehart, who saw burned bodies of children and women. If true, it rather contradicts the Pentagon’s official statement that white phsphorous was only used against military targets. Oh wait, no it doesn’t. There’s a semantic difference between intentional use of weapons against civilians and collateral damage, which is what the military commonly terms “dead women and children.”

Anyway, the Reuters story is a must-read, in my opinion. No doubt supporters of the war will soon be marching in lockstep to the tune of “Kill the Messenger,” trashing Englehart as a traitor and a liar. Since trashing soldiers who oppose the war is Michelle Malkin’s specialty, I suspect a column from her on Englehart must be imminent.