Spc. Willy Pete

What a difference a week makes:

The Pentagon on Wednesday acknowledged using incendiary white-phosphorus munitions in a 2004 counterinsurgency offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja, but defended their use as legal.

That's one giant step backwards from the flat out denials issued last week after an Italian televison station reported use of the chemical. Now the story line is they only use the stuff for illumination...and routing out "terrorists" from foxholes.

I guess the logical follow up would be: how did the military determine who was or wasn't a terrorist? Let's hope the answer wasn't something like "they're breathing."

More here, including a primer on the term "shake 'n bake" for British readers. Speaking of Britain, they've now admitted use of the substance too, although for more limited uses.

Still, as the Scotsman article points out, it's more than a little disengenous to invade on the pretext that Hussein had--and was willing to use--chemical weapons, only to do the same yourself. And does anyone doubt that, had quantities of Willy Pete been found in Iraq, it would've been touted as the smoking gun to justify the invasion?

Finally, at the very bottom of the Reuter's article, there's a highly qualified denial from Pentagon spokesperson Bryan Whitman about the chemical's use on civilians:

"We don't target any civilians with any of our weapons. And to suggest that U.S. forces were targeting civilians with these weapons would simply be wrong," Whitman said.

Again, no explanation of how the term "civilian" is defined, nor does he make any mention of whether or not civilians were caught in the various crossfires--a virtual certainty given the nature of urban combat.

What a goddamned, totally unnecessary tragedy.