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As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Confirmed

War is hell, especially when you're using chemical weapons in contravention of explicit international law.

"White Phosphorous: WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it 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 to flush them out and HE to take them out." [...]

We used improved WP for screening missions when HC (hexachloroethane zinc) smoke would have been more effective and saved our WP for lethal missions.


So that's confirmed, then, by the Army's own official magazine. And here's the confirmation, in a British report, that this does in fact violate international law.

5. International Law [...]

Protocol III of the 1980 UN convention on 'Weapons Which May Be Deemed To Be Excessively Injurious Or To Have Indiscriminate Effects' states that:

It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons.

'A concentration of civilians' is defined as including 'inhabited parts of cities', such as Fallujah.


In other words, white phosphorus (and MK-77, which is basically napalm, unless oyu want to hide behind technical phraseology like the US military) cannot be used as a bomb. The military has previously claimed that WP is not banned by any international treaties:

Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. U.S. forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters.


It's true that WP is not outlawed as an illumination device; it IS outlawed as a weapon. The Army contradicts itself in the Army Field Artillery Magazine, claiming that it was a versatile "munition." Munitions aren't dropped to illuminate battlefields. You don't fire "shake and bake" missions at insurgents so you can see them. You do it to kill them.

I'm sure this will be met (again) with cries of "You hate America" and "You don't want us to win the war on terror" and assorted other bullshit. When did the right become so unconcerned with law and order? (answer: when they took power) Fact: there are laws against what we're doing. Fact: we're doing them anyway. There are practical, moral, and humanitarian arguments to be made, but shove them aside for a moment. This government has been caught breaking international law over and over and over again, in the "ends-justify-the-means" name of the war on terror. We've become the outlaws. We've become the rogues. We've become what we behold (hat tip: David Mamet).

Go investigate that, Billy Frist & Denny Hastert.

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