Truespeak

For the last few days, the internets have been buzzing about white phosphorus. According to the Italian state-run television station RAI, the US military used white phosphorus (also known as whiskey pete) during last year's siege on Fallujah. (You can see the documentary here.) White phosphorus is an incendiary device used by the military to provide smoke screen for operations and to illuminate a darkened battlefield. However, WP can also be used much the same way as napalm was years ago. Such is the charge leveled by the Italian documentary. According to Wikipedia:

Detonating a WP shell will cause an effect comparable to the use of lung agent poison gases for those exposed to the gas. Death will occur from lung edema, phosphoric acid poisoning or the resulting shock, or burns while leaving clothes and other solid material intact. Most victims would die from the second cause, as in a confined area it is hardly avoidable to inhale a considerable quantity of smoke, which will immediately dissolve to form concentrated phosphoric acid in the lungs and airways, leading to a condition similar to phosgene poisoning, but (due to the higher concentration of phosphorous oxide smoke) with a more rapid onset, death from shock or lung edema occurring after a short time.

All I can say is that if this is true, we have truly become everything we've allegedly been fighting against. Do you remember back when the invasion of Iraq began? I do. And what I remember most is the embedded reporters reminding us every ten minutes or so of the possibility of a chemical or biological attack. I even remember an MSNBC reporter having to don a mask on-air as a siren blared in the background. Who would have thought that the country responsible for the chemical attack may have ultimately been us.

Watch the documentary for yourself and make your own decisions. I can only hope that it is false. But if not, I don't think we could possibly sink any lower.