they're confirming white phosphorus in fallujah

US troops used white phosphorus as a weapon in last year's offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja, the US has said.

"It was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants," spokesman Lt Col Barry Venable told the BBC - though not against civilians, he said.

The US had earlier said the substance - which can cause burning of the flesh - had been used only for illumination.

--source

and as someone on DU mention, and put it so adeptly:

The R's will now say DUers don't support our troops and applaud when Blackwater contractors are Bar-B-Que'd . Then the Rush Limballs of the world will chime in saying same.

The atrocities of the Blackwater guys and the use of WP in Fallujah go hand in hand with guerilla war just as in Vietnam. Occupation spawns this.

With "Hama Rules", which means no rules at all as Thomas Friedman has shown us in From Beirut to Jerusalem, playing to the Arab world media, which showed the Blackwater atrocity, is now forcing them to show the Fallujah pictures. This is what happens when the US military 'takes the gloves off'.

Bush's role in creating this war in Iraq with phoney pretexts and no end in sight, the current Republican hijacking of the Democratic Levin amendment today as proof of that -- it still leaves no exit strategy or timetable-- means that the R's will claim to be supporting the troops while keeping them in place for more losses in a war whose purpose is STILL ill-defined.

Are they there to secure the oilfields ? There to 'promote democracy', whatever that means in a region content to vote in Islamic theocracies ? There on a military holiday so to speak in order to test new weapons and strategies ? WTF are they there for ? Bush's annual press conferences never seem to get this answered.

yup. back when the italians were pissed off about it, good ol' rummy was washing it as white as possible. no pun intended. but this thing needs to be exposed and stopped.