Daily Kos

Let's say it's not a chemical weapon. Great, then we're merely using "incendiaries" over a city with a known remaining civilian population. Great, we're fuckin' heros.

Indeed. The tack to take with this, in my opinion, is "our boys dropped fire on civilians, and burned them to death".

The reality of the situation is horrible enough. It does not need embellishment. Notice how little we've heard about Bush's National Guard service since some twit decided that the story could use a little push, and faked up those memos? Stick to absolutely indisputable truth. The story doesn't need to be sexed up.

I don't give a rat's ass, personally, whether we call it a chemical weapon or not.

Good. Don't. It's a weak claim, and gives your opponent an easy out.

But it is highly instructive that the Pentagon claimed it was, in making a case against Saddam, while they are denying it when used by our forces.

That's weak. The WMD claims against Saddam centered on the massacre at Halabja, and the use of nerve agents and mustard gases, which are universally recognized as chemical weapons, as WMD. (See the Chemical Weapons Convention.)

The story here is not definitive proof that WP is considered by the Pentagon to be a chemical weapon, despite people finding these additional citations to back up such an argument. The story here is that they're either lying about it now, or they were lying about it back then. It's cut and dried.

Luckily, as the people asking, we simply get to ask "when were you lying, then or now?"  I'll be interested in hearing the answer.

For that argument--chock full of delicious irony, I agree--to work, you need two things. (a) White phosphorus was used against civilian targets by Saddam's forces. (b) The United States government decried the specific use of white phosphorus. Optional but very powerful is a third: (c) the United States government used it as a rationale for the invasion.

If you cannot prove all three of those in an airtight fashion, I urge you to make your stand on the fact that civilized nations, via the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, declare the use of incendiaries on civilians to be a savage and horrible thing. Feel free to point out that the United States is not a signatory to Article III of that treaty, which covers incendiaries, and ask why it's vital to our national security that we set fire to civilians. I mean, clearly we don't outlaw it via treaty, and we're okay with it when our soldiers do it. How much more approval can there be?

This is an important story. Please tell it as it is. Tell only what you can be absolutely sure about. That idea of unimpeachable integrity that was bandied about when the indictments were flying fast and furious? This is where it starts.

Thanks for listening, and good luck.