http://www.cleveland.com/news/esullivan/index.ssf?/base/opinion/113222358485790.xml&coll=2Thursday, November 17, 2005
Elizabeth Sullivan
The Iraq war has come full circle.
As if the spectacle of U.S. senators rushing to cover posteriors over their earlier war enthusiasm weren't bad enough, now the Pentagon admits that earlier denials were wrong and it did use incendiary "white phosphorus" weapons in Fallujah.
White phosphorus bombs aren't banned, since they can create necessary illumination in battle. However, when used for chemical properties that burn on contact and keep burning when exposed to oxygen, they can be a horrific force for civilian terror. The allies' 1943 Operation Gomorrah firebombing of Hamburg took an estimated 37,000 lives.
That's why Protocol III of the 1980 convention on Certain Conventional Weapons prohibits the use of incendiary weapons against civilians. Among other things, the protocol - which the United States has not signed - bars the use of firebombs against military forces hiding among large concentrations of civilians. That would seem to encompass Fallujah, once a city of 300,000...