The Chemical Weapon

Kos points out the particularly strange irony that seems to have arisen over the Pentagon's repeated assertions that their dropping white phosphorus potentially on civilian targets does not constitute usage of a chemical weapon.

White phosphorus' valid usage in the field includes a use as a luminous marker or cloaking device, and as an illuminatory device for enemy locations. However, due to it's ability to shear unprotected flesh directly from a human body, and to bring up boils, bleeding sores, and open wounds within seconds of exposure, it also has found a certain favor as an incindiary weapon. As an Italian television station has reported, it's possible, even, that it has been used on civilians in Iraq.

The Pentagon's position has, at very best, shifted- but they have always ascertained that white phosporus is not listed as a chemical weapon, and therefore, this entire affair is a non-affair.

This position might be accepted, if it were not for for ThinkProgress' sluething work...