Willy Pete Actually was a Chemical Weapon

... before it wasn't.

I always love it when declassified government documents pop up and demonstrate government agents, in this case Pentagon "spokespeople," to be the lying buggers we all know they are.

We can all recall recently that the Pentagon, to say nothing of the dolts at Captain's Quarter and other right wing, "burn the ragheads" Bush supporters, protested mightly that white phosphorous is not a "chemical weapon," which appeared to be nothing more than semantic quibbling. The Army's own accounts had clearly indicated that WP had been used as a weapon in Falluja and it is a chemical but the quibbling rested on what various international aggreements had explicitly designated "chemical weapons." White phosphorous was not among them. So, nya, nya. Of course, the irony slapped me sideways. All of a sudden international treaties and multilateral agreements are of the upmost importance to the Pentagon and Bush fans. The times, they are a changin'.

Not really. The times are exactly the same for these people. International treaties are only useful when they can be employed by whatever administration agent needs them to justify or excuse a course of action and utterly ignored otherwise. We should all recollect John Bolton's now famous words when he explicitly stated that the only reason for the existance of the UN is to serve the will of the United States:

The United States makes the UN work when it wants it to work, and that is exactly the way it should be, because the only question, the only question for the United States is what is in our national interest.

Treaties be damn, unless we find them useful.

Well, it just so happens that the Pentagon has made generous use of the term "chemical weapon" when describing how white phosphorous was used by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds in 1991:

DURING THE BRUTAL CRACKDOWN THAT FOLLOWED THE KURDISH UPRISING, IRAQI FORCES LOYAL TO PRESIDENT SADDAM ((HUSSEIN)) MAY HAVE POSSIBLY USED WHITE PHOSPHOROUS (WP) CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGAINST KURDISH REBELS AND THE POPULACE IN ERBIL.

THESE REPORTS OF POSSIBLE WP CHEMICAL WEAPON ATTACKS SPREAD QUICKLY AMONG THE KURDISH POPULACE IN ERBIL AND DOHUK. AS A RESULT, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF KURDS FLED FROM THESE TWO AREAS....

Of course, we have the usual "we're good, so everything we do, no matter how bad, is still good" mentality oblivious to the sanctimony here. And, of course, Saddam using WP is a chemical weapon attack. Our use of it as a weapon is ok because, under international treaty definitions, it is not a chemical weapon. Can the military possibly get more supercilious in this? To find out, we'll have to stay tuned to see how they respond this latest exposure.