All quiet on the Colorado front

The military, in Field Artillery Magazine and Infantry Magazine, has admitted to dumping white phosphorus on Fallujah. White phosphorus is an incendiary, a chemical weapon, and an illuminant. It is banned by a 1980 treaty. However, the United States did not sign the provisions of the treaty that ban the illuminant uses of white phosphorus. It did sign the part about not dumping it on civilian populations or using it as a weapon.

Photos of burned children are all over European TV, Arab TV, and the Internet. The BBC reports that, "Eyewitnesses and ex-US soldiers say the weapon was used in built-up areas in the insurgent-held city. The US military denies this, but admits using white phosphorus bombs in Iraq to illuminate battlefields."

Obviously, the denials are false. The army's own publication, Field Artillery Magazine, reports, "WP [i.e., white phosphorus rounds] proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."

While this is huge news, no one in Colorado seems to be talking about it. I have tried to contact Senator Ken Salazar to get a statement and he has not returned my emails as of yet.

Even more troubling, the Denver Post has not reported the story at all. A search of denverpost.com for "white phosphorus" turned up zilch. This is inexcusable. Who is writing the Post these days, Dick Cheney? I emailed their newsroom to ask who was covering the story. That email has also thus far gone unreturned.