White (Phosphorus) Lies
Take this bit from this article as an example of the sort of thing that motivated my previous post:
The use of white phosophorous and Napalm is prohibited by UN conventions. Moroever, the United States signed up to the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997.
The juxtaposition of these two statements is deliberately misleading, intended to suggest that, among other things:
- International law considers WP to be a chemical weapon.
- The US signed UN conventions prohibiting use of WP.
- The Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits the use of WP.
As far as I can tell, none of thse are true, but pretty much everyone advancing the accusations has included at least one of them.
If the accusations of deliberate (or even careless) WP use against civilians are true, that is plenty to be outraged about. Mingling them with plain lies doesn’t help anybody, and leaves me skeptical.
Update: For what it’s worth, here is the Wikipedia article on WP—it is not only used as an incendiary weapon.