Les Jones

Lt Col Barry Venable admitted to the BBC that we used phosphorus against enemy combatants in Fallujah, and an embedded reporter corroborated his admission. But the bizarre kidnapping and shooting of the Italian journalist attempting to cover the story is still the bigger story.

Which isn't a story. Yes, we use white phosphorous flares. So do the armies of well, every country in the world. Trying to re-define them as chemical weapons is just silly. Bombs and hand grenades have chemicals that make them explode, but they're not chemical weapons, and neither are white phosphorous flares.

The Italians are already outraged over the killing of Nicola Calipari as he rescued the journalist behind these reports. They don't much care for the technicalities about what is or isn't a chemical weapon and whether we signed the treaty most nations did swearing off the use of phosphorus against humans. That might be enough to keep this story from penetrating the propaganda bubble of the U.S. media, but for Europe, this story is further evidence that the U.S. can not be trusted to be ethical or honest. Increasingly, the perversions of Donald Rumsfeld define our image in the rest of the world while we sit around making excuses for the sick fuck. Twice he has offered to resign and Bush would not let him go.

"this story is further evidence that the U.S. can not be trusted to be ethical or honest."

hah hah.

But then again Europe can't be trusted to ethical or honests. Un oil for food ring a bell.

cube, you do realize that America was recently almost universally admired as the standard-bearer among nations, right? We would take occasional lumps for opportunistic alliances with Central American dictators, but for the most part, we were the ones everyone interested in democracy, freedom, human rights, and peace turned to for guidance and leadership. That might be true again some day if we can purge thugs like Rumsfeld and Cheney from power, but that will require that ordinary Americans demand more from their leaders. Why are you happy to settle for lower standards?

Persimmon: let me guess, everyone in the world wuvved the U.S. right up until Bush become president, right?

Actually, for a long time we've propped up and played footsie with a lot of evil dictators, including Saddam Hussein, in the name of so-called stablility and realism. I prefer the Bush policy of de-stabilizing dictatorships and installing democracy and constitutional government.

Most of the world respected the U.S. before Bush took over. What you call "the Bush policy" has been American foreign policy for a long time, but typically that policy has been pursued with some measure of fiscal restraint, using sanctions, incentives, and international coalitions and diplomacy instead of thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. The only thing that distinguishes the Bush approach is wastefulness, dishonesty, opportunism, and irresponsibility.