Italian media alleges US using chemical weapons against Iraqi combatants and civilians

UPDATE: The English language video version of this story is online here. The part about white phosphorus begans at around 5:27 into the broadcast. Just finished watching much of the report, it's rather long (like 30 minutes, I think). This kind of stuff, true or not, does NOT help our image abroad. We look like animals.
The Italian media is reporting that US troops have used a chemical agent, normally used for lighting up enemy positions in the dark (and/or sowing confusion with billowing smoke), as a weapon against Iraqi combatants and civilians.

According to the Italian story, the chemical is called "white phosphorus," but the soldiers call it Willy Pete. According to the article, they say they interview former US soldiers and Iraqi civilians in the broadcast.

Obviously, we have no way of confirming the Italian report, but it was done by the RAI media conglomerate, which is a big network in Italy. They're broadcasting a show on this on Tuesday in Italy and on satellite. So I'm posting the story. At the very least, hopefully this will get some US reporters to either confirm or repudiate the story.

It's quite possible that we're using the phosphorus the way it was intended, and that someone simply misunderstood and thought we were using it as a weapon (which is what I'm sure we'll here from the US government). Then again, it's also quite possible that some military folks decided to shoot the phosphorus at gatherings of enemy combatants to harm them en masse. After what we've seen with this war, I'm highly suspicious of everything this administration does (torture anyone?)

For any of you with international cable TV access, and who speak Italian, the show is called "Fallujah: The Secret (Hidden) Slaughter." It's on Rai News on Tuesday November 8, at 07.35 (I suppose that's Italian time) on satellite Hot Bird, and on channel 506 of Sky and its Rai Tre channel, and it will repeated son satellite Hot Bird and on channel 506 of Sky at 5pm and on several days thereafter (basically, look it up).

I found a further discussion of this issue on another blog from several months ago.