US State Depart­ment press release:

some news accounts have claimed that U.S. forces have used “out­lawed” phos­pho­rus shells in Fal­lu­jah. Phos­pho­rus shells are not out­lawed. U.S. forces have used them very spar­ing­ly in Fal­lu­jah, for illu­mi­na­tion pur­pos­es. They were fired into the air to illu­mi­nate ene­my posi­tions at night, not at ene­my fighters.

White Phos­pho­rus (WP):

White phos­pho­rus burns spon­ta­neous­ly in air. Con­tact with these par­ti­cles can cause local burns. These weapons are par­tic­u­lar­ly nasty because white phos­pho­rus con­tin­ues to burn until it dis­ap­pears. If ser­vice mem­bers are hit by pieces of white phos­pho­rus, it could burn right down to the bone. Remove quick­ly all cloth­ing affect­ed by phos­pho­rus to pre­vent phos­pho­rus burn­ing through to skin. If this is impos­si­ble, plunge skin or cloth­ing affect­ed by phos­pho­rus in cold water or moist­en strong­ly to extin­guish or pre­vent fire. Then imme­di­ate­ly remove affect­ed cloth­ing and rinse affect­ed skin areas with cold sodi­um bicar­bon­ate solu­tion or with cold water. Moist­en skin and remove vis­i­ble phos­pho­rus (prefer­ably under water) with squared object (knife-back etc.) or tweez­ers. Do not touch phos­pho­rus with fin­gers! Throw removed phos­pho­rus or cloth­ing affect­ed by phos­pho­rus into water or allow to bum in suit­able loca­tion. Cov­er phos­pho­rus burns with moist dress­ing and keep moist to pre­vent renewed inflam­ma­tion. It is nec­ces­sary to dress white phos­pho­rus-injured patients with saline-soaked dress­ings to pre­vent reig­ni­tion of the phos­pho­rus by con­tact with the air.

White phos­pho­rus fume is an irri­tant of the res­pi­ra­to­ry tract and eyes; the sol­id in con­tact with the skin pro­duces deep ther­mal burns. Expo­sure to mois­ture pro­duces phos­phor­ic acid. Pro­longed absorp­tion of phos­pho­rus caus­es necro­sis of bones. It is a hepatotoxin.

The Con­ven­tion on Cer­tain Con­ven­tion­al Weapons Pro­to­col III:

• It is pro­hib­it­ed in all cir­cum­stances to make the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion as such, indi­vid­ual civil­ians or civil­ian objects the object of attack by incen­di­ary weapons.
• It is pro­hib­it­ed in all cir­cum­stances to make any mil­i­tary objec­tive locat­ed with­in a con­cen­tra­tion of civil­ians the object of attack by air-deliv­ered incen­di­ary weapons.
• It is fur­ther pro­hib­it­ed to make any mil­i­tary objec­tive locat­ed with­in a con­cen­tra­tion of civil­ians the object of attack by means of incen­di­ary weapons oth­er than air-deliv­ered incen­di­ary weapons, except when such mil­i­tary objec­tive is clear­ly sep­a­rat­ed from the con­cen­tra­tion of civil­ians and all fea­si­ble pre­cau­tions are tak­en with a view to lim­it­ing the incen­di­ary effects to the mil­i­tary objec­tive and to avoid­ing, and in any event to min­i­miz­ing, inci­den­tal loss of civil­ian life, injury to civil­ians and dam­age to civil­ian objects.

The Unit­ed States is par­ty to the Con­ven­tion, but has not signed that protocol.

Field Artillery, Mar. 2005 (PDF):

b. White Phos­pho­rous. WP 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.

One pre­sumes that a sealed off city would qual­i­fy as “a con­cen­tra­tion of civil­ians.” The screen­ing mis­sions, which I take to involve smoke screen, would be legal. It’s the air-deliv­ered attacks on con­cen­tra­tions of civil­ians which are problematic. 

Read the descrip­tion of what WP does to bod­ies once more think about describ­ing the WP rounds as “shake and bake.” Pho­tos exist which show the con­se­quences, but I won’t link to them.

From a tran­script of a doc­u­men­tary about Fal­lu­jah:

REPORTER: Have you seen the effects of these weapons [WP]?

JEFF ENGLEHART: Yes. Burned. Burned bod­ies. I mean, it burned chil­dren, and it burned women. White phos­pho­rus kills indis­crim­i­nate­ly. It’s a cloud that will with­in, in most cas­es, 150 meters of impact will dis­perse, and it will burn every human being or animal.

WP also pro­duces tox­ic vapors which can linger.

The claim that this vio­lates the Chem­i­cal Weapons Con­ven­tion does not appear to be true.

But I think the ques­tion about WP, like the ques­tion about tor­ture (or cru­el and inhu­mane treat­ment), is not whether this falls with­in some tech­ni­cal­i­ty of legal­i­ty, but whether this is what we want to be doing. Legal or not, should our troops be shak­ing and bak­ing Iraqi cities?

Iraq at this point is about hearts and minds, and things like this, both the act and then the lies, just set things back.

“Civ­il War” by Guns N’ Ros­es from the album Use Your Illu­sion II (1991, 7:42).