Popham's wrong on reporting of phosphorus in Fallujah

Peter Popham's Nov. 8 story in the Independent, "US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah" is getting a lot of play lately, but he's quite wrong in one respect. He says:

"Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumours have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city."

Well, it went unreported by most Western journalists and mainstream media, but Dahr Jamail, Alaskan and correspondent for The Ester Republic, was talking about the use of phosphorus and other nasty chemical weapons in November 2004. He was interviewed about it on Democracy Now! by Amy Goodman.

It wasn't that Western journalists weren't reporting it, it was that Western mainstream media were ignoring it, just like they ignored other evidence of serious wrongdoing by the US in Iraq. Dahr Jamail also broke the Abu Ghraib torture story: he was reporting on this in December 2003.

So why are the mainstream media so reluctant to touch such major stories? Why are they so, well, timid? Let's pretend it isn't happening, and maybe it will go away?

Fat chance. Corruption thrives on darkness, and when the media don't shine a light on the policy maggots bred by people like Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, we get America the torturer, America the briber, America the crony, America the false, the cowardly, the bully, the pirate, the rogue state. These people have prostituted the ideals of our country and dragged us all through septic mud—and the US media let them do it. Popham's recent story makes me wonder what else the media in the US are pretending doesn't exist or isn't happening.

When are we going to learn that using the techniques of the bad guys MAKES US ONE OF THEM?