WHITE PHOSPHOROUS

Bush used white phosphorous, an unlawful incendiary weapon, against civilians in Fallujah Nov. 2004, days after his re-election, burning them alive, BBC and The Guardian report. The Bush administration first denied the use, later admitted they had used it for "illumination purposes", and finally that they used it against "enemy combatants".  There were between 30,000 and 50,000 innocent civilians present in Fallujah when the city was shelled.

THE PENTAGON - WE BURNED PEOPLE ALIVE
The Guardian: "A Pentagon spokesman told the BBC that white phosphorus "was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants". He claimed "it is not a chemical weapon. They are not outlawed or illegal." This denial has been accepted by most of the mainstream media. UN conventions, the Times said, "ban its use on civilian but not military targets". But the word "civilian" does not occur in the chemical weapons convention. The use of the toxic properties of a chemical as a weapon is illegal, whoever the target is.
The Pentagon argues that white phosphorus burns people, rather than poisoning them, and is covered only by the protocol on incendiary weapons, which the US has not signed. But white phosphorus is both incendiary and toxic. (...) "It was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants," spokesman Lt Col Barry Venable told the BBC (...) The US state department had earlier said white phosphorus had been used in Falluja very sparingly, for illumination purposes. (...) Col Venable denied that white phosphorous constituted a banned chemical weapon. Washington is not a signatory to an international treaty restricting the use of the substance against civilians. The Guardian comments on this statement:  "The US (...) knows that its use as a weapon is illegal. In the Battle Book, published by the US Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, my correspondent David Traynier found the following sentence: "It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets". (...) A declassified document from the US department of defense, dated April 1991, and titled "Possible use of phosphorus chemical". "During the brutal crackdown that followed the Kurdish uprising," it alleges, "Iraqi forces loyal to President Saddam may have possibly used white phosphorus (WP) chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels and the populace in Erbil ... and Dohuk provinces, Iraq. The WP chemical was delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunships ... These reports of possible WP chemical weapon attacks spread quickly ... hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled from these two areas". (...) Before attacking the city, the marines stopped men "of fighting age" from leaving. Many women and children stayed: the Guardian's correspondent estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians were left".

EFFECT OF WHITE PHOSPHOROUS
BBC:  "White phosphorus is highly flammable and ignites on contact with oxygen. If the substance hits someone's body, it will burn until deprived of oxygen.  Globalsecurity.org, a defence website, says: "Phosphorus burns on the skin are deep and painful... These weapons are particularly nasty because white phosphorus continues to burn until it disappears... it could burn right down to the bone.", BBC writes in below article.

WHERE ELSE HAS IT BEEN USED LATELY?

YEMEN, 2016
Washington Post: 'U.S. officials confirmed that the American government has supplied the Saudis white phosphorus in the past but declined to say how much had been transferred or when. After reviewing a social media image taken from the battlefield that showed a white phosphorus mortar shell,a U.S. official said it appeared to be American in origin but could not trace it to a particular sale because some of the markings were obscured'.

GAZA, 2009
Human Rights Watch: 'All of the white phosphorus shells that Human Rights Watch found were manufactured in the United States in 1989 by Thiokol Aerospace, which was running the Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant at the time. On January 4, Reuters photographed IDF artillery units handling projectileswhose markings indicate that they were produced in the United States at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in September 1991'.

AFGHANISTAN, 2001 and onward
New York Times: 'At that point, the platoon had fired more rounds than they had on any day since arriving in Afghanistan in the summer — 142 in all, half of them air-bursting, high-explosive rounds and half white phosphorus (“Willie Pete” to soldiers) with so-called point-detonating fuses, which cause the rounds to explode upon striking the ground.'