How eager is Think Progress to claim that out troops used chemical weapons and are thus, as Kos states, no better than Saddam himself? So much so that the declassified intel they used yesterday as ‘proof’ that the Pentagon and US military ‘classify’ White Phosphorus as a ‘chemical’ weapon is little more than a transcription of two Kurdish brothers speaking too each other on the phone:
Yes, their “classified Pentagon document” boils down to a single brief phone call between two Kurdish brothers. Not so impressive now, is it?
And why does Think Progress also leave out the warning the report that forcefully states:
WARNING: (U) THIS IS AN INFORMATION REPORT, NOT FINALLY EVALUATED INTELLIGENCE. REPORT CLASSIFIED
Just to make this clear: the Pentagon NEVER referred to white phosphorus rounds as “chemical weapons” in this report. Only the conversation of two Kurdish brothers mentioned the term “chemical weapons” and that characterization was never accepted by the military.
Think Progress completely misrepresents the core element of their article.
Ask yourself- why are some on the left so willing to believe every awful thing they are told about our troops?
And then ask yourself why Think Progress, a project of the left-wing American Progress Action Fund, doing opposition research against our troops, digging through declassified intel, hopingto find anything they can use to portray our troops as monsters and this administration as evil?
I should probably note, my instincts are a little bit better than our credulous lefties:
I should probably add what I think this intel memo really is. I would bet my left nut it is unedited raw intelligence (or something similar) from some asset on the ground who has no idea about anything related to the military. He/she was probably told WP was being used, and knowing nothing, simply thought it was a chemical weapon, given the other weapons used on Kurds and Shi’ites.
Pretty damned close.