Amen, Brother Fareed
There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans

Good stuff from Fareed Zakaria in this week's Newsweek:

I have a suggestion that might improve Bush's image abroad—and it doesn't require that Karen Hughes go anywhere. It would actually help Bush at home as well, and it has the additional virtue of being the right thing to do. It's simple: end the administration's disastrous experiment with officially sanctioned torture.

We now have plenty of documents and testimonials that make plain that the administration created an atmosphere in which the interrogation of prisoners could lapse into torture. After 9/11, high up in the administration—at the White House and the Pentagon—officials and lawyers were asked to find ways to bend and stretch the traditional rules of war. Donald Rumsfeld publicly declared that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the war against Al Qaeda. Whether or not these legalisms were correct, their most important effect was the message they sent down the chain of command: "Push the envelope."
[...]
This is a case of more than just bad public relations. Ask any soldier in Iraq when the general population really turned against the United States and he will say, "Abu Ghraib." A few months before the scandal broke, Coalition Provisional Authority polls showed Iraqi support for the occupation at 63 percent. A month after Abu Ghraib, the number was 9 percent. Polls showed that 71 percent of Iraqis were surprised by the revelations. Most telling, 61 percent of Iraqis polled believed that no one would be punished for the torture at Abu Ghraib. Of the 29 percent who said they believed someone would be punished, 52 percent said that such punishment would extend only to "the little people."

America washes its dirty linen in public. When scandals such as this one hit, they do sully America's image in the world. But what usually also gets broadcast around the world is the vivid reality that the United States forces accountability and punishes wrongdoing, even at the highest levels. Initially, people the world over thought Americans were crazy during Watergate, but they came to respect a rule of law so strong that even a president could not break it. But today, what angers friends of America abroad is not that abuses like those at Abu Ghraib happened. Some lapses are probably an inevitable consequence of war, terrorism and insurgencies. What angers them is that no one beyond a few "little people" have been punished, the system has not been overhauled, and even now, after all that has happened, the White House is spending time, effort and precious political capital in a strange, stubborn and surely futile quest to preserve the option to torture.

Another thing that's not going to help is allegations like this one being made on an Italian news magazine; via BBC:

Italian state TV, Rai, has broadcast a documentary accusing the US military of using white phosphorus bombs against civilians in the Iraqi city of Falluja.
Rai says this amounts to the illegal use of chemical arms, though the bombs are considered incendiary devices.

Eyewitnesses and ex-US soldiers say the weapon was used in built-up areas in the insurgent-held city.

The US military denies this, but admits using white phosphorus bombs in Iraq to illuminate battlefields.

Washington is not a signatory of an international treaty restricting the use of white phosphorus devices.

Salon's War Room notes:

So far as we can tell, the mainstream press in the United States hasn't picked up on the story, but the international press certainly has. Al Jazeera has posted the BBC's story on its English-language Web site, complete with graphic photos from RAI.

There's no new response from the Pentagon yet. In the denial issued late last year, the Pentagon insisted that, in Fallujah, white phosphorus shells "were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."

Here's more on what white phosphorus is from Wikipedia:

White phosphorus is a common allotrope of the chemical element phosphorus which has found extensive military application as a smoke-screening agent and secondarily as an incendiary weapon. It is commonly referred to in military jargon as "WP" or "white phos". The Vietnam War era slang Willie Pete, Whiskey Pete or Wiley P is still occasionally heard.
[...]
It is commonly believed that white phosphorus ignites spontaneously on contact with air at room temperature. This is not quite true; the autoignition temperature is actually about 30°C in humid air, and slightly higher in dry air. However at slightly lower temperatures WP will slowly surface oxidise, effectively smouldering, and will often warm up to the point where it will ignite. At any rate, the slightest degree of friction will easily ignite it, and it is practically guaranteed to be ignited by a burster charge, so for all intents and purposes it is pyrophoric.
[...]
Burns to persons struck by particles of burning WP are usually much less extensive than napalm or metal incendiary burns, but are complicated by the toxicity of phosphorus, the release of phosphoric acid into the wounds, and the possibility of small particles continuing to smoulder for some time if undetected.
[...]
Use of white phosphorus is not specifically banned by any treaty, however the 1980 Geneva Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons (Protocol III) prohibits the use of incendiary weapons against civilian populations or by air attack against military forces that are located within concentrations of civilians. [1] The United States is among the nations that have not signed this protocol.