"The jawbones would disintegrate over time."

Dr. Sanjay Gupta mentioned something I didn't know about white phosphorus today, something that intimates that this could not only be melting the skin off of "enemy combatants" (and they were all enemies. Just ask them), but have far-reaching effects to our own soldiers.

COOPER: Are there long-term effects?

GUPTA: It's hard to say. There haven't been a lot of studies on this sort of thing. They know a couple of things. One is that it can cause liver and kidney damage long term. It also might cause scarring again just from the burns. Also, you know, it used to be used in matchsticks. It was the white powder actually in matchsticks. So the factory workers who worked at those matchstick factories would actually get something known as "phossy jaw," that's what they called it. What would happen was the jawbones would actually disintegrate over time. Really dramatic for them. (understatement of the year -ed.) But again, that was from sustained long-term exposure.

Gupta went on to add that this wouldn't have any effect on troops unless there was some kind of unintentional explosion. But somebody has to be firing these shells. And nobody should assume that everything the military uses is air-tight and perfect.

Here's what phossy jaw looks like:



And Dick Cheney claims that WORDS are hurting the troops. How about this shit that may be disintegrating their jawbones?

p.s. Reading this Jamie McIntyre (Pentagon water-carrier at CNN) quote, what are you reminded of?

MCINTYRE (on camera): Any munition can inflict unintended civilian casualties, but the Pentagon argues it works hard to avoid the loss of innocent life. In Falluja, the military says civilians were urged for weeks to leave. And by the time the siege took place, most of the people left were either insurgents or their sympathizers.

Yes, they were urged for weeks to leave... why, they even delivered a mandatory evacuation... they asked civilians to line up at the Falluja Convention Center where buses would take them to safety... The point is that it's dubious to suggest that everyone who was still in the city were insurgents or sympathizers. We know the difficulties inherent in an evacuation. McIntyre should know better and cast a little more doubt.