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KOK Edit: your favorite copyeditor since 1984(SM) KOK Edit: your favorite copyeditor since 1984(SM) Katharine O'Moore Klopf
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Thursday, November 17, 2005

Double Standard

Apparently, some in the British government have brains and souls, unlike those in the American administration. After the Pentagon confirmed that U.S. troops use white phosporus in Iraq, Britain confirmed that it does also but is reconsidering the practice:


... former armed forces minister Doug Henderson said the admission by the Pentagon that it was used to flush out insurgents in the assault on Fallujah raised serious questions for the coalition allies.

"It exposes the fact that double standards have applied," he told BBC Radio 4's The World at One.

"You cannot say you are going to invade a country to find chemical weapons and prevent them being used and then admit that you have used chemical weapons yourself in carrying out your endeavours."

The chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Labour MP Mike Gapes, said that the international conventions on chemical weapons may now have to be strengthened to cover white phosphorus.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just to remind you that a few days from now is the 60th anniversary of the start of the first Nuremberg trial:

November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946.

(The International Military Tribunal was opened on October 18, 1945.)

I don't think I need to comment on the irony.

Katharine O'Moore-Klopf said...

It is indeed ironic.

Peter K Fallon, Ph.D. said...

As the (NY) writer and journalist Sidney Zion once said, "If it weren't for the double standard, Britain would have no standards at all."

Sadly, that now applies to the United States.

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