"A bullet goes through skin even faster than white phosphorus does"

Sec. Rumsfeld: Well, I think that there are a lot of things going on in that country. Some are worrisome. Obviously, there's still continued violence, as Charlie points out. …On the other hand, when the Iraqi people have their own constitution, that they wrote, that they voted for, and then they elect people under that constitution, it becomes increasingly clear that anyone going around killing the Iraqi people are fighting against a legitimate government, they are against a legitimate constitution, they will be against people who have been legitimately elected under the Iraqi constitution. Any contention that there's some sort of an occupation taking place or that coalition forces are there at anything other than the invitation of the government and the United Nations becomes a weaker argument.

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General Pace: White phosphorus is a legitimate tool of the military. It is used for two primary purposes. One is to mark a location for strike by an aircraft, for example. The other is to be used -- because it does create white smoke -- to be used as a screening agent so that you can move your forces without being seen by the enemy. It is not a chemical weapon, it is an incendiary (sic) and it is well within the law of war to use those weapons as they are being used for marking and for screening.

Q: But you and I have both seen the results of "Willy Pete" in Vietnam. And when it's on the skin, it doesn't stop burning until it goes all the way through or runs out of oxygen. It's a pretty tough weapon. Do you want to use it in urban areas such as Fallujah?

Gen. Pace: No armed force in the world goes to greater effort than your armed force to protect civilians and to be very precise in the way we apply our power. A bullet goes through skin even faster than white phosphorus does. So I would rather have the proper instrument applied at the proper time as precisely as possible to get the job done in a way that kills as many of the bad guys as possible and does as little collateral damage as possible. That is just the nature of warfare.

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Sec. Rumsfeld: I think that you can have a legitimate insurgency in a country that has popular support and has a cohesiveness and has a legitimate gripe. These people don't have a legitimate gripe. They've got a peaceful way to change that government through the constitution, through the elections. These people aren't trying to promote something other than disorder and to take over that country and turn it into a caliphate, and then spread it around the world. This is a group of people who don't merit the word “insurgency,” I think. But I'll look it up. You look it up for me, too. I'm sure you will.

News Briefing with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace. U.S. Department of Defense. Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense. November 29, 2005.