They have issued an update / retraction to their denial of WP at the bottom of their page, saying:
"White phosphorous shells, which produce smoke, were used in Fallujah not for illumination but for screening purposes, i.e., obscuring troop movements and, according to an article, "The Fight for Fallujah," in the March-April 2005 issue of Field Artillery magazine, "as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes …." The article states that U.S. forces used white phosphorous rounds to flush out enemy fighters so that they could then be killed with high explosive rounds."
It's still an understatement of the article, which conveniently cuts out the mention of "shake and bake" and saving their WP ordinance for "lethal missions", but it's probably as close to the truth as those bastards are going to get. Good for them for correcting their misstatement/lie/whatever. Negative marks for the U.S. media, though, for not adequately covering and investigating the issue. Once again, they leave all the work for the webloggers. Pussies...
So, the obvious question left to ask is where the hell did the U.S. State Department get the idea previously that white phosphorus was only used for "illumination"? Was it an intentional deceit, or just half-assed asscovering? That, of course, is the question that will probably never be answered, but at least truth won another small battle without having to wait fifty years for the historians to figure it out.
