"they also used banned weapons such as white phosphorus,"

White phosphorous isn't actually banned - there are restrictions on how and where you use it, as indeed there are for bullets and grenades. Incidentally, the US only signed that Protocol in 2009; for the vast majority of fighting in Iraq, only Protocols I and II were in force, I, prohibiting fragments which are X-ray transparent while II relates to land mines and other booby-trap devices. III, from 2009 onwards for the US, bars their use as incendiary devices against civilian targets, as well as against combatants in close proximity to civilians, but specifically does not restrict their use for illumination or smoke production purposes, which is how the US troops were using them in Iraq anyway.

There wasn't an "Operation Shock and Awe", either - the document titled Shock and Awe was from 1996, expanding upon a phrase dating right back to Sun Tzu; the actual implementation in Iraq was a rapid decapitation attack, intended to minimise both civilian and military deaths and very successful in that respect. You acknowledge the Pentagon would be a legitimate military target in a war, why not accept that Hussein's equivalent compounds and bunkers - which were the targets in those "shock and awe" opening air strikes - were just as legitimate, rather than "terrorism"?