U.S. Military Confirms Chemical Use In Battle of Fallujah
U.S. Military
attempts to deny
While Confirming
Use of White Phosphorus
On Iraqi civilians in Fallujah
By: Tom Scott
As could be expected, the U.S. military in Iraq has denied while confirming evidence presented in the Italian documentary called "Falluja: The Hidden Massacre".The documentary, which was shown on Italian state television on Tuesday, November 8th, cited evidence that U.S. Armed Forces had used the incendiary chemical white phosphorus, also know as “Willy Pete” or “Whiskey Pete” in military jargon, against innocent civilians in the November 2004 offensive on the Iraqi town of Fallujah immediately following the U.S. Presidential election.
The RAI documentary shows images of bodies recovered after a November 2004 offensive by U.S. troops on the town of Fallujah, which it said proved the use of white phosphorus against innocent men, women and children who were burnt to the bone.A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad had said earlier on Tuesday he did not recall white phosphorus being used in Fallujah.Sounding a lot like Scooter Libby in his total lack of recall of the Vice Presidents actions on the outing of Covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, Lieutenant Colonel Steven Bolin said "I do not recall the use of white phosphorus during the offensive operations in Fallujah in the fall of 2004,”
This reporter was expecting Bolins next statement to place the use of “Willy Pete” squarely on the shoulders of Tim Russet.
Bolin also denied the use of “Willy Pete” against “civilians” in Fallujah despite numerous eyewitness accounts to the contrary.
Interestingly, the Marine spokesman did take time Wednesday, November 9th, to make the statement that he would describe white phosphorus as "conventional munitions" used primarily for smoke screens and target marking. He then went on to state that “U.S. forces do not use any chemical weapons in Iraq.”
If he, like the Bush Administration considered everyone in Fallujah as “enemy combatants”, which Bush and the military did at the time that would technically be a true statement, but that wasn't the reality.
Bolin did confirm however, in an about face from previous statements to the contrary, that U.S. forces had dropped MK 77 firebombs, which the documentary on Italian broadcaster RAI compared to napalm, against military targets only in Iraq in March and April 2003.
However, a March ‘05 publication by the US Army confirms that US soldiers used white phosphorus offensively in the Battle of Fallujah. This directly contradicts the statements made by the U.S. Department of Defense, as well as a previous statement by the US State Department that Willy Pete was used “very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes”.
Also a story on artillery use in Fallujah from the March/April edition of the US Army’s “Field Artillery Magazine” states that “The munitions we brought to this fight were illumination and white phosphorous (WP, M110 and M825), with point-detonating (PD), delay, time and variable-time (VT) fuses.”
“WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with High Explosives (HE). We fired ’shake and bake’ missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out.”
What the article does not say, however, is that there is no way you can use white phosphorus at ground level without forming a deadly chemical cloud that kills everything within a quarter of a mile in all directions from where it hits. Obviously, the effect of such deadly clouds weren't just psychological in nature.
This claim of “shake and bake” is further confirmed in a news article reported on NCTimes.com on April 10, 2004 by an embedded journalist at the time.
“Bogart is a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the city Friday and Saturday, never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused. . . they ran through the drill again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives they call “shake ‘n’ bake” into a cluster of buildings where insurgents have been spotted all week.”
Why were "round after round of Willy Pete needed if it were used for illumination purposes only? When used in this manner Willy Pete will form a toxic chemical cloud which will kill within a quarter mile radius.
It feels like the American people have been hit by a barrage of “shake ‘n’ bake” with the smokescreen and High Explosive denials that the Pentagon and the Bush Administration puts out on a consistent basis.
The documentary had cited a letter it said had come from British Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram; admitting 30 MK 77 weapons were used on military targets in Iraq between March 31 and April 2, 2003.
The Defense Minister admitted that the US had misled the British high command about the use of napalm, but he would not comment on the extent of the cover up.
"The only instance of MK 77 use during (Operation Iraqi Freedom) occurred in March/April 2003 when U.S. Marines employed several bombs against legitimate military targets," Keefe said.
He also stated that the chemical composition of the MK 77 firebomb is “different from that of napalm.” The documentary has also accused U.S. forces of using the Mark 77 firebomb on Fallujah.
The use of firebombs puts the US in breach of the 1980 Convention on Certain Chemical Weapons and is a violation the Geneva Protocol against the use of white phosphorous and napalm, "since its use causes indiscriminate and extreme injuries especially when deployed in an urban area."
Regrettably, "indiscriminate and extreme injuries" are a vital part of this Administration’s terror campaign in Iraq. It is a well-coordinated strategy designed to spawn panic throughout Iraq with random acts of violence.
It is clear that the U.S. military never needed to use napalm in Iraq.
Their conventional weaponry and laser-guided technology were already enough to run roughshod over the Iraqi army and seize Baghdad almost unobstructed. Napalm was introduced simply to terrorize the Iraqi people and to pacify through intimidation.
The Geneva Convention has banned the use of incendiary weapons against civilians but interestingly enough the United States did not sign the relevant protocol to the convention, a U.N. official in New York has confirmed.
The Fallujah offensive in November 2004, had aimed to crush followers of al Qaeda's Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said to have linked up with local insurgents in the Sunni Arab city west of Baghdad.
The shocking Italian documentary showed images of bodies recovered after a November 2004 offensive by U.S. troops on the Iraqi town of Fallujah, which it said, proves the use of white phosphorus against innocent men, women and children who were burnt to the bone.
"I do know that white phosphorus was used," said Jeff Englehart in the RAI documentary, which identified him as a former soldier in the U.S. 1st Infantry Division in Iraq. "Burnt bodies. Burnt children and burnt women," said Englehart, who RAI said had taken part in the Falluja offensive. "White phosphorus kills indiscriminately."
Western newspapers had also reported at the time that white phosphorus had been used during the offensive. But not one American newspaper or TV station picked up the story.
This is the extent to which the American "free press" is yoked to the center of power in Washington. As we have seen with the Downing Street memo, which was reluctantly reported 5 weeks after it appeared in the British press, the airtight American media ignores any story that doesn't embrace their collective support for the war.
So far, none of this has appeared in any American media, nor has the media reported that the United Nations has been rebuffed twice by the Defense Department in calling for an independent investigation into what really took place in Fallujah. The US simply waves away the international body as a minor nuisance while the media scrupulously omits any mention of the allegations from their coverage.
Unfortunately Cheney, Rumsfeld and many others in the Bush Administration are old hands at terrorism dating back to their counterinsurgency projects in Nicaragua and El Salvador under the Reagan Administration.
We can assume that the order to use white phosphorous came straight from the office of Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney. No one else could have issued that order, nor would they have risked their career by unilaterally using banned weapons when their use was entirely gratuitous.
These directives are consistent with other decisions attributed to the Bush Administration. Much like the authorizing of torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prison, the targeting of members of the press and the rehiring of members of Saddam's Secret Police to carry out their brutal activities under new leadership.
Rumsfeld and Cheney’s offices have always been the headwaters for most of the administration's treachery. White Phosphorous and Napalm simply adds depth to an already prodigious list of war crimes on the Bush Administrations resume'.
They know that the threat of immolation serves as a powerful deterrent and fits seamlessly into their overarching scheme of rule through fear. Terror and deception are the rotating parts of the same axis and are the two imperatives of the Bush-Cheney Administrations foreign policy strategy.
We have to wonder when that terror and deception will spill over to the American people.
If it hasn't already.
