US USED WHITE PHOSPHORUS, CHEMICAL WEAPONS ON FALLUJAH

[Zlatko Waterman]

(I have seen the pictures on the Italian web site, and they are horrifying. I recommend this film, mentioned in the story from the UK Independent. I heard the film-maker interviewed on Pacifica radio. This assault and the weapons used were not reported by the US mass media)



Published on Tuesday, November 8, 2005 by the Independent / UK


US Forces 'Used Chemical Weapons' During Assault on City of Fallujah
by Peter Popham

Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.

Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumors have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city.

On 10 November last year, the Islam Online website wrote: "US troops are reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous gas in its large-scale offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion of Fallujah, a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein's alleged gassing of the Kurds in 1988."

The website quoted insurgent sources as saying: "The US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally banned chemical weapons."

In December the US government formally denied the reports, describing them as "widespread myths". "Some news accounts have claimed that US forces have used 'outlawed' phosphorus shells in Fallujah," the USinfo website said. "Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes.

"They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."

But now new information has surfaced, including hideous photographs and videos and interviews with American soldiers who took part in the Fallujah attack, which provides graphic proof that phosphorus shells were widely deployed in the city as a weapon.

In a documentary to be broadcast by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, this morning, a former American soldier who fought at Fallujah says: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete.

"Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 meters is done for."

Photographs on the website of RaiTG24, the broadcaster's 24-hours news channel, www.rainews24.it, show exactly what the former soldier means. Provided by the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, dozens of high-quality, colour close-ups show bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, whose clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved or caramelised or turned the consistency of leather by the shells.

A biologist in Fallujah, Mohamad Tareq, interviewed for the film, says: "A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact."

The documentary, entitled Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, also provides what it claims is clinching evidence that incendiary bombs known as Mark 77, a new, improved form of napalm, was used in the attack on Fallujah, in breach of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons of 1980, which only allows its use against military targets.

Meanwhile, five US soldiers from the elite 75th Ranger Regiment have been charged with kicking and punching detainees in Iraq.

The news came as a suicide car bomber killed four American soldiers at a checkpoint south of Baghdad yesterday.

© 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.


(end paste)


Those of you on StudioEight who have the capacity on your computers to listen to audio signals, may wish to hear this debate on DemocracyNow!:

(link)


http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? ... 08/1516232

[mnaz]

This can't possibly be true, can it? Fuck this war. Fuck the profiteers. That's all. Sorry I don't have something more constructive to add. At a loss for words, frankly.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear mnaz:

Oddly enough, white phosporus bombs and napalm, both used widely and continuously in Vietnam, banned by the Geneva Protocols of 1977 for use as offensive weapons, have been conspicuously in sight in Iraq, simply not filmed. Reporters, as one learns from the testimony of Robert Fisk and others, have not been able to witness their use. The Europeans who made the film about the massacre at Fallujah insinuated themselves ( unembedded with US forces) and did their filming. Hundreds of still photos were also taken.

Though perhaps those will be dismissed by President Bush the way he dismissed the Abu Ghraib evidence ( much of it still suppressed by the Pentagon-- 800 still photos and four videos) yesterday in his speech from Panama:

"We do not torture" (Pres. Bush, Nov. 7th, 2005)


Here is a very good information site about the past, present, and probable future of white phosphorous and napalm weaponry.

(link below)

Don't forget-- the US also uses DU, technically nuclear weapons, in Iraq, as it used them in Bosnia.


Thanks for your comments, mnaz.

Now I'm going to my polling place to vote against Arnold's power and money grabs( while I still can . . .).

( link)

http://electroniciraq.net/news/printer1928.shtml



--Z

[Zlatko Waterman]

By the way:


I strongly recommend that persons supporting President Bush's policies, believing in the veracity of his statements ( like the one from Panama I quoted above), or even those who believe your President is occasionally unreliable, read the article in THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Nov. 3, 2005, page 67. This is a shortened version of Human Right Watch's investigation into torture by the US military in Iraq.

The full report is available online at:


http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us0905/


with footnotes not available in the NYR shortened version.

The report is clear and straightforward and should be read by all Americans.


--Z

[Arcadia]

auch!

[mnaz]

Well, truth has always been the no. 1 casualty in this war.... damn near impossible to get at. As I suspected, the military denies the use of white phosphorus on Fallujah.

Since I first clicked on the Democracy Now link, new text has appeared; that of Amy Goodman's phone conference with the Italian RAI documentary producer, Maurizio Torrealta, along with Jeff Englehart, former Army specialist in Iraq (near the Fallujah siege), and Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, spokesman for the US military in Iraq.

Torrealta presents his evidence, Englehart reports that w.p was called for on the radio (and gives his eyewitness accounts), and Boylan denies everything. Who didn't see that one coming?

What the hell are we doing in Iraq? I mean, what's really going on? Jeezus.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
On the torture issue, the Bush Admin. is coming under heavy fire for opposing Repub. Sen. McCain's legislation to outlaw torture of war prisoners and detainees. McCain is a former prisoner of war.

links..

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1107/p08s01-comv.html

http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn ... 00679.html

[Zlatko Waterman]

(link)


http://rawstory.com/news/2005/U.S._Army ... _1109.html

[whimsicaldeb]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4417024.stm

I sent the BBC article link of this documentary to Michael Moore because it contains a Jeff Englehart interview. MM is our country's leading documentary producer …as well as activist ~ and he can get things moving where others cannot.

In addition, I’m sending this link and information along to my local TV stations, including PBS stations, radio news, and all newspapers (large & small) asking them to air and report on this documentary.

I ask that if you feel also so inclined, to do so as well.

In order for those who don’t know, to finally know … it has to be shown on main stream news: radio, TV and newspaper. Not everyone will believe this is true … but others will. And that’s enough for me to begin… for to do nothing is to guarantee the continuation of ignorance, and that means the continuation of this terrible pain and suffering.

Please join me … send this information along to all your local TV, radio, newspapers. Ask them to air it; publish the information.

Thank you.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. – Abraham Lincoln

[Zlatko Waterman]

Another soldier for peace:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1110-07.htm

[tinkerjack]

Well, truth has always been the no. 1 casualty in this war....

mnaz I am too wasted to google it but I believe the quote is truth is the first casualty of War. any war.

Watching a Veterans show about WWII war wounds. Listening to Veterans Day Show on NPR about the War Crimes tribunal in Nurenberg.

Z I suppose I sound like a dippy sixties hippy with my anti war posts but Iraq was our second front. We had a war in Afghanistan, that place where the mighty sun never sets British Empire got their ass kicked. We were doing some good in the country that was home to the people who attacked pearl harbor on september elenth. I have not seen her posts but tilly seemed to say that Afghanistan was slipping away from us.

As bad as it is over seas, it is the dark age of the church that we are sinking into here. Kansas school board wrote super natural into the definition of science. I suppose this is all meaning less ramble but it all seems related, the war, crusaders, state religion, I have seen some recruiting posters for the noble cause that make me think of how many virgins will be waiting in heaven for me.

it is all the same entity
don't ask what is the point please
just vanity

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear Tink:

You can be my dippy hippy anytime, soul bro' . . .

I would have "hipped" myself in 1965-71 except I was so terrified of not getting a good job and having to depend on my parents ( whom I had completely "divorced" at 19) that I stuck to school, got THE MAN's college degrees, became a teacher, and took my refuge there.

But as far as the rest of it goes, I was a "wannabe" hippy-- more, I suppose, what Ginz called a "hipster" ( would-be).

I've still got all my Buffalo Springfield and Moby Grape albums.

I WAS in San Francisco and Berkeley, after all, during that period.

As usual, thanks for your comments . . .


--Z-ip

[Zlatko Waterman]

Pentagon lies, followed by the truth . . . finally, about the use of this weapon in Iraq:


President Bush:

"We did not use white phosphorous in Fallujah . . ."

"We do not torture . . ."

( remarks this past week in Panama 11/05)


(paste)


How the US came clean

Napalm/Mark 77s

It took five months for the US to admit its marines had used Mk 77 firebombs (a close relative of napalm) in the invasion. The Pentagon said their functions were "remarkably similar".

Cluster bombs

General Myers admitted: "In some cases, we hit those targets knowing there would be a chance of collateral damage." It was "unfortunate" that "we had to make these choices".

White Phosphorus

Pentagon spokesman Lt-Col Barry Venable said this week that WP had been used, "to fire at the enemy" in Iraq. "It burns... it's an incendiary weapon. That is what it does."

( end paste)





(the full story at the link below)


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1117-01.htm

(Note: MK77 is an updated and more efficient form of napalm, which inflicts virtually the same effect on those it contacts.)

MK77 definition:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... s/mk77.htm




--Z

[knip]

i wanted to believe these fools wouldn't do this, but i'm convinced

clearly against laws of armed conflict

[jimboloco]

Kelly Dougherty is reaffirming, no doubt, thanks for that link.

It has got to change sometime, but for now, the house passed another budget taking more money away from food stamps, etc, and extending the tax privelidges for the elite; the senate hearing with the oil company execs was bogus as well. They were not under oath. They all denied being part of Cheney's Energy Task Force, which was held in secret, protected by the Supreme Court, that gave the oil companies increased profits (less taxes) and forgot about conservation or alternate fuels), and this was revealed later by journalists, yet they oil execs flat denied it anyhow, not being under oath. Yowsa.


I mean, napalm is napalm by any name, and cluster bombs? oh no, we are sanitary as possible with all our smart bombs and new and improved weapons guidance systems.

[knip]

different issue, jimbo, although i see you working