U.S. Used Chemical Weapons In Iraq
Veteran admits: Bodies melted away before us.
11/07/05 “La Repubblica” — — ROME. In soldier slang they call it Willy Pete. The technical name is white phosphorus. In theory its purpose is to illumine enemy positions in the dark. In practice, it was used as a chemical weapon in the rebel stronghold of Fallujah. And it was used not only against enemy combatants and guerrillas, but again innocent civilians. The Americans are responsible for a massacre using unconventional weapons, the identical charge for which Saddam Hussein stands accused. An investigation by RAI News 24, the all-news Italian satellite television channel, has pulled the veil from one of the most carefully concealed mysteries from the front in the entire US military campaign in Iraq.
Elisabetta Burba, the Italian journalist at ‘Panorama’ magazine in Milan who was offered the Niger documents but dropped the story after travelling to Niger and deciding they were forgeries, interviewed by SBS Dateline, The Plame Game:
REPORTER: When you heard about President Bush’s State of the Union address in 2003, when he was talking about uranium, what did you think when you heard that?
ELISABETTA: I jumped on my chair. I said “Oh, my God!”
Update 11/08/2005: Democracy NOW! aired excerpts today from the RAI 24 News special “Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre” and has a download link to the entire film. Amy Goodman interviews Jeff Englehart, the former army Specialist featured in it (editor of the blog Fight to Survive) and Maurizio Torrealta, News Editor for RAI and co-producer of the film.
Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan provides the military response in the debate that amounts to:
White phosphorous is used but is a legal weapon.
It’s an “obscurant”, used to shield operations from the enemy’s view and/or to destroy equipment/weapons caches.
The injuries cited by RAI producers and others as proof white phosphorous was the agent responsible can be caused by something else, for instance, suicide bombers deployed by the insurgents take the same toll – clothes remain intact whilst the skin suffers burns to the bone – when the dust is inhaled, it burns the respiratory tract and causes suffocation?
Police televise Bali bombers` remains
At a Jakarta news conference, Bali`s police chief, Maj. Gen. Made Mangku Pastika, showed photos of the bombers` heads and asked anyone who recognized them to come forward. The bombers appeared to be in their early 20s, CNN reported.
Possible because this is how a suicide bomber’s head often ends-up:
A victim of the Fallujah massacre.
The little girl’s face was burned beyond recognition. Her dress is more valuable for purposes of identification.
If the face of a suicide bomber is still recognisable, why not hers?
But RAI 24 and Englehart are propagandists?
Boylan also denied the Bush administration delayed major operations untill after the presidential elections. Goodman refuted this easily enough as can anyone by doing a quick search.
Bush Administration Plans to Delay Major Assaults in Iraq
By Mark Mazzetti, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration will delay major assaults on rebel-held cities in Iraq until after U.S. elections in November, say administration officials, mindful that large-scale military offensives could affect the U.S. presidential race.
Although American commanders in Iraq have been buoyed by recent successes in insurgent-held towns such as Samarra and Tall Afar, administration and Pentagon officials say they will not try to retake cities such as Fallujah and Ramadi — where insurgents’ grip is strongest and U.S. military casualties could be the greatest — until after Americans vote in what is likely to be a close election.
Update 11/08: buermann looks at the use of white phosphorous from a legal perspective. Amy Goodman questioned Boylan about Protocol III which the US has not ratified.
CFL on MK77: “has been banned since a 1980 UN treaty and which the US signed in 1997.”
Update: According to CFL –
The use of the incendiary substance on civilians is forbidden by a 1980 UN treaty. The use of chemical weapons is forbidden by a treaty which the US signed in 1997
In response to this report the US is playing a semantics game by claiming that the MK-77 an incendiary weapon and not a chemical weapon–the US has not signed up to the relevant protocols governing the use of incendiary weapons. An MK-77 is made up of a cocktail of chemicals.
The Italians are clearly considering the chemical cocktail that makes up the Mk-77 fire bombs to be chemical weapons, the semantic quibbling about whether they are incendiaries or chemicals is moot.