DECEMBER 2005

The US used chemical weapons in Iraq - and then lied about it
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11020.htm

Now we know napalm and phosphorus bombs have been dropped on Iraqis, why have the hawks failed to speak out?

By George Monbiot

11/15/05 "The Guardian" Did US troops use chemical weapons in Falluja? The answer is yes. The partial proof is to be found in the documentary broadcast on Italian TV last week, which has generated gigabytes of hype on the internet. It's a turkey, whose evidence that white phosphorus was fired at Iraqi troops is flimsy and circumstantial. But the bloggers debating it found the smoking gun.

The first account they unearthed in a magazine published by the US army. In the March 2005 edition of Field Artillery, officers from the 2nd Infantry's fire support element boast about their role in the attack on Falluja in November last year: "White Phosphorous. 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 HE [high explosive]. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."

The second, in California's North County Times, was by a reporter embedded with the marines in the April 2004 siege of Falluja. "'Gun up!' Millikin yelled ... grabbing a white phosphorus round from a nearby ammo can and holding it over the tube. 'Fire!' Bogert yelled, as Millikin dropped it. The boom kicked dust around the pit as they ran through the drill again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives they call 'shake'n'bake' into... buildings where insurgents have been spotted all week."
White phosphorus is not listed in the schedules of the Chemical Weapons Convention. It can be legally used as a flare to illuminate the battlefield, or to produce smoke to hide troop movements from the enemy. Like other unlisted substances, it may be deployed for "Military purposes... not dependent on the use of the toxic properties of chemicals as a method of warfare". But it becomes a chemical weapon as soon as it is used directly against people. A chemical weapon can be "any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm".

White phosphorus is fat-soluble and burns spontaneously on contact with the air. According to globalsecurity.org: "The burns usually are multiple, deep, and variable in size. The solid in the eye produces severe injury. The particles continue to burn unless deprived of atmospheric oxygen... If service members are hit by pieces of white phosphorus, it could burn right down to the bone." As it oxidises, it produces smoke composed of phosphorus pentoxide. According to the standard US industrial safety sheet, the smoke "releases heat on contact with moisture and will burn mucous surfaces... Contact... can cause severe eye burns and permanent damage."

Until last week, the US state department maintained that US forces used white phosphorus shells "very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes". They were fired "to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters". Confronted with the new evidence, on Thursday it changed its position. "We have learned that some of the information we were provided ... is incorrect. White phosphorous shells, which produce smoke, were used in Fallujah not for illumination but for screening purposes, ie obscuring troop movements and, according to... Field Artillery magazine, 'as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes...' The article states that US forces used white phosphorus rounds to flush out enemy fighters so that they could then be killed with high explosive rounds." The US government, in other words, appears to admit that white phosphorus was used in Falluja as a chemical weapon.

The invaders have been forced into a similar climbdown over the use of napalm in Iraq. In December 2004, the Labour MP Alice Mahon asked the British armed forces minister Adam Ingram "whether napalm or a similar substance has been used by the coalition in Iraq (a) during and (b) since the war". "No napalm," the minister replied, " has been used by coalition forces in Iraq either during the war-fighting phase or since."

This seemed odd to those who had been paying attention. There were widespread reports that in March 2003 US marines had dropped incendiary bombs around the bridges over the Tigris and the Saddam Canal on the way to Baghdad. The commander of Marine Air Group 11 admitted that "We napalmed both those approaches". Embedded journalists reported that napalm was dropped at Safwan Hill on the border with Kuwait. In August 2003 the Pentagon confirmed that the marines had dropped "mark 77 firebombs". Though the substance these contained was not napalm, its function, the Pentagon's information sheet said, was "remarkably similar". While napalm is made from petrol and polystyrene, the gel in the mark 77 is made from kerosene and polystyrene. I doubt it makes much difference to the people it lands on.

So in January this year, the MP Harry Cohen refined Mahon's question. He asked "whether mark 77 firebombs have been used by coalition forces". "The United States have confirmed to us that they have not
used Mark 77 firebombs, which are essentially napalm canisters, in Iraq at any time.  The US government had lied to him. Mr Ingram had to retract his statements in a private letter to the MPs in June.

We were told that the war with Iraq was necessary for two reasons. Saddam Hussein possessed biological and chemical weapons and might one day use them against another nation. And the Iraqi people needed to be liberated from his oppressive regime, which had, among its other crimes, used chemical weapons to kill them. Tony Blair, Colin Powell, William Shawcross, David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen, Ann Clwyd and many others referred, in making their case, to Saddam's gassing of the Kurds in Halabja in 1988. They accused those who opposed the war of caring nothing for the welfare of the Iraqis.

Given that they care so much, why has none of these hawks spoken out against the use of unconventional weapons by coalition forces? Ann Clwyd, the Labour MP who turned from peace campaigner to chief apologist for an illegal war, is, as far as I can discover, the only one of these armchair warriors to engage with the issue. In May this year, she wrote to the Guardian to assure us that reports that a "modern form of napalm" has been used by US forces "are completely without foundation. Coalition forces have not used napalm - either during operations in Falluja, or at any other time". How did she know? The foreign office minister told her. Before the invasion, Clwyd travelled through Iraq to investigate Saddam's crimes against his people. She told the Commons that what she found moved her to tears. After the invasion, she took the minister's word at face value, when a 30-second search on the internet could have told her it was bunkum. It makes you wonder whether she really gave a damn about the people for whom she claimed to be campaigning.

Saddam, facing a possible death sentence, is accused of mass murder, torture, false imprisonment and the use of chemical weapons. He is certainly guilty on all counts. So, it now seems, are those who overthrew him.

www.Monbiot.com

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
MORE FROM MONBIOT:
Behind the phosphorus clouds are war crimes within war crimes

We now know the US also used thermobaric weapons in its assault on Falluja, where up to 50,000 civilians remained

George Monbiot
Tuesday November 22, 2005

Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1647998,00.html

The media couldn't have made a bigger pig's ear of the white phosphorus story. So, before moving on to the new revelations from Falluja, I would like to try to clear up the old ones. There is no hard evidence that white phosphorus was used against civilians. The claim was made in a documentary broadcast on the Italian network RAI, called Falluja: the Hidden Massacre. It claimed that the corpses in the pictures it ran "showed strange injuries, some burnt to the bone, others with skin hanging from their flesh ... The faces have literally melted away, just like other parts of the body. The clothes are strangely intact." These assertions were supported by a human-rights advocate who, it said, possessed "a biology degree".

I, too, possess a biology degree, and I am as well qualified to determine someone's cause of death as I am to perform open-heart surgery. So I asked Chris Milroy, professor of forensic pathology at the University of Sheffield, to watch the film. He reported that "nothing indicates to me that the bodies have been burnt". They had turned black and lost their skin "through decomposition". We don't yet know how these people died.

But there is hard evidence that white phosphorus was deployed as a weapon against combatants in Falluja. As this column revealed last Tuesday, US infantry officers confessed that they had used it to flush out insurgents. A Pentagon spokesman told the BBC that white phosphorus "was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants". He claimed "it is not a chemical weapon. They are not outlawed or illegal." This denial has been accepted by most of the mainstream media. UN conventions, the Times said, "ban its use on civilian but not military targets". But the word "civilian" does not occur in the chemical weapons convention. The use of the toxic properties of a chemical as a weapon is illegal, whoever the target is.

The Pentagon argues that white phosphorus burns people, rather than poisoning them, and is covered only by the protocol on incendiary weapons, which the US has not signed. But white phosphorus is both incendiary and toxic. The gas it produces attacks the mucous membranes, the eyes and the lungs. As Peter Kaiser of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons told the BBC last week: "If ... the toxic properties of white phosphorus, the caustic properties, are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because ... any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons."

The US army knows that its use as a weapon is illegal. In the Battle Book, published by the US Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, my correspondent David Traynier found the following sentence: "It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets."

Last night the blogger Gabriele Zamparini found a declassified document from the US department of defence, dated April 1991, and titled "Possible use of phosphorus chemical". "During the brutal crackdown that followed the Kurdish uprising," it alleges, "Iraqi forces loyal to President Saddam may have possibly used white phosphorus (WP) chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels and the populace in Erbil ... and Dohuk provinces, Iraq. The WP chemical was delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunships ... These reports of possible WP chemical weapon attacks spread quickly ... hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled from these two areas." The Pentagon is in no doubt, in other words, that white phosphorus is an illegal chemical weapon.

The insurgents, of course, would be just as dead today if they were killed by other means. So does it matter if chemical weapons were mixed with other munitions? It does. Anyone who has seen those photos of the lines of blind veterans at the remembrance services for the first world war will surely understand the point of international law, and the dangers of undermining it.

But we shouldn't forget that the use of chemical weapons was a war crime within a war crime within a war crime. Both the invasion of Iraq and the assault on Falluja were illegal acts of aggression. Before attacking the city, the marines stopped men "of fighting age" from leaving. Many women and children stayed: the Guardian's correspondent estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians were left. The marines treated Falluja as if its only inhabitants were fighters. They levelled thousands of buildings, illegally denied access to the Iraqi Red Crescent and, according to the UN's special rapporteur, used "hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population".

I have been reading accounts of the assault published in the Marine Corps Gazette. The soldiers appear to have believed everything the US government told them. One article claims that "the absence of civilians meant the marines could employ blast weapons prior to entering houses that had become pillboxes, not homes". Another said that "there were less than 500 civilians remaining in the city". It continued: "The heroics [of the marines] will be the subject of many articles and books ... The real key to this tactical victory rested in the spirit of the warriors who courageously fought the battle. They deserve all of the credit for liberating Falluja."

But buried in this hogwash is a grave revelation. An assault weapon the marines were using had been armed with warheads containing "about 35% thermobaric novel explosive (NE) and 65% standard high explosive". They deployed it "to cause the roof to collapse and crush the insurgents fortified inside interior rooms". It was used repeatedly: "The expenditure of explosives clearing houses was enormous."

The marines can scarcely deny that they know what these weapons do. An article published in the Gazette in 2000 details the effects of their use by the Russians in Grozny. Thermobaric, or "fuel-air" weapons, it says, form a cloud of volatile gases or finely powdered explosives. "This cloud is then ignited and the subsequent fireball sears the surrounding area while consuming the oxygen in this area. The lack of oxygen creates an enormous overpressure ... Personnel under the cloud are literally crushed to death. Outside the cloud area, the blast wave travels at some 3,000 metres per second ... As a result, a fuel-air explosive can have the effect of a tactical nuclear weapon without residual radiation ... Those personnel caught directly under the aerosol cloud will die from the flame or overpressure. For those on the periphery of the strike, the injuries can be severe. Burns, broken bones, contusions from flying debris and blindness may result. Further, the crushing injuries from the overpressure can create air embolism within blood vessels, concussions, multiple internal haemorrhages in the liver and spleen, collapsed lungs, rupture of the eardrums and displacement of the eyes from their sockets." It is hard to see how you could use these weapons in Falluja without killing civilians.

This looks to me like a convincing explanation of the damage done to Falluja, a city in which between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians might have been taking refuge. It could also explain the civilian casualties shown in the film. So the question has now widened: is there any crime the coalition forces have not committed in Iraq?

www.monbiot.com

U.S. Used Chemical Weapons In Iraq

Veteran admits: Bodies melted away before us.

Shocking revelation RAI News 24.

White phosphorous used on the civilian populace: This is how the US "took" Fallujah. New napalm formula also used.

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.

A US veteran of the Iraq war told RAI New correspondent Sigfrido Ranucci this: I received the order use caution because we had used white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military slag it is called 'Willy Pete'. Phosphorus burns the human body on contact--it even melts it right down to the bone.

RAI News 24's investigative story, Fallujah, The Concealed Massacre, will be broadcast tomorrow on RAI-3 and will contain not only eye-witness accounts by US military personnel but those from Fallujah residents. A rain of fire descended on the city. People who were exposed to those multicolored substance began to burn. We found people with bizarre wounds-their bodies burned but their clothes intact, relates Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji, a biologist and Fallujah resident.

I gathered accounts of the use of phosphorus and napalm from a few Fallujah refugees whom I met before being kidnapped, says Manifesto reporter Giuliana Sgrena, who was kidnapped in Fallujah last February, in a recorded interview. I wanted to get the story out, but my kidnappers would not permit it.

RAI News 24 will broadcast video and photographs taken in the Iraqi city during and after the November 2004 bombardment which prove that the US military, contrary to statements in a December 9 communiqué from the US Department of State, did not use phosphorus to illuminate enemy positions (which would have been legitimate) but instend dropped white phosphorus indiscriminately and in massive quantities on the city's neighborhoods.

In the investigative story, produced by Maurizio Torrealta, dramatic footage is shown revealing the effects of the bombardment on civilians, women and children, some of whom were surprised in their sleep.

The investigation will also broadcast documentary proof of the use in Iraq of a new napalm formula called MK77. 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

Fallujah. La strage nascosta [Fallujah, The Concealed Massacre] will be shown on RAI News tomorrow November 8th at 07:35 (via HOT BIRDTM statellite, Sky Channel 506 and RAI-3), and rebroadcast by HOT BIRDTM satellite and Sky Channel 506 at 17:00 [5 pm] and over the next two days.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House

one year ago.....fallujah offensive investigated:

Marines in Fallujah

Bogert 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.

By DARRIN MORTENSON
Staff Writer

04/11/04 "North County Times" -- -- FALLUJAH, Iraq ---- The siege is still on but the violence subsided some in Fallujah on Saturday as American military and political leaders gave members of the new Iraqi government a day to persuade insurgents to stop resisting U.S. troops in the city.

Wire services reported U.S. forces and Iraqi insurgents had agreed to begin a cease-fire at 10 this morning, but U.S. military authorities did not confirm the agreement. One condition of the cease-fire reportedly was that U.S. forces begin a withdrawal from the city within 12 hours. A member of the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, Mahmoud Othman, told Associated Press, "I don't know how likely that is."

Insurgents and Marines occasionally skirmished along the city's fringes, but for the most part, each still hunted the other from afar.

For the third straight day, American jets hurled 500-pound bombs at buildings. Insurgents fired rockets and lobbed mortars at the Marine positions, which are no secret now, six days after troops first encircled this embattled city northwest of Baghdad.

What appears to be a standoff, however, is just the calm before the storm, Marines said.

"I don't want to have to level the city," said Maj. Brandon McGowan, as some of his men set up in an emptied apartment building to watch activity in the city beyond.

McGowan is the executive officer of the Camp Pendleton-based 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment ---- the battalion that has lost two Marines since Monday while fighting for a foothold in Fallujah's tough northwest corner.

"I don't think the Marines really want to level the city, but," McGowan shrugged and trailed off, like many Marines have in the last two days as a full-scale assault on the city becomes the obvious next step.

More Marines arrive

About 1,000 infantrymen from a third Southern California Marine battalion arrived Saturday to reinforce the cordon established by two other battalions, and to join in whatever offensive operation follows this bloody and costly Holy Week.

According to The Associated Press, the U.S. military's death toll from the week of fighting across the country stood at 47. The fighting has killed more than 500 Iraqis ---- including more than 280 in Fallujah, a hospital official said. At least 648 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

Officials said about 60,000 residents fled the city Friday in vehicles and on foot from checkpoints in the south.

In the north, however, no men are allowed to leave the part of town where insurgents concentrated last week and have led coordinated attacks in neighborhoods they fortified with bunkers, barricades and weapons caches.

Military officials no longer speak of winning hearts and minds in Fallujah.

"At this point, this is conventional war," said McGowan, who added that what could go down in Fallujah is really the kind of head-on operation the Marines are trained for. "At the small unit level, the squad level, it may already seem like it has started. But really, at the battalion level and higher, this thing has not even really begun."

Marines wait for offensive

The street fighting that characterized the week since Tuesday hushed some in the north Saturday as troops held the first few blocks, awaiting orders to advance.

Other Marines who were dug in along the cordon dug deeper to survive increasingly accurate mortar and rocket attacks.

Rockets exploded about 9 p.m. Friday, kicking up rocks and dirt and knocking out power to a neighborhood Marines had taken over as a defensive base.

"I was walking right over where the second or third one hit when I just yelled 'Hey! Hit the deck!' Lance Cpl. Adam Scott, 24, of Mustang, Okla., said Saturday morning, recounting the attack the night before. "We got lucky that time."

After that attack, like the countless other attacks, Marines counted heads, checked for damage to vehicles and weapons, and got on with nightly watch shifts.

Others tried to snatch a few hours of sleep between the outbursts of wild dogs and before the AC-130 Specter gunship started its nightly thundering, enforcing the nightly curfew from the sky.

Day six dawns

The sun up and the Specter gone, Marines awoke Saturday to faint sirens from ambulances collecting the night's casualties from a sector of the city that has been reduced to a smoldering ghost town.

The calm on Saturday gave troops only enough time to come to grips with their environment and start thinking about the toll the fighting has taken.

At the city's littered and dusty northern edge, stinking swamps have formed where tanks and tracked vehicles have broken farmers' water lines and carved out farmland to the water table, which is shallow from the Euphrates River some half-mile away.

Soggy trash and human waste from makeshift latrines stew under the unforgiving sun, attracting hordes of fat black flies.

The tenacious flies ---- that troops liken to the insurgents because "they just keep on coming" ---- land on food and cover hands and faces that never really get clean in the dust and sweat of the Marines' wartime workday.

Fighting from a distance

After pounding parts of the city for days, many Marines say the recent combat escalated into more than they had planned for, but not more than they could handle.

"It's a war," said Cpl. Nicholas Bogert, 22, of Morris, N.Y.

Bogert 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.

"We had all this SASO (security and stabilization operations) training back home," he said. "And then this turns into a real goddamned war."

Just as his team started to eat a breakfast of packaged rations Saturday, Bogert got a fire mission over the radio.

"Stand by!" he yelled, sending Lance Cpls. Jonathan Alexander and Jonathan Millikin scrambling to their feet.

Shake 'n' bake

Joking and rousting each other like boys just seconds before, the men were instantly all business. With fellow Marines between them and their targets, a lot was at stake.

Bogert received coordinates of the target, plotted them on a map and called out the settings for the gun they call "Sarah Lee."

Millikin, 21, from Reno, Nev., and Alexander, 23, from Wetumpka, Ala., quickly made the adjustments. They are good at what they do.

"Gun up!" Millikin yelled when they finished a few seconds later, grabbing a white phosphorus round from a nearby ammo can and holding it over the tube.

"Fire!" Bogert yelled, as Millikin dropped it.

The boom kicked dust around the pit as 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.

They say they have never seen what they've hit, nor did they talk about it as they dusted off their breakfast and continued their hilarious routine of personal insults and name-calling.

Say 'cheese'

Every day since they started firing rounds into the city, other Marines have stopped by the mortar pit to take a turn dropping mortars into the tube and firing at some unseen target.

Like tourists at some macabre carnival, some bring cameras and have other troops snap photos of their combat shot. Even the battalion surgeon fired a few Saturday, just for sport.

Everyone wants to "get some," the troops explain, some joking that Fallujah is like a live-fire range.

Some have started to think of what happens after all the guns go silent.

"I just don't want to come home and have someone calling me a baby killer," Alexander said after firing dozens of high explosive mortar rounds into the city. "That would piss me off."

Alexander said no one has told him what the charges have hit.

Anxious to move again

While they've hunkered down in their sandbagged positions, some of the Marines have come out of their shell.

As the sun set Saturday, Lance Cpl. Jose Robles, 20, of Tustin and Cpl. Juan Perez, 24, of the Bronx, N.Y., took a moment to feed their neighbors: four wild fuzzy puppies that live in holes and tunnels they've burrowed in the huge berm along Fallujah's train tracks.

The puppies wagged filthy tails and let out little squeals as the Marines fed them from the packaged rations. The puppies didn't care for the food any more than the Marines, but lapped up copious amounts of water before the two troops went back to work.

Earlier Saturday, Lance Cpl. Joseph McCarthy ate a big black dung beetle to win a $40 bet, and to kill the time.

"That one tasted kinda funky," he said, washing it down with a swallow of water. "The big long one I ate last year tasted better."

Just killing time

Sitting atop a train trestle watching bombs drop on the city beyond, Lance Cpl. Scott said such antics didn't shock him. The Marines were just trying to deal with time and discomfort while they wait for the battle for Fallujah to really kick off.

"I'm glad to see we're not going to be (messing) around anymore," Scott said. "We're going to finally go in and get it done. I just don't want to have to come back here a year from now to have to finish something."

What the "it" is that needs to get done is something most Marines don't explain, but they say "it" is what they do best.

"They were never really that comfortable with the 'no better friend part,' " said Navy chaplain Lt. Scott Redatski, referring to "No better friend ---- No worse enemy" ---- the motto the Marines used when there was still talk of trying to win hearts and minds in Fallujah.

"But they seem pretty ready to be 'no worse enemy,' " Redatski said. "This is what they're trained for. This is what they do."

Staff writer Darrin Mortenson and staff photographer Hayne Palmour are reporting from Iraq, where they are with Camp Pendleton Marines. Their coverage is collected at www.nctimes.com/military/iraq.

© 1997-2005 North County Times

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House