Did United States troops use chemical weapons in Fallujah? The answer is yes. The proof is not 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 Fallujah 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 Fallujah. ”’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 and 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. But it becomes a chemical weapon as soon as it is used directly against people.
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 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 ”sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes”. They were fired ”to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters”.
Confronted with the new evidence, last 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 … 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 Fallujah as a chemical weapon.
The invaders have been forced into a similar climbdown over the use of napalm in Iraq. In December last year, British 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 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 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 British MP, Harry Cohen, refined Mahon’s question. He asked ”whether mark 77 firebombs have been used by coalition forces”. The US, the minister replied, has ”confirmed to us that they have not used mark 77 firebombs … in Iraq at any time”. The US government had lied to him. 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 use them against another nation. And the Iraqi people needed to be liberated from his oppressive regime. Tony Blair, Colin Powell and Blair’s special representative for Iraq, Ann Clwyd, and many others referred, in making their case, to Hussein’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?
Hussein, 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. — Â