|
The White Death
By Chris Floyd
11/11/05 "Moscow
Times" -- -- This week, the broadcast of a shattering
new documentary,provided fresh confirmation of
a gruesome war crime covered by this column nine months ago: the
use of chemical weapons by U.S. forces during the frenzied
destruction of Fallujah in November 2004.
Using filmed and photographic evidence, eyewitness accounts and
the direct testimony of U.S. soldiers who took part in the
attacks, the documentary -- "Fallujah: The Hidden
Massacre" -- catalogs the American use of white phosphorus
shells and a new, "improved" form of napalm that
turned human beings into "caramelized" fossils, with
their skin dissolved and turned to leather on their bones. The
film was produced by RAI, the Italian state network run by a
government that backed the war.
Vivid images show civilians, including women and children, who
had been burned alive in their homes, even in their beds. This
illegal use of chemical weapons -- at the order of the Bushist
brass -- and the killing of civilians are confirmed by former
U.S. soldiers interviewed on camera. "I heard the order to
pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on
Fallujah," said one soldier, quoted in The Independent.
"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."
The broadcast is an important event: shameful, damning,
convincing. But it shouldn't be news. Earlier this year, as
reported here on March 18, a medical team sent to Fallujah by
the Bush-backed Iraqi interim government issued its findings at
a news conference in Baghdad. The briefing, by Health Ministry
investigator Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, was attended by more than
20 major U.S. and international news outlets. Not a single one
of these bastions of a free and vigorous press reported on the
event. Only a few small venues -- such as the International
Labor Communications Association -- brought word of the
extraordinary revelations to English-speaking audiences.
Yet this highly credible, pro-American official of a
pro-occupation government confirmed, through medical
examinations and the eyewitness testimony of survivors --
including many civilians who had opposed the heavy-handed
insurgent presence in the town -- that "burning
chemicals" had been used in the attack, in direct violation
of international and U.S. law. "All forms of nature were
wiped out" by the substances unleashed in the assault,
including animals that had been killed by gas or chemical fire,
said ash-Shaykhli. But apparently this kind of thing is not
considered news anymore by the corporate gatekeepers of media
"truth."
As we noted here in March, ash-Shaykhli's findings were
buttressed by direct testimony from U.S. Marines filing
"after-action reports" on web sites for military
enthusiasts back home. There, fresh from the battle, soldiers
talked openly of the routine use of Willy Pete, propane bombs
and "jellied gasoline" (napalm) in tactical assaults
in Fallujah. As it says in the scriptures: By their war porn ye
shall know them.
This week, as in March, the Pentagon said it only used white
phosphorus shells in Fallujah for "illumination
purposes." But the documentary's evidence belies them.
Although there are indeed many white bombs bursting in air to
bathe the city in unnatural light, the film clearly shows other
phosphorus shells raining all the way to the ground, where they
explode in fury throughout residential areas and spread their
caramelizing clouds. As Fallujah biologist Mohamed Tareq says in
the film: "A rain of fire fell on the city, the people
struck by this multicolored substance started to burn, we found
people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the
clothes intact."
The slaughter in Fallujah was a microcosm of the entire
misbegotten enterprise launched by those two eminent Christian
statesmen, U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime
Minister Tony Blair: a brutal act of collective punishment for
defying the imperial will, a high-tech turkey shoot that mowed
down the just and unjust alike, an idiotic strategic blunder
that has exacerbated the violence and hatred it was meant to
quell. The vicious overkill of the Fallujah attack -- where an
estimated 1,200 civilians died while almost all of the targeted
insurgents slipped away beforehand -- alienated large swaths of
previously neutral Iraqis and spurred many to join the
resistance. It further entangled the United States and Britain
in a putrid swamp of war crime, state terrorism and atrocity,
dragging them deeper into a moral equivalency with the murderous
extremists whom the Christian leaders so loudly condemn.
Let's give the last word to Jeff Engelhardt, one of the
ex-servicemen featured in the documentary, who recently issued
this plea to his fellow U.S. soldiers on Fight
to Survive, a new dissident web site run by
Iraqi War vets:
"I hope someday you find solace for the orders you have had
to execute, for the carnage you helped take part in, and for the
pride you wear supporting this bloodbath. Until then, you can
only hope for an epiphany, something that stands out as
completely immoral, that convinces you of the inhumanity of this
war. I don't know how much more proof you need. The criminal
outrage of Abu Ghraib, the absolute massacre of Fallujah, the
stray .50 caliber bullets or 40mm grenades or tank rounds fired
in highly packed urban areas, 500-pound bombs dropped on
innocent homes, the use of 25mm depleted uranium rounds, the
inhumane use of white phosphorus, the hate and the blood and the
misunderstandings ... this is the war and the system that you
support."
Annotations
US
forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of
Fallujah
The Independent, Nov. 8, 2005
US
'uses incendiary arms' in Iraq
BBC, Nov. 8, 2005
The
White Death
Empire Burlesque, Nov. 9, 2005
The
Fight for Fallujah
Field Artillery magazine, March 2005
US
Army Admits Use of White Phosphorus as Weapon
Daily Kos, Nov. 9, 2005
Napalm,
Chemical Weapons Used at Fallujah: Iraqi Official
ILCA Online, March 7, 2005
Stories
From Fallujah
Iraq Dispatch, Feb. 8, 2005
Iraqi
Health Ministry Confirms Use of Prohibited Weapons in Attacks on
al-Fallujah
Mafkarat al-Islam (Iraq), March 2, 2005
The
Eyewitnesses Must Be Crazy
Antiwar.com, March 15, 2005
Life
Under the Bombs in Iraq
TomDispatch, Feb. 2, 2005
A War
Crime in Real Time: Obliterating Fallujah
CounterPunch, Nov. 15, 2004
Inside Fallujah: One
Family-s Diary of Terror
Scotland Sunday Herald, Nov. 14, 2004
US
Strikes Raze Fallujah Hospital
BBC, Nov. 6, 2004
Ghost
City Calls for Help
BBC, Nov. 13, 2004
Odd
Happenings in Fallujah
Electronic Iraq, Jan. 18, 2005
American
Heroes
Baghdad Burning, Nov. 16, 2004
Copyright © 2005 The Moscow Times
|
