Guardian.UK- George Monbiot: Behind the phosphorus clouds are war crimes within

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Tue, 22 Nov 2005 05:47:12 -0800

[Zepps_News] George Monbiot: Behind the phosphorus clouds are

war crimes within war crimes

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

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

The Guardian

 

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 " .

 

Article continues

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

 

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