Fwd: The White Death of Fallujah

[Guest guest]

The White Death of Fallujah

 

By CHRIS FLOYD

 

Last month, 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 American forces during the frenzied,

Bush-ordered destruction of Fallujah in November 2004.

 

Using filmed and photographic evidence, eyewitness accounts, and the direct

testimony of American soldiers who took part in the attacks, the documentary

­ " Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre " ­ catalogues the American use of white

phosphorous 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 use of chemical

weapons ­ at the order of the Bushist brass ­ and the killing of civilians

are confirmed by former American soldiers interviewed on camera. " I heard

the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorous

on Fallujah, " said one soldier, quoted in the Independent. " In military

jargon, it's known as Willy Pete. Phosphorous 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 press conference in Baghdad. The briefing, by

Health Ministry investigator Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, was attended by more

than 20 major American 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 by U.S. forces in the attack, in direct violation of international

and American 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 Dr 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, Dr ash-Shaykhli's findings were buttressed by

direct testimony from U.S. Marines filing " after-action reports " on websites

for military enthusiasts back home. There, fresh from the battle, American

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 phosphorous

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

phosphorous 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 multi-colored substance started to burn,

we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes

intact. "

 

As word of the documentary spread across the Internet and into a very few

mainstream media sources, intrepid investigators dug out even more

confirmation of how Bush's battalions whipped out the Willy Pete and flayed

Fallujah's heathen devils with flesh-eating fire. A Daily Kos diarist,

Stephen D., dug up one of the U.S. military's own publications, Field

Artillery Magazine, which eagerly related the use of white phosphorous,

which " proved to be an effective and versatile munition, " the article said.

" 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. We fired 'shake

and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to

take them out. "

 

Mr. D also points to a comment on Altercation.com, that provides further

ammunition ­ for " illumination purposes " ­ on the effect of white

phosphorous on human beings. There, Mark Kraft writes: " There is no way you

can use white phosphorus like that without forming a deadly chemical cloud

that kills everything within a tenth of a mile in all directions from where

it hits. Obviously, the effect of such deadly clouds weren't just

psychological in nature. "

 

Another Kossack, " Hunter, " digs up mention of Willy Pete use as a weapon in

Washington Post reports from the battlefield itself last November. He then

takes on the hair-splitters who immediately arose on the Right to declare

that white phosphorous is not itself a banned substance, so it's OK to

incinerate children with it. Hunter's incandescant irony is worth quoting at

length:

 

" First, I think it should be a stated goal of United States policy to not

melt the skin off of children. As a natural corollary to this goal, I think

the United States should avoid dropping munitions on civilian neighborhoods

which, as a side effect, melt the skin off of children. You can call them

'chemical weapons' if you must, or far more preferably by the more proper

name of 'incendiaries.' The munitions may or may not precisely melt the skin

off of children by setting them on fire; they do melt the skin off of

children, however, through robust oxidation of said skin on said children,

which is indeed colloquially known as 'burning'

 

" And I know it is true, there is some confusion over whether the United

States was a signatory to the Do Not Melt The Skin Off Of Children part of

the Geneva conventions, and whether or not that means we are permitted to

melt the skin off of children, or merely are silent on the whole issue of

melting the skin off of children[However] I am going to come out, to the

continuing consternation of Rush Limbaugh and pro-war supporters everywhere,

as being anti-children-melting, as a matter of general policy. "

 

Meanwhile, in the Guardian, Mike Marquesse pounded home the reality of the

overarching atrocity of the attack:

 

" One year ago this week, US-led occupying forces launched a devastating

assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja. The mood was set by Lt Col Gary

Brandl: 'The enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He's in Falluja. And

we're going to destroy him.'

 

 

" The assault was preceded by eight weeks of aerial bombardment. US troops

cut off the city's water, power and food supplies, condemned as a violation

of the Geneva convention by a UN special rapporteur, who accused occupying

forces of " using hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against

the civilian population " . Two-thirds of the city's 300,000 residents fled,

many to squatters' camps without basic facilities

 

" By the end of operations, the city lay in ruins. Falluja's compensation

commissioner has reported that 36,000 of the city's 50,000 homes were

destroyed, along with 60 schools and 65 mosques and shrines. The US claims

that 2,000 died, most of them fighters. Other sources disagree. When medical

teams arrived in January they collected more than 700 bodies in only one

third of the city. Iraqi NGOs and medical workers estimate between 4,000 and

6,000 dead, mostly civilians -- a proportionately higher death rate than in

Coventry and London during the blitz. "

 

The atrocity-breeding mindset behind the attack was evident from the very

first, as I noted in my Moscow Times column of November 18, 2004: " One of

the first moves in this magnificent feat of arms was the destruction and

capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors ­ and their patients, including

women and children ­ were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN

Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in

the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing

could be used as " propaganda centers, " the Pentagon's " information warfare "

specialists told the NY Times. Unlike the first attack on Fallujah last

spring, there was to be no unseemly footage of gutted children bleeding to

death on hospital beds. This time ­ except for NBC's brief, heavily-edited,

quickly-buried clip of the usual lone " bad apple " shooting a wounded Iraqi

prisoner ­ the visuals were rigorously scrubbed. "

 

When you begin by bombing hospitals, devouring innocent people with hot

jellied death is not exactly a stretch. It is simply part and parcel of the

inhumanity of the Bushist mindset.

 

Indeed, the slaughter in Fallujah was a microcosm of the entire misbegotten

enterprise launched by those two eminent Christian statesmen, Bush and

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 alienated

large swathes 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 ever deeper

into a moral equivalency with the murderous extremists that the Christian

leaders so loudly and self-righteously 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 depleted uranium

rounds, the inhumane use of white phosphorus, the hate and the blood and the

misunderstandingsthis is the war and the system that you support. "

 

Chris Floyd is a columnist for The Moscow Times and regular contributor to

CounterPunch. A new, upgraded version of his blog, " Empire Burlesque, " can

be found at www.chris-floyd.com.