UPDATE 5: follow the continuing controversy over Fallujah WP here.
UPDATE 4: A marine speaks:
I was with a Marine Corps unit on the outskirts of An Nasiriyah, Iraq in March 2003. [. . .] An Nasiriyah was proving very difficult to secure, so that city became the intregal objective for the Marine Corps.
Anyway, I recall vividly a incident that took place at our position. A Marine Artillery battery was within 500 meters of our position and they were providing indirect fire support in support of ground operations occuring in and around An Nasiriyah. I recall them shooting at a target in a tree line, across the river, maybe 700-1000 meters to the east of our position. When the rounds were shot out, they seemed to explode over the target area. A dense white cloud rained down on the tree line and you could see some enemy vehicles attempt to flee the area. I knew from watching similar explosions in training exercises that the cloud raining down on the target area was a white phosphorus round. They shot about 5 of them from my recollection.
I recall thinking, "Man, that is some evil stuff there." Knowing what I know about Willy Pete, it would be a terrible way to die. White Phosphorus is supposed to be used to mark targets for aviation flying high over an objective area. And I know for a fact that no fixed-winged aviation was dropping ordnance in that area, it was too close to friendlies. I know this for a FACT. To see what I saw, not 1000 meters from where I was, in retrospect, is really frightening. I remember feeling like the more of them we killed, the quicker we could go home. And I am positive that is how every servicemember in a combat zone feels.
This is what I saw. No lies, no embellishing, just true facts. We did use Willy Pete on enemies (and due to urban operations, most likely on civilians too).
UPDATE 3: Backstory on US use of incendiaries in Iraq (and the NY Times reaction) here.
UPDATE 2: Needlenose has a link to an English-language version of the RAI documentary 'Massacre in Fallujah'. Astonishing. This is your/our government in action, US-ers. You/we paid for that Willy Pete (just as you/we are paying for people to be tortured). What are you/what are we going to do about it? Should we stage a taxpayers' revolt? A general strike? Why aren't these and other options being discussed? So much commentary, so little action. Where is the progressive leader that through the power of organized non-violent effective protest can help us bring this insanity to an end? -- Jessica
UPDATE: video is available here and here. Reaction by the NY Times is here.
For those not yet familiar with Chomsky's classic essay, "The Backroom Boys", he cites in the opening pages the following gruesome description of the effects of napalm:
The original product wasn’t so hot–if the gooks were quick they could scrape it off. So the boys started adding polystyrene–now it sticks like shit to a blanket. But then if the gooks jumped under water it stopped burning, so they started adding Willie Peter [WP–white phosphorous] so’s to make it burn better. It’ll even burn under water now. And one drop is enough, it’ll keep on burning right down to the bone so they die anyway from phosphorous poisoning.
“Napalm is the most terrible pain you can imagine,” she said. “Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. Napalm generates temperatures of 800 to 1,200 degrees Celsius.”
(Dick Cheney, waxing Han Solo-ish: "I dunno, I can imagine a lot".)
The international community outlawed napalm against civilians in 1980 (the US, needless to say, never felt need to sign on). Of course, it's not so nice to use this against non-"civilians", either; and since some non-civilians are guerilla freedom fighters, who don't have the industrial apparatus to produce or deploy this substance, one might take even this to give an unfair advantage to state power. Just saying.
Now, the US destroyed its last stocks of napalm in 2001. Nice guys, right? Wrong. They got rid of napalm because now they've got even nastier stuff which isn't called "napalm", it's called "mark 77" (which to its credit, is environmentally friendlier).
By its own admission, the US used "Mark 77" in Fallujah:
"Usually we keep the gloves on," said Army Capt. Erik Krivda, of Gaithersburg, Md, the senior officer in charge of the 1st Infantry Division's Task Force 2-2 tactical operations command center. "For this operation, we took the gloves off."
Some artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water. Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns.
Kamal Hadeethi, a physician at a regional hospital, said, "The corpses of the mujahedeen which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted."
(hat tip to dbnkr.) Taking the gloves off? Nice metaphor. Usually the US military plays by Marquess of Queensbury rules, of course.
As dbnkr (above cite) points out about the "Mark 77", these attacks also constituted attacks on civilians:
MK77 is a 750-lb bomb consisting of an aluminum container filled with 75 gallons of kerosene-based jet fuel, polystyrene and benzene. When detonated it creates a sticky combustible gel that cannot be exstinguished. As if this type of weapon was not dangerous enough, there is no stabilizing tail or fin on the MK77, thus making the bomb very imprecise. In military parlance it is what's called a "dumb bomb." Used against any densely-populated area it is an indiscriminate killer.
dbnkr rounds up an excellent series of citizen journalism by Dahr Jamail for those who want to go deeper: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Fortunately, the world media, especially in Italy, are waking up to these sadistic atrocities:
Italian media going full-bore on the Bush Administration. After its revelations on the subterfuge behind the Nigergate forgeries, documentary evidence of the use by US troops of phosphorus and a new formulaton of napalm [MK77] on the Sunni civilian population will be broadcast tomorrow on international satellite TV. Global coverage of the atrocity, folks.
The story from today's Repubblica (hat tip and translation due to paper tigress):
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.
