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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
By
George Monbiot
11/22/05 "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".
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
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
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