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   From: oO@oO.com   
      
   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".   
   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   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)