November 7, 2005
Daily Kos is reporting:
RAI
News 24, an Italian satellite TV news program, is broadcasting a
documentary charging that the US used a new formulation of an
napalm-like incendiary chemical weapon against the civilian population
of Fallujah in firebombing attacks on the city. In
soldier slang they call it [MK77} 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. That
the US has used white phosphorus to firebomb civilian targets with MK77
ordinance in assaults on Fallujah has been well known and leaking out
around the edges of the US corporate media for more than a year.
It also has been admitted to, indirectly, by the Pentagon.
In June of 2005, the Independent/UK ran an article titled "US lied to Britain over use of napalm in Iraq war."Despite
persistent rumours of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of
incendiary weapons such as napalm, Adam Ingram, the Defence minister,
assured Labour MPs in January that US forces had not used a new
generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.
But
Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter
obtained by The London Independent that he had inadvertently misled
Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. "The US confirmed
to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and
this was the basis of my response to you," he told Mr Cohen. "I regret
to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must
now correct the position."
Mr Ingram said 30 MK77 firebombs were
used by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in the invasion of Iraq
between 31 March and 2 April 2003. They were used against military
targets "away from civilian targets", he said. This avoids breaching
the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which
permits their use only against military targets. Of course Ingram was still being fed a load of crap by the Pentagon. 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.
On the
rare occasion where the US media has touched on the story, it has
obscured it by burying it. Consider the following excerpt from a San
Francisco Chronicle report on the attack on Fallajuah from 2004, beginning with graph 26:"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." Some independent journalists have had the courage to expose what the US has been up to.
Dahr
Jamail, who has reported aggressively on the US assaults on Fallujah,
has authored numerous articles on the use of unconventional weapons and
what amount to war crimes by the United States. The articles entitled
Covering up Napalm in Iraq; 'Unusual Weapons' Used in Fallujah; An
Eyewitness Account of Fallujah; Iraq: The Devastation; Odd Happenings
in Fallujah; More Evidence Indicts US; The Failed Seige of Fallujah; US
Claims Over Seige Challenged; and Media Held Guilty of Deception can be
found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
The
long-term significance of the RAI News 24 documentary is that the story
of US war crimes in Iraq, while untold by a compromised US media, won't
stay buried.
It's sure to come back again and again as the
secrets behind the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history
spill out.
There can be no effective inoculation against a virus attacking the soul a nation other than truth.
 "You
smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world
smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning... The
smell...that gasoline smell...smell[s] like...victory."
— Robert Duvall, "Apocalypse Now" (1979)
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