November 11, 2005
A March '05 publication
by the US Army confirms that US soldiers used white
phosphorus offensively in the Battle of Fallujah. This
directly contradicts statements made by the U.S. Department
of Defense and by the US State Department. The new
discovery also backs up the allegations made in an Italian documentary
screened this week concerning the use of white
phosphorous in Fallujah. (See
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0511/S00143.htm
) The broadcast shows video of a U.S.
helicopter repeatedly raining down a bombardment of white
phosphorus across Fallujah at night. The U.S. State
Department had previously released a statement categorically
denying all use of white phosphorus during the battle of
Fallujah except for illumination purposes. This confirms
several firsthand reports from news sources at the time of
the invasion. In the video, Jeff Englehart, a Marine who
served in Fallujah and who maintains a weblog at http://www.ftssoldier.blogspot.com ,
claims that there was widespread, indicriminate use of white
phosphorus in last year's attack on Fallujah. The white
phosphorus hits and disperses into an indiscriminately
lethal cloud with a kill zone approximately a quarter of a
mile wide -- over a tenth of a mile in all directions.
Although white phosphorus often has no effect on clothes,
when it makes contact with a person's skin, it will burn it
down to the bone. If the gas is inhaled, it will blister the
throat and lungs, causing rapid suffocation, burning the
body from the inside.
Englehart heard officers approve
requests for use of white phosphorus on a wide scale
throughout the assault. "It comes across
the radio as a general transmission... we have speakers in
our trucks. 'We're going to drop some Willy Pete.' 'Roger.
Commence bombing'" "We were told going into Fallujah that
every single person going into the combat area that was
walking, talking, breathing was an enemy combatant. . . It
seemed like just a massive killing of Arabs. It looked like
just a massive killing. . . Burned bodies. Burned children.
Burned women. White phosphorus kills
indiscriminately." Englehart also
reported that the invasion of Fallujah was intentionally
delayed by the Bush administration until after the election.
"It's was definitely the case. Even in
the military ranks, we knew what was going on. They told
us..." Here is the story on artillery
use from the March/April edition of the US Army's "Field
Artillery Magazine" : http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0511/S00185.htm The
relevant mentions of white phosphorous in the
article: The munitions we brought to
this fight were . . . illumination
and white phosphorous
(WP, M110 and M825), with point-detonating (PD), delay, time
and variable-time (VT) fuzes.""WP proved to be an
effective and versatile munition. 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."
 What the article does
not say, however, is that 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. This
claim of "shake and bake" is further confirmed in a news
article by an embedded journalist at the time. See
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/04/11/military/iraq/19_30_504_10_04.t
xt "Bogert is a mortar team leader who directed his men to
fire round after round of high explosives and white
phosphorus charges into the city Friday and Saturday, never
knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting
explosions caused. . . they ran through the drill again and
again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and
high explosives they call "shake 'n' bake" into a cluster of
buildings where insurgents have been spotted all
week." This directly contradicts a previous US State
Department statement, (archived at:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0511/S00186.htm) , that
WP was used "very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination
purposes". Video of the Italian broadcast, which made the
original claims, which is online at:
MIRROR 1 and at
MIRROR
2
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