November 11, 2005

This week, the broadcast of a shattering new documentary provided fresh confirmation of a gruesome war crime covered by this column nine months ago: the use of chemical weapons by U.S. forces during the frenzied destruction of Fallujah in November 2004.

Using filmed and photographic evidence, eyewitness accounts and the direct testimony of U.S. soldiers who took part in the attacks, the documentary -- "Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre" -- catalogs the American use of white phosphorus shells and a new, "improved" form of napalm that turned human beings into "caramelized" fossils, with their skin dissolved and turned to leather on their bones. The film was produced by RAI, the Italian state network run by a government that backed the war.

Vivid images show civilians, including women and children, who had been burned alive in their homes, even in their beds. This illegal use of chemical weapons -- at the order of the Bushist brass -- and the killing of civilians are confirmed by former U.S. soldiers interviewed on camera. "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah," said one soldier, quoted in The Independent. "In military jargon, it's known as Willy Pete. Phosphorus burns bodies; in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone. ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 meters is done for."


The broadcast is an important event: shameful, damning, convincing. But it shouldn't be news. Earlier this year, as reported here on March 18, a medical team sent to Fallujah by the Bush-backed Iraqi interim government issued its findings at a news conference in Baghdad. The briefing, by Health Ministry investigator Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, was attended by more than 20 major U.S. and international news outlets. Not a single one of these bastions of a free and vigorous press reported on the event. Only a few small venues -- such as the International Labor Communications Association -- brought word of the extraordinary revelations to English-speaking audiences.

Yet this highly credible, pro-American official of a pro-occupation government confirmed, through medical examinations and the eyewitness testimony of survivors -- including many civilians who had opposed the heavy-handed insurgent presence in the town -- that "burning chemicals" had been used in the attack, in direct violation of international and U.S. law. "All forms of nature were wiped out" by the substances unleashed in the assault, including animals that had been killed by gas or chemical fire, said ash-Shaykhli. But apparently this kind of thing is not considered news anymore by the corporate gatekeepers of media "truth."

As we noted here in March, ash-Shaykhli's findings were buttressed by direct testimony from U.S. Marines filing "after-action reports" on web sites for military enthusiasts back home. There, fresh from the battle, soldiers talked openly of the routine use of Willy Pete, propane bombs and "jellied gasoline" (napalm) in tactical assaults in Fallujah. As it says in the scriptures: By their war porn ye shall know them.

This week, as in March, the Pentagon said it only used white phosphorus shells in Fallujah for "illumination purposes." But the documentary's evidence belies them. Although there are indeed many white bombs bursting in air to bathe the city in unnatural light, the film clearly shows other phosphorus shells raining all the way to the ground, where they explode in fury throughout residential areas and spread their caramelizing clouds. As Fallujah biologist Mohamed Tareq says in the film: "A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multicolored substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact."

The slaughter in Fallujah was a microcosm of the entire misbegotten enterprise launched by those two eminent Christian statesmen, U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair: a brutal act of collective punishment for defying the imperial will, a high-tech turkey shoot that mowed down the just and unjust alike, an idiotic strategic blunder that has exacerbated the violence and hatred it was meant to quell. The vicious overkill of the Fallujah attack -- where an estimated 1,200 civilians died while almost all of the targeted insurgents slipped away beforehand -- alienated large swaths of previously neutral Iraqis and spurred many to join the resistance. It further entangled the United States and Britain in a putrid swamp of war crime, state terrorism and atrocity, dragging them deeper into a moral equivalency with the murderous extremists whom the Christian leaders so loudly condemn.

Let's give the last word to Jeff Engelhardt, one of the ex-servicemen featured in the documentary, who recently issued this plea to his fellow U.S. soldiers on Fight to Survive, a new dissident web site run by Iraqi War vets:

"I hope someday you find solace for the orders you have had to execute, for the carnage you helped take part in, and for the pride you wear supporting this bloodbath. Until then, you can only hope for an epiphany, something that stands out as completely immoral, that convinces you of the inhumanity of this war. I don't know how much more proof you need. The criminal outrage of Abu Ghraib, the absolute massacre of Fallujah, the stray .50 caliber bullets or 40mm grenades or tank rounds fired in highly packed urban areas, 500-pound bombs dropped on innocent homes, the use of 25mm depleted uranium rounds, the inhumane use of white phosphorus, the hate and the blood and the misunderstandings ... this is the war and the system that you support."

Annotations


US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah
The Independent, Nov. 8, 2005

US 'uses incendiary arms' in Iraq
BBC, Nov. 8, 2005

The White Death
Empire Burlesque, Nov. 9, 2005

The Fight for Fallujah
Field Artillery magazine, March 2005

US Army Admits Use of White Phosphorus as Weapon
Daily Kos, Nov. 9, 2005

Napalm, Chemical Weapons Used at Fallujah: Iraqi Official
ILCA Online, March 7, 2005

Stories From Fallujah
Iraq Dispatch, Feb. 8, 2005

Iraqi Health Ministry Confirms Use of Prohibited Weapons in Attacks on al-Fallujah
Mafkarat al-Islam (Iraq), March 2, 2005

The Eyewitnesses Must Be Crazy
Antiwar.com, March 15, 2005

Life Under the Bombs in Iraq
TomDispatch, Feb. 2, 2005

A War Crime in Real Time: Obliterating Fallujah
CounterPunch, Nov. 15, 2004

Inside Fallujah: One Family-s Diary of Terror
Scotland Sunday Herald, Nov. 14, 2004

US Strikes Raze Fallujah Hospital
BBC, Nov. 6, 2004

Ghost City Calls for Help
BBC, Nov. 13, 2004

Odd Happenings in Fallujah
Electronic Iraq, Jan. 18, 2005

American Heroes
Baghdad Burning, Nov. 16, 2004