| Tuesday, November 08, 2005 |
| Going medieval on us |
According to a diarist named Paper Tigress at DailyKos, the Italian media will broadcast on Tuesday "documentary evidence of the use by US troops of phosphorus and a new formulaton of napalm [MK77] on the Sunni civilian population." I checked out and Google translated the Repubblica article linked to by the Koskid, and it read (very roughly) like a "Dateline" style documentary which will purport that white phosphorous used to illuminate night targets was somehow deployed against enemy insurgents and civilians in and around Fallujah. I don't know what the evidence of this is, but the news organization RAI 24 is claiming they have photographs. We'll see if this gets beyond Kos and the HuffPo tomorrow.
Update: Shit. It already has. Here's the Indpendent's version for Tuesday:
Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.
Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumours have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city.
On 10 November last year, the Islam Online website wrote: "US troops are reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous gas in its large-scale offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion of Fallujah, a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein's alleged gassing of the Kurds in 1988."
The website quoted insurgent sources as saying: "The US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally banned chemical weapons."
In December the US government formally denied the reports, describing them as "widespread myths". "Some news accounts have claimed that US forces have used 'outlawed' phosphorus shells in Fallujah," the USinfo website said. "Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes.
"They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."
But now new information has surfaced, including hideous photographs and videos and interviews with American soldiers who took part in the Fallujah attack, which provides graphic proof that phosphorus shells were widely deployed in the city as a weapon.
In a documentary to be broadcast by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, this morning, a former American soldier who fought at Fallujah says: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. 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 metres is done for." ...(click the link above to read more) The story and video are up at www.rainews24.it. This ain't good, folks. In the RAINews piece (don't know if this translated link will work, but here it is) the "American solider" quoted above is credited as a "Jeff Eglehart," and he goes on to describe the supposed use of white phosphorous and its "irreversible damage" to human flesh.
Honestly, I don't know how believable any of this is (I'm sure Eglehart will be well researched in a couple of days). I watched the video, and it's absolutely impossible to tell if it's real or a put-on. "Eglehart" is not credited by rank or unit, or even which branch of the military he's supposed to be in, so you can't even tell if he's really a member of the American military at all.
But you know what? It doesn't matter whether it's believable. This will be as damaging as Abu-Ghraib -- if not worse. And this while the president and vice president dicker back and forth about whether or not we're going to be a nation that employs torture as a matter of policy.
Meanwhile, this all comes just as it's time for the U.S. to go back to the United Nations to try and extend the American mandate to have our troops in Iraq (despite that country now supposedly being self-governing.) Why we would want to stay there another year is beyond me (I'm for pulling out the bulk of our troops and leaving only expert trainers behind to polish up the Iraqi forces). But how on earth do we ask for that mandate with so many clouds hanging over our prosecution of the war so far? Thus far, we've been accused of torture, of allowing the widespread looting of Iraq's treasures, of cheating the Iraqi government out of some $200 million, of just plain incompetence ... and now, of using the same kinds of weapons against the Iraqi people that we supposedly went to war to punish Saddam Hussein for.
For Willy Pete's sake what next???
Tags: Iraq, Middle East, War, Terrorism, Foreign Policy, Torture |
posted by JReid @ 12:23 AM   |
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