Sickening
U.S. forces in Iraq have used incendiary white phosphorus against civilians and a firebomb similar to napalm against military targets, Italian state-run broadcaster RAI reported on Tuesday.
A RAI documentary showed images of bodies recovered after a November 2004 offensive by U.S. troops on the town of Falluja, which it said proved the use of white phosphorus against men, women and children who were burned to the bone.
“I do know that white phosphorus was used,” said Jeff Englehart in the RAI documentary, which identified him as a former soldier in the U.S. 1st Infantry Division in Iraq.
The U.S. military says white phosphorus is a conventional weapon and says it does not use any chemical arms.
“Burned bodies. Burned children and burned women,” said Englehart, who RAI said had taken part in the Falluja offensive. “White phosphorus kills indiscriminately.”
A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said he did not recall white phosphorus being used in Falluja. “I do not recall the use of white phosphorus during the offensive operations in Falluja in the fall of 2004,” Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan said.
An incendiary device, white phosphorus is used by the military to conceal troop movements with smoke, mark targets or light up combat areas. The use of incendiary weapons against civilians has been banned by the Geneva Convention since 1980.
The United States did not sign the relevant protocol to the convention, a U.N. official in New York said.
This report may be wrong, or a malicious attempt to make the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld military look truly monstrous.* But given everything else that we know about – Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, the black sites, the murders and “renditions” and refusal to abide by any law other than the president’s will – I can only assume this is probably true. And note: white phosphorous, an incendiary, is classified as a conventional, ie non-chemical, weapon. Well, since ketchup’s been a vegetable since the Reagan administration, I suppose napalm-like substances can be classified as little worse than rubber darts.
What will it take to stop these horrors? When will this country demand, with one voice, that torture and atrocities committed by the US stop, and stop, now, today?
*For the benefit of the rightwingers amongst us, who assume that those of us opposed to Bush/Iraq hate the military and think all soldiers are sadistic beasts, I don’t believe the majority of American soldiers behave like the Abu Ghraib torturers. Obviosuly.
But I do believe that soldiers must follow orders from their higher ups and are often in no position to question what may be morally questionable orders. The sadistic beasts are the ones who condoned and ordered atrocities, not the soldiers who have been placed in an untenable position and cannot refuse without risking court martial or perhaps even summary execution.