WILLY PETE DOES FALLUJAH - Fallujah, the Guernica of our Times, Part 8

Fallujah, the Guernica of Our Times

Part 8: Willy Pete Does Fallujah

By Mac McKinney

"I was on the point of crying at her, 'Don't you hear them?' The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of the rising wind. 'The horror! The horror!'

- Marlow from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

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On March 3, 2005, Dr Khalid ash Shaykhli, an Iraqi health ministry official, made a shocking announcement at a Baghdad press conference, stating that his medical team had discovered that the US military had employed chemical weapons in their November, 2004 assault that all but leveled the city of Fallujah, weapons that included mustard gas, nerve gas and burning agents. The Australian Journal, Green Left Weekly, March 16, 2005 issue quoted from Al Jazeera satellite news that "Shaykhli said that during the US assault, fleeing residents described 'seeing corpses that had melted, which suggests that US troops used napalm gas, a poisonous compound of polystyrene and aircraft fuel which melts bodies'. He also said that his researchers had found evidence of the use of mustard gas and nerve gas. 'We found dozens, not to say hundreds, of stray dogs, cats, and birds that had perished as a result of those gasses', he told the press conference, which was held in the health ministry's Baghdad building."
(http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/619/619p15b.htm )

Although there were several prominent American media representatives there, only the Christian Scientist Monitor carried this story, and only on its website. Once again the American media was ignoring a report of a major American breach of international conventions. Even so, the Pentagon was already getting defensive as early as December of 2004, made nervous perhaps by Islamic website charges as well as GI blogs and "after-action reports" on the Internet that were touting the use of Willy Pete (white phosphorus), propane bombs and napalm against Fallujah. Official Pentagon spokesmen began claiming that white phosphorus was only used as an illumination device:

Official Denials

"In December the US Government formally denied the reports (based on insurgent claims-parentheses mine), 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.' (Peter Popham, the Independent UK)
(http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/printer_110805Z.shtml )

But the charges persisted throughout 2005, strengthened by bloggers who had started looking back at reports issued by embedded reporters in Fallujah during the November, 2004 siege, bloggers such as Mike Whitney:

"The US also used napalm in the siege of Falluja as was reported in the UK Mirror ('Falluja Napalmed', 11-28-04) The Mirror said, '[that] President George Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet-fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun the world. Reports claim that innocent civilians have died in napalm attacks, which turn victims into human fireballs as the gel bonds flames to flesh. Since the American assault on Falluja there have been reports of 'melted' corpses, which appeared to have napalm injuries." ("Incinerating Iraqis; The Napalm Cover Up" by Mike Whitney)
(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9307.htm )

Finally, the official Pentagon story-line began to unravel after several revelations surfaced toward the end of 2005, the most powerful being an Italian documentary by Sigfrido Ranucci of RAINews24 entitled "Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre."
(http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/en/body.asp )

To again quote from Peter Popham of The Independent UK, Tuesday, November 8, 2005 regarding this film:

"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.

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