United States used weapons of mass destruction in Iraq

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"At intervals, white phosphorus rounds would illuminate entire sections of the city, showering down balls of orange flame and leaving behind smoky jellyfish-shaped silhouettes." --Newsweek, November 22, 2004.
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In the November 8, 2004, Operation Phantom Fury, the U.S.-led assault on Fallujah, "[s]ome artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water. Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns," the Washington Post reported November 10, 2004.

On Wednesday, November 16, 2005, the Pentagon "acknowledged using incendiary white-phosphorus munitions in a 2004 offensive against insurgents in the Iraqi city of Falluja and defended their use as legal, amid concerns by arms control advocates," Reuters reported November 16, 2005. "Army Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. military had not used the highly flammable weapons against civilians."

"Shake 'n' Bake"

The California counties of San Diego and Riverside North County Times reported April 10, 2004, on the "siege" of Fallujah, during which Jonathan Millikin, 21, from Reno, Nevada grabbed "a white phosphorus round from a nearby ammo can" and held it over the firing tube before dropping it in ...

"The boom kicked dust around the pit as [the soldiers] 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.
"They say they have never seen what they've hit, nor did they talk about it as they dusted off their breakfast and continued their hilarious routine of personal insults and name-calling."

The "Fight for Fallujah"

The following comes from the November 9, 2005, Daily Kos:

  • "WP [i.e., white phosphorus rounds] 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 [high explosive]. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out." --Field Artillery Magazine, March/April 2005.
  • "In other words the claim by the US Government that White Phosphorus was used only for illumination at Fallujah had been pre-emptively debunked by the Army. Indeed, the article goes on to make clear that soldiers would have liked to have saved more WP rounds to use for 'lethal missions'," Steve D. wrote.
  • "... 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." --Mark Kraft, Altercation, MSNBC, November 9, 2005.

See Digital Globe Maps of Al Fallujah September 15, 2002, and November 5, 2004 for views of the city before the November 2004 assault. Global Security also has numerous Digital Globe aerial view Maps of Al Fallujah dating from 2002 and November 4 and 5, 2004, and Troop Movements November 9, November 10, November 14, 2004.

The Italian Report

Related SourceWatch Resources

External links

Websites

Definition

Photographs

  • U.S. Army Redstone Technical Test Center, Redstone Arsenal. Scroll down to second row of pictures and the one described as "White phosphorous obscurant" shows the "smoky jellyfish-shaped silhouettes" described in Newsweek, November 22, 2004.

Documents & Publications

Napalm

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2004

2005

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