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| 7/12 |
| 2005/11/16-17 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:40610 Activity:nil 90%like:40601 |
11/15 Pentagon used white phosphorous in Iraq:
http://tinyurl.com/8phfo (news.yahoo.com)
\_ yeah, we know. the u.s. didn't sign any treaties prohibiting WP use
as an anti-personnel weapon against combatants, so it's "legal" ...
even though it fucks up your lungs (in enclosed spaces) and also
acts as napalm-lite (if it gets on you). Your jaw only falls off
with long-term exposure (months/years). fyi, it's "legal" to use
napalm against military targets too, although the military says it
decommissioned its napalm stores (they had better napalm-like stuff
to use in 2003 Baghdad, no need for Original Napalm(TM)).
\_ The very concept of legal or illegal weapons is just stupid.
If you're willing to kill people, you're willing to kill people.
Civilians get killed by bullets, bombs, fire, cold, disease,
starvation, land minds, etc, etc in war. War kills civilians.
Now if you wanted to declare genocidal race destroying bio
weapons or nukes or whatever 'illegal' sure, that makes sense
in a twisted sort of way but not that it matters if someone
manages to wipe out the entire race anyway. The M16 has killed
more people than WP or napalm. Let's declare the M16 an illegal
weapon. Whatever. This is all bullshit to keep food on the
table of diplomats, lawyers, politicians, and other scum.
\_ Is the previous poster an Asian?
\_ We could flatten the entire country with nukes and we'd be
almost 100% sure we would have "won" the war.
\_ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4442156.stm
http://chris-floyd.com/fallujah
Remember when Saddam Hussein was the bad guy for using Chemical
weapons on civilians? Turns out we are doing the same thing.
\_ "but is not illegal and is not classified as a chemical
weapon"
\_ We should fight with big fluffy pillows instead.
Hypoallergenic, of course. Otherwise that could be
construed as biological warfare. Did we ever not sign
a treaty to not use fluffy hypoallergenic pillows in a
way we did not use?
\_ We should use the neutron bomb. It's the most moral
weapon ever devised.
http://boingboing.net/profits_of_fear.html
\_ Is that what you got from reading those two articles?
\_ The story from the government keeps changing ...
1) We didn't use WP
2) We used it, but only to "light up" the battlefield
3) We used it, but not in neighborhoods full of civilians
\_ Yeah, but what do you expect? I wouldn't be surprised if
the official rules said "don't use WP to flush out targets"
but give some marines underfire WP, what do you think
they're going to do with it? |
| 7/12 |
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| tinyurl.com/8phfo -> news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051116/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_white_phosphorous Pentagon officials acknowledged Tuesday that US troops used white p hosphorous as a weapon against insurgent strongholds during the battle o f Fallujah last November. But they denied an Italian television news rep ort that the spontaneously flammable material was used against civilians . Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman, said that while white phosp horous is most frequently used to mark targets or obscure a position, it was used at times in Fallujah as an incendiary weapon against enemy com batants. The spokesman referred reporters to an article in the March-April 2005 ed ition of the Army's Field Artillery magazine, an official publication, i n which veterans of the Fallujah fight spelled out their use of white ph osphorous and other weapons. The authors used the shorthand "WP" in refe rring to white phosphorous. "WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition," the authors wrote. "We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fi ght, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench l ines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE (hig h explosive)" munitions. "We fired shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out." The authors added, in citing lessons for future urban battles, that fire- support teams should have used another type of smoke bomb for screening missions in Fallujah "and saved our WP for lethal missions." The battle for Fallujah was the most intense and deadly fight of the war, after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. The city, about 35 miles west of Baghdad on the Euphrates River, was a key insurgent stronghold. The a uthors of the "after action" report said they encountered few civilians in their area of operations. Italian communists held a sit-in Monday in front of the US Embassy in R ome to protest the reported use by American troops of white phosphorous. Italy's state-run RAI24 news television aired a documentary last week a lleging the US used white phosphorous shells in a "massive and indiscr iminate way" against civilians during the Fallujah offensive. The State Department, in response, initially denied that US troops had used white phosphorous against enemy forces. "They were fired into the a ir to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters." The department later said its statement had been incorrect. "There is a great deal of misinformation feeding on itself about US for ces allegedly using outlawed' weapons in Fallujah," the department said . Venable said white phosphorous shells are a standard weapon used by field artillery units and are not banned by any international weapons convent ion to which the US is a signatory. White phosphorous is a colorless-to-yellow translucent wax-like substance with a pungent, garlic-like smell. The form used by the military ignite s once it is exposed to oxygen, producing such heat that it bursts into a yellow flame and produces a dense white smoke. It can cause painful bu rn injuries to exposed human flesh. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. |
| news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4442156.stm Printable version Iraq probes US phosphorus weapons Residents pick through the rubble of a house destroyed in Falluja The US offensive in Falluja reduced much of the city to rubble An Iraqi human rights team has gone to the city of Falluja to investigate the use of white phosphorus as a weapon by US forces, a minister has to ld the BBC. Acting Human Rights Minister Narmin Uthman said her staff would examine t he possible effects on civilians. The US has now admitted using white phosphorus as a weapon in Falluja las t year, after earlier denying it. The substance can cause burning of the flesh but is not illegal and is no t classified as a chemical weapon. The BBC's Caroline Hawley in Baghdad says it will be some time before the human rights team reports back. In other developments in Iraq: * Sunni parties demand an international inquiry into the alleged abuse of more than 170 detainees by Iraqi forces in Baghdad. Italian TV station Rai alleged last week that the US had used phosphorus against built-up areas, and that civilians were killed. The report sparked fury among Italian anti-war protesters, who demonstrat ed outside the US embassy in Rome. Q&A: White phosphorus The US initially said white phosphorus had been used only to illuminate e nemy positions, but now admits it was used as a weapon. BBC defence correspondent Paul Wood says having to retract that denial is a public relations disaster for the US. A Pentagon spokesman, Lt Col Barry Venable, confirmed to the BBC the US h ad used white phosphorus "as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatan ts" - though not against civilians, he said. He said earlier denials had been based on "poor information". Washington is not a signatory to an international treaty restricting the use of the substance against civilians. The US-led assault in November 2004 on Falluja - a stronghold of the Sunn i insurgency west of Baghdad - displaced most of the city's 300,000 popu lation and left many of its buildings destroyed. However, he "never saw anybody intentionally use any weapon against civil ians", he said. Italian interview White phosphorus is highly flammable and ignites on contact with oxygen. If the substance hits a person's body, it will burn until deprived of ox ygen. org, a defence website, says: "Phosphorus burns on the ski n are deep and painful... These weapons are particularly nasty because w hite phosphorus continues to burn until it disappears... Britain's Defence Secretary John Reid said UK forces had used white phosp horus in Iraq, but not as "anything other than a smokescreen to protect our troops when in action". The UK Ministry of Defence said its use was permitted in battle in cases where there were no civilians near the target area. But Professor Paul Rogers, of the University of Bradford's department of peace studies, said white phosphorus could be considered a chemical weap on if deliberately aimed at civilians. He told the BBC: "It is not counted under the chemical weapons convention in its normal use but, although it is a matter of legal niceties, it pr obably does fall into the category of chemical weapons if it is used for this kind of purpose directly against people." |
| chris-floyd.com/fallujah -> www.chris-floyd.com/fallujah/ The video above is called 'Fallujah - the hidden massacre' - from RAI News 24, Italy Fallujah:The Flame of Atrocity Below is a vastly expanded and reworked version of a column originally pu blished in the Nov. emical weapons by American forces during the frenzied, Bush-ordered destruction of Fall ujah in November 2004. Using filmed and photographic evidence, eyewitness accounts, and the dire ct testimony of American soldiers who took part in the attacks, the docu mentary "Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre" catalogues the American use of w hite phosphorous 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 Ital ian state network run by a government that backed the war. Vivid images show civilians, including women and children, who had been b urned alive in their homes, even in their beds. This use of chemical wea pons at the order of the Bushist brass and the killing of civilians are confirmed by former American soldiers interviewed on camera. "I heard th e order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorou s on Fallujah," said one soldier, quoted in the Independent. in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone. The broadcast is an important event: shameful, damning, convincing. n March 18, a medical team sent to Fallujah by the Bush-backed Iraqi i nterim government issued its findings at a press conference in Baghdad. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, w as attended by more than 20 major American and international news outlet s Not a single one of these bastions of a free and vigorous press repor ted on the event. International Labor Communications Association brought word of the extraordinary revel ations to English-speaking audiences. Yet this highly credible, pro-American official of a pro-occupation gover nment confirmed, through medical examinations and the eyewitness testimo ny of survivors including many civilians who had opposed the heavy-hande d insurgent presence in the town that "burning chemicals" had been used by US forces in the attack, in direct violation of international and A merican law. "All forms of nature were wiped out" by the substances unle ashed in the assault, including animals that had been killed by gas or c hemical fire, said Dr ash-Shaykhli. But apparently this kind of thing is not considered news anymore by the corporate gatekeepers of media "trut h" As we noted here in March, Dr ash-Shaykhli's findings were buttressed by direct testimony from US Marines filing "after-action reports" on webs ites for military enthusiasts back home. There, fresh from the battle, A merican 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 phosphorous shells in Fallujah for "illumination purposes." i ndeed many white bombs bursting in air to bathe the city in unnatural li ght, the film clearly shows other phosphorous 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 Tare q says in the film: "A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-colored substance started to burn, we found people dead wi th strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact." As word of the documentary spread across the Internet and into a very few mainstream media sources, intrepid investigators dug out even more conf irmation of how Bush's battalions whipped out the Willy Pete and flayed Fallujah's heathen devils with flesh-eating fire. A Daily Kos diaris t, Stephen D, dug up one of the US military's own publications, Field Artillery Magazine, which eagerly related the use of white phosphorous, which "proved to be an effective and versatile munition," the article s aid. "We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in th e fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in tren ch lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out." com, that provides further ammunition for "illumination purposes" on the effect of white phosphorou s on human beings. There, Mark Kraft writes: "There is no way you can us e white phosphorus like that without forming a deadly chemical cloud tha t 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 psych ological in nature." Another Kossack, "Hunter," digs up mention of Willy Pete use as a wea pon in Washington Post reports from the battlefield itself last November . He then takes on the hair-splitters who immediately arose on the Right to declare that white phosphorous is not itself a banned substance, so it's OK to incinerate children with it. Hunter's incandescant irony is w orth quoting at length: "First, I think it should be a stated goal of United States policy to not melt the skin off of children. As a natural corollary to this goal, I t hink the United States should avoid dropping munitions on civilian neigh borhoods which, as a side effect, melt the skin off of children. Mike Marquesse pounded home the reality o f the overarching atrocity of the attack: "One year ago this week, US-led occupying forces launched a devastating a ssault on the Iraqi city of Falluja. The mood was set by Lt Col Gary Bra ndl: 'The enemy has got a face. condemned as a violation of the Geneva convention by a UN special rapporteur, who accused occupying forces of "using hunger and deprivati on of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population". Two-thi rds of the city's 300,000 residents fled, many to squatters' camps witho ut basic facilities "By the end of operations, the city lay in ruins. Falluja's compensation commissioner has reported that 36,000 of the city's 50,000 homes were de stroyed, along with 60 schools and 65 mosques and shrines. When me dical teams arrived in January they collected more than 700 bodies in on ly one third of the city. Iraqi NGOs and medical workers estimate betwee n 4,000 and 6,000 dead, mostly civilians -- a proportionately higher dea th rate than in Coventry and London during the blitz." Moscow Times column of November 18, 2004: "O ne of the first moves in this magnificent feat of arms was the destructi on and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors and their patients, in cluding women and children were killed in an airstrike on one major clin ic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital w as seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Because these p laces of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's " information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. Unlike the first att ack on Fallujah last spring, there was to be no unseemly footage of gutt ed children bleeding to death on hospital beds. This time except for NBC 's brief, heavily-edited, quickly-buried clip of the usual lone "bad app le" shooting a wounded Iraqi prisoner the visuals were rigorously scrubb ed." When you begin by bombing hospitals, devouring innocent people with hot j ellied death is not exactly a stretch. It is simply part and parcel of t he inhumanity of the Bushist mindset. Indeed, the slaughter in Fallujah was a microcosm of the entire misbegott en enterprise launched by those two eminent Christian statesmen, Bush an d 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 hat red it was meant to quell. The vicious overkill of the Fallujah attack a lienated large swathes 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 t hem ever de... |
| boingboing.net/profits_of_fear.html Palm OS doc file Prologue: Nuclear News on Route 66 ---------------------------------- I'm cruising into the small town of Williams, Arizona, heading for the la undromat, when my pickup truck coughs and dies, leaving me stranded at t he side of old Route 66. As I pause to consider my options, my cell phon e rings. "Charles, this is Sam," he says, sounding elderly and erudite. In his inimitable fashion, Sam Cohen, who really did invent the neutron b omb, is notifying me that Edward Teller has died after a long series of health problems. Sam was on first-name terms with Edward for about fifty years, since the days when they worked on nuclear weapons at Los Alamos during World War II. It occurs to me that something must be seriously wrong with the world whe n a former guru of American nuclear policy seems to have so much time on his hands, he can find nothing better to do than chat with a semi-retir ed, little-known science journalist sitting in the middle of nowhere in a dead pickup truck carrying an unprocessed cargo of dirty laundry. Once upon a time Sam Cohen conferred with cabinet members, briefed congre ssional committees, and argued international strategy with U S preside nts. He participated in the most influential think-tank that ever existe d, and his bid to reform modern warfare earned him a Medal of Peace from Pope Paul VI. During a relentless campaign to deploy downsized nuclear weapons of vastly reduced destructive power, he received an audience fro m Dwight D Eisenhower, who was polite but uninterested, preferring big bombs to small ones. He managed to get a memo through to John F Kennedy , whose position turned out to be similar to that of Eisenhower. He spen t some time with Richard M Nixon, whose position turned out to be simil ar to that of Kennedy. Finally he scored a hit with Ronald Reagan, who i nitiated a project along the lines that Cohen had in mind, until George Bush, Senior, reversed the policy at a total cost approaching $1 billion . The story of how this happened is not just of historical interest. It exp oses pathologies in the Federal Government that devour our resources and jeopardize our security just as much now as they did then. For those wh o wonder how neoconservative think tanks managed to incite empire-buildi ng conceits that fomented a renewed war in Iraq, Cohen's experiences fif ty years ago turn out to be unexpectedly relevant. Named by concatenating the words "research and development," RAND attracted worl d-class scientists such as John von Neumann, Herman Kahn, Edward Teller- -and Sam Cohen. While Cohen's academic credentials were less impressive than those of most of his colleagues, he made up for them with qualities that many RANDites lacked: Commonsense coupled with undiplomatic, in-yo ur-face honesty, regardless of any consequences to his own career. In Cohen's words, RAND's objective was "to challenge the stultified menta lity of the military brass who already had begun planning for the next w ar on the basis of the last one, even though we had entered the Nuclear Age. For that matter, RAND's e xperience also bordered on zero, but their intellectual arrogance convin ced them this was no major handicap." He remembers them as "people who thought they had a God-given ability to k now the unknowable. Formulating scenarios for deploying and using nuclear weapons in oppositi on to the Soviet Union was the highest-stakes game in military history. Nuclear analysts who advised everyone up the chain of command to the Pre sident of the United States were conscious of controlling immense power; The title of Herman Kahn's n otorious book, _Thinking the Unthinkable,_ accurately conveyed the mood of horrified fascination that infected some people who immersed themselv es in the macabre study of megatons and megadeaths. Kahn in particular became intoxicated by his role as a doomsayer. He actu ally seemed to enjoy delivering bad news, and with good reason: It made him famous. One of his fundamental messages was that national survival d epended on deterring aggression from potential enemies, and a deterrent was only effective if you were willing to use it. Therefore, instead of being afraid to think about nuclear war, we had to show the world that w e were perfectly willing to deal with the consequences, even if they ent ailed a dark age lasting ten thousand years. We had to "stop worrying an d love the bomb," as Stanley Kubrick put it in his subtitle to the nucle ar black comedy _Dr. Strangelove_--and some grim one-liners from _Thinki ng the Unthinkable_ actually were used as dialogue in the movie. The problem was that Kahn's intoxication with his subject matter and his doomsayer status tempted him to cut corners on his science. One of his m ost influential papers claimed that the Russians could and perhaps would launch a pre-emptive strike against American air bases, wiping out the nation's ability to defend itself, and forcing it to capitulate. Sam Coh en had been a friend of Kahn's during their college days--in fact, he ha d brought Kahn into RAND--but friendship couldn't blind him to the defec ts he saw in the study. He recalls finding calculations of bombing accur acy based on guesswork, assessments of Soviet military strength that see med grossly exaggerated, and estimates of bomb damage that Kahn had simp ly invented. "I suspected that Herman had put out his study more for eff ect and notoriety (which he sure got) than for substance," Cohen wrote l ater. There were plenty, in and out of RAND, who knew what he had done was basically fraudulent. The tr ouble was that he already had made his mark and a huge impact on Washing ton officialdom, which in those days liked hearing horror stories like t his." To anyone who wondered how horror stories about an elevated communist thr eat could possibly be popular, the answer was that they served the needs of hundreds of thousands of people who worked for the Federal Governmen t or enjoyed its largesse. Bad news justified bigger military budgets, w hich enriched defense contractors, boosted employment in key congression al districts, and increased the influence of cold warriors in the Pentag on. Bad news united the nation and weakened opposition to legislation wh ich rode in on the coat tails of anticommunist hysteria. Most of all, ba d news enhanced nuclear drama, which inflated the importance of governme nt in general and the Executive Branch in particular. Kahn was by no means the only one with a flare for dramatic scare tactics . When Nikita Khruschev hammered his desk with his shoe in a temper tant rum at the United Nations General Assembly, or John F Kennedy suggested that he might have to bomb Moscow if the Soviet Union didn't pull its m issiles out of Cuba, anyone could see that nuclear drama had infected pl ayers up to the highest levels of government. Their performances became a prime-time phenomenon reaching a worldwide audience that numbered hund reds of millions. Hitler's rallies and Roosevelt's fireside chats were t rivial by comparison. The Cold War was the ultimate endorphin rush for a ny public figure who enjoyed making dramatic pronouncements that could m old history, while legions of advisors experienced a contact high. Imagine for a moment that at some time during the 1960s, the communist th reat had suddenly disappeared. Politicians, policy wonks, and pundits wo uld have found themselves instantaneously demoted from star status. They would have been forced to fall back on humdrum traditional issues in go vernment such as placating special-interest groups or juggling the budge t For an ambitious statesman, a four-star general, a RAND doomsayer, or a hungry defense contractor, the disappearance of communism would have precipitated a humiliating career catastrophe. Of course the rich rewards from nuclear drama lasted only so long as it s topped short of nuclear war. Therefore, a major task for RANDites was to develop strategies to stabilize the nuclear deterrent and discourage an yone from doing anything stupid, such as launching a pre-emptive strike. Cohen argued that this would be such a singular, unprecedented act, ana lysts who imagined t... |
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