The use of chemical weapons in Fallujah
War crimes and silence
It is becoming increasingly clear that the US used chemical weapons – white phosphorous – during the invasion of Fallujah. In today’s Guardian, George Monbiot explains: “White phosphorus is fat-soluble and burns spontaneously on contact with the air. According to globalsecurity.org, “The burns usually are multiple, deep, and variable in size. The solid in the eye produces severe injury. The particles continue to burn unless deprived of atmospheric oxygen. ... If service members are hit by pieces of white phosphorus, it could burn right down to the bone.” As it oxidises, it produces a smoke composed of phosphorous pentoxide. According to the standard US industrial safety sheet, the smoke “releases heat on contact with moisture and will burn mucous surfaces. ... Contact with substance can cause severe eye burns and permanent damage.” He gives full details of how it was used, and where, at
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/11/15/war-without-rules/#more-960 and I strongly urge you to read it.
Clearly, in any utilitarian calculus weighing the dangers of going to war against the dangers of leaving Saddam in place, this tilts the balance further against invasion. Add it to the systematic use of torture by American forces, the undemocratic shock-privatisation of the Iraqi economy, and more.
I began to think again about a reader who e-mailed me just before the invasion of Fallujah began. He said, "You wrote this week about the snobbery facing 'chavs' in Britain. Hmm ... I don't think the underclass of this country are under threat of mass aerial bombardment, detention of all males under 45, their ghettoes facing the prospects of being razed to the ground, etc. On the other hand, the town where my mother originates from (Fallujah), is facing total and utter destruction. 'For its own good,' mind."
He continued: "Mum's lost all contact with her parents (both in their late seventies ... and never members of the evil Baath Party) who, we assume, are still trapped in Fallujah. An uncle from Baghdad set off a couple of days ago to try to locate them. My granddad has very advanced motor neurone disease and isn't particularly mobile. I guess we may as well do the janaza [funeral prayer] for them now. You're free to write whatever you want Johann. I just think that seeing as you were one of the loudest 'liberal-hawk' cheerleaders for invading Iraq, it would be nice to read a few words about the impending massacre that's gonna happen in Mum's home town ... one of the fruits of your agitation for war."
His grandparents might well have been killed using white phosphorous – which makes my hand-wringing response (which you can read at
http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=479 although I’d rather you didn’t) all the more unpleasant.
Monbiot goes on to ask a question that was (for me) unsettling: “We were told that the war with Iraq was necessary for two reasons. Saddam Hussein possessed biological and chemical weapons and might one day use them against another nation. And the Iraqi people needed to be liberated from his oppressive regime, which had, among its other crimes, used chemical weapons to kill them. Tony Blair, Colin Powell, William Shawcross, David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen, Ann Clwyd and many others referred, in making their case, to Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds in Halabja in 1988. They accused those who opposed the war of caring nothing for the welfare of the Iraqis. Given that they care so much, why has none of these hawks spoken out against the use of unconventional weapons by coalition forces?”
For what it’s worth, I was one of those liberal hawks, and I too have been silent about a very serious war crime. Sure, I can hide behind the fact I wrote a column before the war saying that the use of depleted uranium and cluster bombs was totally unacceptable: “There is a danger that the use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions will puncture all his talk of humanitarian action," I said. "Of course, war cannot be sanitised, and all bombs have a horrible effect. But even in war there are basic rules. Most nations now agree that forbidding cluster
bombs should be one of them. They are effectively land-mines dropped from the air, and they are still
killing civilians in Kuwait over a decade after the last Gulf War. To drop them now will be to kill Iraqis for many years to come.
The US is one of the only countries that still insists on using these immoral weapons, in the name of
"maximum military flexibility". There is no need for them; they are imprecise and maximise the death of
civilians. Similarly, there is too much risk that depleted uranium may cause cancer (the scientists
offer a mixed verdict) to justify using it. Human Rights Watch has launched a campaign for precisely
this purpose: not to stop the war, but to make sure the war does as little damage as possible to the civilian population of Iraq. (Its website,
www.hrw.org, provides important information about how we can exert pressure to make this happen.)” That argument obviously also extends to white phosphorous.
But, really, it’s not much of a moral shield, is it?
http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=724