| Debate ongoing
over whether the Pentagon made indiscriminate or illegal use of the incendiary
weapon |
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| Roberto Spiezio (seong) 2005-11-16 22:49 |
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The Italian TV RaiNews24 report "Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre" keeps raising reactions and has triggered debate among journalists, experts and the military.
On Nov. 15, the U.S. Pentagon admitted that White Phosphorus (WP) -- known as "Willy Pete" or "Whiskey Pete" in military slang -- was used in November 2004 during the Fallujah raids, though it denied that it was ever used on civilians, as alleged by the Rai TV report.
This is an important admission, according to many, because initially the State Department -- the U.S. Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- had denied using WP against enemy forces, changing its statement later by calling it "incorrect."
A Pentagon spokesperson, Lt. Col. Barry Venable has shed light on what the State Department defined as "A great deal of misinformation feeding on itself about U.S. forces allegedly using 'outlawed' weapons in Fallujah."
Speaking with reporters, Venable clarified that the typical use of WP in combat actions is for marking targets, cloaking troops or illuminating the battlefield during operations.
In Fallujah, Venable added, it was occasionally used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants.
Venable also quoted an official U.S. Army's publication "Field Artillery" that explains --in the words of the U.S. veterans who participated in the Fallujah attack -- the use of WP and other weapons.
On page 26, par.9 (PDF) -- titled "Munitions," it refers to WP:
"WP 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."
On Nov. 16, RaiNews24 reported in an article that a former "embedded" journalist, Darrin Mortenson of the San Diego North County Times, who participated as a reporter in the April 2004 Fallujah assault, had already reported the use of WP by U.S. troops.
Covering the Fallujah assault, Mortensen wrote in the April 11, 2004 edition of the North County Times: "The boom kicked dust around the pit as they 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."
The 1925 "Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare" prohibits the use of weapons that consist of chemical compounds.
The 1980 "Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects" states in the III Protocol:
"Protocol III on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons prohibits, in all circumstances, making the civilian population as such, individual civilians or civilian objects, the object of attack by any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat or a combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target."
The United States never signed this Protocol.
The 1997 "Convention (PDF) on the prohibition of the development, production stockpiling and use of chemical weapons and on their destruction," which the U.S. signed, doesn't define WP as an illegal substance itself. Nonetheless, according to some experts, if the substance is used by exploiting its toxic proprieties to harm or kill animals or people, it should be considered a chemical weapon, and therefore prohibited by the Convention.
Professor Paul Rogers, of the University of Bradford's department of peace studies in the U.K. told the BBC that WP could be considered a chemical weapon if deliberately aimed at civilians.
It's clear that the key point of the whole matter is the definition of "Chemical Weapon" according to experts and international conventions, because this would discriminate between a legitimate or illegal use of WP by U.S. troops in Iraq.