SKIN PEELING....IRAQ NAPALM

Pentagon Used White Phosphorus in Iraq
The Associated Press

Wednesday 16 November 2005

Washington - Pentagon officials acknowledged Tuesday that U.S. troops used white phosphorous as a weapon against insurgent strongholds during the battle of Fallujah last November. But they denied an Italian television news report that the spontaneously flammable material was used against civilians.

Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman, said that while white phosphorous is most frequently used to mark targets or obscure a position, it was used at times in Fallujah as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants.

"It was not used against civilians," Venable said.

The spokesman referred reporters to an article in the March-April 2005 edition of the Army's Field Artillery magazine, an official publication, in which veterans of the Fallujah fight spelled out their use of white phosphorous and other weapons. The authors used the shorthand "WP" in referring 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 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)" 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 authors 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 U.S. Embassy in Rome to protest the reported use by American troops of white phosphorous. Italy's state-run RAI24 news television aired a documentary last week alleging the U.S. used white phosphorous shells in a "massive and indiscriminate way" against civilians during the Fallujah offensive.

The State Department, in response, initially denied that U.S. troops had used white phosphorous against enemy forces. "They were fired into the air 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 U.S. forces allegedly using `outlawed' weapons in Fallujah," the department said. "The facts are that U.S. forces are not using any illegal weapons in Fallujah or anywhere else in Iraq."

Venable said white phosphorous shells are a standard weapon used by field artillery units and are not banned by any international weapons convention to which the U.S. 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 ignites 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 burn injuries to exposed human flesh.



Tim Collins trained troops to fight with white phosphorus
By Sean Rayment Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 20/11/2005)

Col Tim Collins, the controversial Iraq war commander, trained his soldiers to use white phosphorus, which burns through flesh to the bone, in combat against enemy troops.

The admission by the former Special Air Service officer, revealed in his autobiography Rules of Engagement, contradicts claims by the Ministry of Defence that the chemical was only ever used to create a smokescreen.


British troops also used white phosphorus to kill Argentinian troops during the Falklands conflict.

In his book, Col Collins describes how he trained 1bn Royal Irish Regiment for an attack codenamed Operation Fury planned for April 2003.

The colonel, who left the Army last year, said that he "directed" the men to "perfect" house-to-house fighting skills in preparation for the battle.

Discussing the weapons to be used in the operation in the Basra area, he wrote: "The star of the show was the new grenade which had only been on issue since the previous summer. It absolutely trashed the inside of the room it was put into.

"I directed the men to use them where possible with white phosphorus, as the noxious smoke and heat had the effect of drawing out any enemy from cover, while the fragmentation grenade would shred them."


Col Collins' tactics mirror the United States army "shake and bake" technique which involves forcing troops out of cover with white phosphorus and then killing them with artillery rounds.

The furore surrounding the weapon emerged last week after Lt Col Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman, used almost identical phraseology to Col Collins, when he confirmed that "shake and bake" was a recognised American tactic.

In an interview with the BBC, Col Venable said: "When you have enemy forces in covered positions that your high explosive artillery rounds are not having an impact on, one technique is to fire white phosphorus into the position because the combined effects of the fire and smoke will drive them out so that you can kill them with high explosives."

He confirmed: "It was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants."

White phosphorus has been used by the British Army for decades to create instantaneous smokescreens during battle. In contact with skin, however, it burns to the bone and the gas it produces, phosphorus pentoxide, is poisonous.

Article two of Protocol Three of the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons bans the use of the weapon against civilians and also military targets located within civilian areas. Although the US is not a signatory of the convention, Britain is.

But there is now increasing debate as to whether the use of the weapon should instead fall under the United Nations Convention on Chemical Weapons.

Last week John Reid, the Defence Secretary, maintained the British troops had only ever used white phosphorus as a battlefield smokescreen. His department continued to stress that troops had never used it as "an incendiary weapon, against either civilians or even enemy combatants".

Although Operation Fury was cancelled, it remains unclear whether British troops went on to use white phosphorus against Iraqi forces, putting Col Collins' style of attack into action.

Prof Paul Rogers, of Bradford University's peace studies department, said he believed that most soldiers would use all weapons at their disposal.

He said: "There is a presumption among certain members of the population that wars are clean. They are not."Pentagon spokesman


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-phosphorus28nov28,0,1951628,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Use of Chemical in Iraq Ignites Debate
Critics say civilians died in incendiary attacks. U.S. asserts white phosphorus was only used on insurgents.
By John Daniszewski and Mark Mazzetti
Times Staff Writers

November 28, 2005

BAGHDAD — Omar Ibrahim Abdullah went for a walk to get away from the heavy fighting in Fallouja a little over a year ago and, by his account, came across such a grotesque sight that he's been unable to banish it from his memory.

The United States had mounted a full-scale offensive to pacify the rebel-controlled Iraqi city, and Abdullah said he was eager to escape the Askari district, where he lived. He walked south toward the Euphrates River and stumbled on dozens of burned bodies that he said were colored black and red.

"They must have been affected by chemicals," he said, "because I had never seen anything like that before."

The corpses, he said, had suffered burns from the U.S. military's use of an incendiary chemical known as white phosphorus.

The Pentagon and other U.S. officials at first denied, and later admitted, that troops had used white phosphorus as a weapon against insurgents in Fallouja during that fiercely fought campaign. Its use became public because of questions raised by an Italian television documentary Nov. 8, which alleged that civilians had been targeted "indiscriminately" and that hundreds had died.

But even though U.S. officials have admitted using the substance against enemy fighters, they have denied the allegations of Fallouja residents such as Abdullah that its use was widespread and civilians were among those killed.

"We don't use munitions of any kind against innocent civilians," Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said during a news conference. "In accordance with all established conventions, [white phosphorus] can be used against enemy combatants."

Nicknamed "Willie Pete" by troops, white phosphorus is a dangerous chemical that combusts on contact with oxygen. The military employs it mainly to illuminate battlefields and provide smoke screens. But its use is highly controversial because the only way it can be extinguished is by shutting off its air supply. When it comes in contact with humans, the chemical will burn through to the bone.

Incendiaries are considered particularly inhumane weapons under international treaty, and a 1980 United Nations convention limits their use. The U.S. has not signed the part of the convention that deals with incendiary weapons. Nevertheless, it largely has avoided using incendiary weapons since the Vietnam War and destroyed the last of its napalm arsenal four years ago.

In the 1990s, in fact, the U.S. condemned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for allegedly using "white phosphorus chemical weapons" against Kurdish rebels and residents of Irbil and Dohuk.

In regard to a war the U.S. said it fought partly because of fears that Hussein would employ chemical or other nonconventional weapons, some critics say the use of white phosphorus is contrary to the spirit of American aims.

"An incendiary weapon cannot be thought of just like any conventional weapon," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Assn. in Washington. "There are rules that apply, and we have to make sure that they are being followed for various reasons."

He went on to explain that for the last century and a half, the U.S. has led international efforts to establish humane conduct standards in war, in part because American troops or civilians could be harmed.

"There is an important principle at stake here. The United States should be very interested in making sure that we are following the rules and other people understand we are following the rules," Kimball said.

But Pentagon officials say the use of white phosphorus, even as an incendiary weapon, is not proscribed by any treaty as long as it is directed solely against military targets.

The question is whether its use in November 2004 against insurgents fighting in a city that most, but not all, civilian inhabitants had fled violates the Inhumane Weapons Convention, to which the United States is a party.

Another issue is whether the United States is obliged to follow the convention's rules on incendiary weapons, given that the U.S. Senate has not ratified that protocol.

The rule bans the use of incendiary weapons against civilian targets or military targets not clearly separated from "concentrations" of civilians.

On the streets of Fallouja, the common allegation is that the U.S. used incendiary bombs against civilians. Iraqi doctors and the local human rights organization have pointed to scores of burned corpses as evidence.

But there's been no independent verification. U.S. officials have accused doctors in Fallouja of lying about such issues because, the officials say, the physicians are loyal to or intimidated by insurgents. The blackened corpses seen in the Italian documentary, for instance, may have been burned by conventional explosives or resulted from decomposition, some viewers have argued.

Abdul Qadir Sadi, an Iraqi from Fallouja in his 30s, said doctors had told him that two of his family members were killed by white phosphorus.

"They had a lot of serious skin burns," Sadi said. "The doctor at the hospital told us that they must have been hit by these chemicals. They were being treated by the doctor, but after a while, these burned places started to dissolve."

"We have registered the documents and exhibits of everything that happened," said Mohammed Tariq, a human rights worker in Fallouja. "We informed the Iraqi Red Crescent, the International Red Cross and [other] international organizations, but our efforts were in vain."

Pentagon officials say troops used white phosphorus in the Fallouja offensive for several reasons.

"It was used to mask and obscure U.S. troop movements and to flush out dug-in insurgents from spider holes and trenches," said Maj. Todd Vician, a Pentagon spokesman. "It was lawfully used against legitimate military targets."

When stories surfaced last year that the U.S. had used white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon in Fallouja, the State Department flatly denied the allegations. Such denials from Pentagon and diplomatic officials continued until only weeks ago.

According to talking points issued by the State Department in December, "U.S. forces have used [white phosphorus rounds] very sparingly in Fallouja, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."

Vician said he could not explain the denials.

Elsewhere, soldiers and Marines had publicly praised the weapon's effectiveness against insurgents during the battle. A group of artillery officers who fought in Fallouja wrote in a military journal this year that white phosphorus, typically referred to as WP, "proved to be an effective and versatile weapon."

"We used it for screening missions … and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents … when we could not get effects on them with [high explosives]," the officers wrote in the March-April issue of Field Artillery magazine.

"We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and [high explosives] to take them out."

The U.S. began using white phosphorus extensively during World War II, when soldiers found the chemical useful for smoke screens, marking enemy positions and attacking military targets. For more than half a century, white phosphorus has been a staple of the U.S. arsenal.

John E. Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington-based military affairs think tank, doubts the claims made in the Italian television report that the U.S. military was aiming such munitions at civilians.

"What purpose could possibly be served by targeting civilians in Iraq?" he asked. "It would accomplish nothing, it would be counterproductive, and it would be a waste of ammo."

To journalists who saw white phosphorus used during the campaign, it appeared that it was meant for illuminating, not killing, insurgents.

Los Angeles Times reporter Patrick J. McDonnell, who accompanied Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, as it fought its way into Fallouja, recalls seeing night virtually turn to day as white phosphorus shells burst in the air.

"We only saw 'Willie Pete' being used for illumination purposes," McDonnell said. But he also remembers how the proximity of the fiery blasts concerned the Marines.

"The guys in my company were somewhat annoyed for two reasons: It illuminated our positions at night, not a nice thing, and occasionally the bursts came quite close to us. There didn't seem to be a lot of coordination," he said by e-mail.

At the time, most civilians had fled town, and U.S. troops seemed to be fighting in a city devoid of almost everyone but insurgents, McDonnell noted.

"We had rounds of white phosphorus burst in the air quite close to us, and the Marines were quite concerned, since they knew of its impact — that it burns through flesh and is impossible to extinguish," he said.

"Many Marines on the ground cursed the 'Willie Pete' every time it went off."

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Daniszewski reported from Baghdad and Mazzetti from Washington. Special correspondent Asmaa Waguih contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

White heat

White phosphorus, a highly flammable substance that ignites on contact with oxygen, is a longtime staple of the U.S. military arsenal. Some uses:

{bull} Can be loaded into a mortar shell, howitzer round or other projectile and fired at a target.

{bull} When delivered by an exploding shell, white phosphorus in contact with oxygen produces a smoke screen on the ground that can last up to 15 minutes. It can also illuminate battlefield targets.

{bull} Can be used as a weapon. Human contact with white phosphorus results in severe burns. The fire can only be extinguished by eliminating the oxygen supply.

Sources: Integrated Publishing, fas.org