This was a woman who was burned alive in Fallujah by Willy Pete, utilized by the American military in their assault on the city.
This is a serious, serious allegation and must be investigated by the United Nations as a potential war crime. I have watched on Aljazeera.net as their cameras panned to white clouds exploding and floating down on Gaza, just like Willy Pete does, and doctors have been reporting horrible burns in the hospitals. The London Times has published an article on this which is posted at OpEdNews, detailing the allegations. Here is the article:
From The Times (London)
January 12, 2009
Gaza's burn victims add to pressure on army over phosphorus (source)
Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem and Michael Evans, Defence Editor
Pressure grew on Israel to end the use of controversial white phosphorus yesterday as The Times saw more evidence of its deployment around civilian populations in Gaza.
More than 50 people with burns were taken into Nasser Hospital in the southern town of Khan Yunis, in what the hospital director, Youssef Abu Al-Reesh, said was a massive case of exposure to white phosphorus.
“We don’t have the medical experience to judge these cases, but we searched the internet according to the cases we have, and it indeed confirmed that it’s white phosphorus munitions. I have been working in this hospital for ten years and I have never seen anything like this.”
The 1980 Geneva treaty says that white phosphorus should not be used as a weapon of war in civilian areas, but there is no blanket ban on its use as a smokescreen or for illumination. It produces a thick white smoke when exposed to oxygen, but can cause severe burns and melt flesh to the bone if it comes into contact with skin.
The sudden influx of burns patients at Nasser Hospital coincided with Israel’s expanded ground offensive, which included the Al-Qarara and Kuza’a suburbs of Khan Yunis.
Muhammad Tahseen, 20, said that he was sitting outside his home in Al-Qarara when a shell exploded above. He described watching his two cousins writhe in pain as he stood metres away, unable to help. “There was an explosion and white smoke. I saw my cousins screaming . . . I saw them burning and their clothes burning. I saw their skin melting.”
Doctors said that they were unable to provide further help to Muhammad Nabih Ahmed, 17, listed in critical condition with burns to the chest and back. The family hope to get Ahmed treated in an Egyptian hospital. But travel from Khan Yunis to the southern border with Egypt is treacherous, and many aid organisations have ceased travelling along the roads.
When first questioned by The Times last week an Israeli military spokesman “categorically denied” using white phosphorus in Gaza. In a statement issued yesterday the spokesman’s office said: “We don’t specify operational details, nor the type of ammunition that we use, but any ammunition that is used by the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] is within the scope of international law.”
Human Rights Watch said it was sure Israel had used white phosphorus. “The use of white phosphorus in densely populated areas of Gaza violates the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life,” it said.
Further research by The Times into the type of US-made shells being fired by Israeli gunners on the border with Gaza uncovered additional evidence that the light blue munitions, known as M825A1s, are carriers of white phosphorus, impregnated in more than 100 felt wedges.
The lot number – PB-91J011-002A – visible in a photograph published by The Times last week indicates that the shells being used by the IDF were assembled in September 1991 at Pine Bluff arsenal in America, where all US white phosphorus munitions are reportedly made. The contractors are Chamberlain Manufacturing [metal parts only], General Dynamics, and Ordnance and Tactical Systems.
White phosphorus can be air-burst or ground-burst. It emits a distinct garlic smell. When air-burst, it covers a larger area than ground-burst and is useful to mask large troop movements. However, this spreads the incendiary effect over a wider area.
Munir Albarsh, the Head of Emergency Medicine at Gaza’s Ministry of Health, said that doctors were collecting tissue samples at hospitals across Gaza to send for phosphorus testing at international laboratories. He added that the ministry would demand an independent international investigation into Israel’s use of white phosphorus.
6 comments:
While I have no knowledge about the use of incendiaries by the Israelis, please be advised that M825A1s are not incendiaries, but smoke rounds. Burns can be caused by the secondary effects from bits of the white phosphorus used in the smoke round. Also, the pic that you have from the Fallujah morgue is unusual in that for a burn victim that does not have burned skin or clothes. The Army WAS NOT "caught" using WP. They admitted using WP against entrenched insurgents. That is the proper use of WP.
CargoSquid, the Pentagon was caught because they were claiming that White Phophorous was only being used as an "illumination device". But they forgot to shut up one of their own journals, Field Artillery Magazine:
"U.S. 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 said. '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 Explosives]. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."
Willy Pete is actually a gaseous chemical compound, not an incendiary, when it explodes, drifting down in a white chemical cloud. It is like liquid fire and does not burn up clothes, but attaches to skin and burns through it down to the bone, carmelizing the body. If you are firing any kind of WP shell into a crowded city, it is going to carmelize anyone the white cloud drifts down on. Below is an article I wrote several years about the use of Willy Pete in Fallujah:
OpEdNews
Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_mac_mcki_061116_willy_pete_does_fall.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 17, 2006
WILLY PETE DOES FALLUJAH - Fallujah, the Guernica of our Times, Part 8
By Mac McKinney
Fallujah, the Guernica of Our Times
Part 8: Willy Pete Does Fallujah
By Mac McKinney
"I was on the point of crying at her, 'Don't you hear them?' The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of the rising wind. 'The horror! The horror!'
- Marlow from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
************************
On March 3, 2005, Dr Khalid ash Shaykhli, an Iraqi health ministry official, made a shocking announcement at a Baghdad press conference, stating that his medical team had discovered that the US military had employed chemical weapons in their November, 2004 assault that all but leveled the city of Fallujah, weapons that included mustard gas, nerve gas and burning agents. The Australian Journal, Green Left Weekly, March 16, 2005 issue quoted from Al Jazeera satellite news that "Shaykhli said that during the US assault, fleeing residents described 'seeing corpses that had melted, which suggests that US troops used napalm gas, a poisonous compound of polystyrene and aircraft fuel which melts bodies'. He also said that his researchers had found evidence of the use of mustard gas and nerve gas. 'We found dozens, not to say hundreds, of stray dogs, cats, and birds that had perished as a result of those gasses', he told the press conference, which was held in the health ministry's Baghdad building."
(http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/619/619p15b.htm )
Although there were several prominent American media representatives there, only the Christian Scientist Monitor carried this story, and only on its website. Once again the American media was ignoring a report of a major American breach of international conventions. Even so, the Pentagon was already getting defensive as early as December of 2004, made nervous perhaps by Islamic website charges as well as GI blogs and "after-action reports" on the Internet that were touting the use of Willy Pete (white phosphorus), propane bombs and napalm against Fallujah. Official Pentagon spokesmen began claiming that white phosphorus was only used as an illumination device:
Official Denials
"In December the US Government formally denied the reports (based on insurgent claims-parentheses mine), describing them as 'widespread myths'. 'Some news accounts have claimed that US forces have used outlawed phosphorus shells in Fallujah,' the USinfo website said. 'Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes.' (Peter Popham, the Independent UK)
(http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/printer_110805Z.shtml )
But the charges persisted throughout 2005, strengthened by bloggers who had started looking back at reports issued by embedded reporters in Fallujah during the November, 2004 siege, bloggers such as Mike Whitney:
"The US also used napalm in the siege of Falluja as was reported in the UK Mirror ('Falluja Napalmed', 11-28-04) The Mirror said, '[that] President George Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet-fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun the world. Reports claim that innocent civilians have died in napalm attacks, which turn victims into human fireballs as the gel bonds flames to flesh. Since the American assault on Falluja there have been reports of 'melted' corpses, which appeared to have napalm injuries." ("Incinerating Iraqis; The Napalm Cover Up" by Mike Whitney)
(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9307.htm )
Finally, the official Pentagon story-line began to unravel after several revelations surfaced toward the end of 2005, the most powerful being an Italian documentary by Sigfrido Ranucci of RAINews24 entitled "Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre."
(http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/en/body.asp )
To again quote from Peter Popham of The Independent UK, Tuesday, November 8, 2005 regarding this film:
"But now new information has surfaced, including hideous photographs and videos and interviews with American soldiers who took part in the Fallujah attack, which provides graphic proof that phosphorus shells were widely deployed in the city as a weapon.
"In a documentary to be broadcast by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, this morning, a former American soldier [Jeff Englehart] who fought at Fallujah says: 'I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete.'
'Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for.'
"Photographs on the website of RaiTG24, the broadcaster's 24-hours news channel, www.rainews24.it, show exactly what the former soldier means. Provided by the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, dozens of high-quality, colour close-ups show bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, whose clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved or caramelised or turned the consistency of leather by the shells.
"A biologist in Fallujah, Mohamad Tareq, interviewed for the film, says: 'A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact.'
"The documentary, entitled 'Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre,' also provides what it claims is clinching evidence that incendiary bombs known as Mark 77, a new, improved form of napalm, was (sic) used in the attack on Fallujah, in breach of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons of 1980, which only allows its use against military targets."
(http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/printer_110805Z.shtml )
At the same time, corroborating evidence now surfaced about the use of Willy Pete as a weapon. To quote Chris Floyd of the Moscow Times in his article, "The White Death of Fallujah":
"A Daily Kos diarist, Stephen D., dug up one of the U.S. 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 said. '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 Explosives]. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."
(http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd12172005.html )
Sophisms
The Pentagon, no longer able to deny its usage of white phosphorus against humans, was now reduced to various sophisms to justify its onerous use. Danny Mayer of ZNet Magazine explores this in his article, "Willy Peter":
"Because the U.S. is not a signatory to the 1980 Geneva Convention and has challenged the legal definition of chemical weapons, the Pentagon now claims that white phosphorus is 'not a chemical weapon' and therefore 'not outlawed or illegal.'
"For the Pentagon, at least, the 'shake and bake' missions are a 'potent psychological weapon' that will drive the enemy 'out of their holes.' The use of white phosphorus has a particularly brutal history. During the war in Vietnam, the U.S. used white phosphorous as an improved form of napalm, terrorizing enemies. Then, as now, it was touted as a psychological tool of warfare necessary to subdue enemy hamlets.
"Unlike napalm, which in Vietnam left villagers and enemies alike with massive burns all over their bodies, white phosphorus burns down to the bone.
"Le The Thrung, a Vietnamese doctor studying white phosphorus burns in 1969, describes its effects on the skin: 'burning phosphorus produces 800-1,000 degrees centigrade heat. Scattered phosphorus particles go on consuming themselves and deepen burn wounds.' Next, chemical compounds 'create a chemical burn, like an acid, drawing water from the cells. This process generates great pain in the nervous system.' Finally, white phosphorus compounds oxygenate and penetrate 'the blood stream and white blood cells in the dermis, subdermis, and deeper skin layers.' This creates what he calls an 'organic toxicity [that] blocks off all blood circulation with the burn area.'.........
"This is what our military and political leaders currently define as a 'potent psychological weapon?' These are the actions that citizens of empire are to support and legitimize, even if tacitly, in the name of spreading democracy and securing our own nebulous borders?
"No, this is not about our national feelings of moral fortitude. This is about civilians and 'enemies' alike having chemicals dropped on them like rain and their skin bubbling, melting, wasting away with no way to scrape off the pain of oxidizing phosphorus and no way to cauterize the slow, painful melting into the nervous system and bloodstream. No, for those getting 'smoked out of their holes,' there is very little, if anything, psychological about Willy Peter."
(http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/010206C.shtml )
How many Fallujans suffered this final indignity of being chemically burned to death in the most agonizing manner imaginable? Dozens, hundreds, several thousand? It is hard to say. Partial American military DD1079 records on the RAI website list 60 bodies destined for Fallujah City Cemetery alone, as well as absolutely macabre photographs of some of the victims. We will likely never know just how many suffered this garish fate. For those readers with strong stomachs who feel compelled to see the photographic proof of the effects of Willy Pete on individual Fallujans, as well as to study the cemetery records, please see:
http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/en/records.asp
This then was the final twist of the knife to Fallujah during the second assault on that hapless city during Operation Phantom Fury in November, 2004, a rain of fiery, excruciating pain and death upon civilians and combatants, ordered by well-groomed and well-educated US commanders with all the moral angst, apparently, of teenagers whacking pixel images at a video game in the Mall. But on some unconscious level at least, those GIs having to load Willy Pete artillery shells certainly knew that those on the receiving end were flesh and blood beings like themselves who were about to be caramelized. Some of them will inevitably have to deal with the ghosts rising from their subconscious in the middle of the night and hope that military or VA shrinks, booze or drugs can make them go away.
Making History
One soldier who eye-witnessed the massive destruction of Fallujah and who goes by the blogger name of hEkLe, wrote a tour de force letter in December of 2004 on what he had just experienced, from which I quote:
"We reduced Falluja to rubble. We claimed victory and told the world we held Falluja under total and complete control. Our military claimed very few civilian casualties and listed thousands of insurgents dead. CNN and Fox News harped and cheered on the television that the battle of Falluja would go down in history as a complete success, and a testament to the United States' supremacy on the modern battlefield.
"However, after the dust settled, and generals sat in cozy offices smoking their victory cigars, the front lines in Falluja exploded again with indomitable mortar, rocket, and small-arm attacks on U.S. and coalition forces."
(http://www.socialistworker.org/2004-2/522/522_07_FromFalluja.shtml )
Ironically, today, two years later, the entire Anbar province, of which the remaining shell of a city that was Fallujah is a part, is swarming with insurgents, with continuing guerrilla activity even in wreathlike Fallujah. The Pentagon has largely kissed off trying to control the province and finds itself in quandary after quandary throughout Iraq.
Right after Operation Phantom Fury flattened Fallujah, one of those generals that hEkLe was referring to above also invoked history:
"It ought to go down in the history books", Major General Richard Natonski of the Marines told the New York Times, proud of America's handiwork in conquering Fallujah. Indeed it will, General, right alongside the Warsaw Ghetto, Grozny and Guernica as testimonies to modern man's ongoing, savage inhumanity to his fellow man. The only thing that remains to be done is for another artist to express the story on canvas for posterity.
Postscript to This Series:
This is from a WWII article entitled "British in Africa Lack Killer Urge", by James Aldridge writing in the New York Times on June 24, 1942:
"The German Africa Corps defeated the Eighth Army because it had speed, anger, virility and toughness....They (the Germans) are practical men, taken from a most practical and hard life to fight practically: Nazis trained to kill. The German commanders are scientists, who are continually experimenting with and improving the hard, mathematical formula of killing. They are trained as mathematicians, engineers and chemists facing complicated problems....War is pure physics to them. The German soldier is trained with a psychology of a daredevil track rider. He is a professional killer, with no distractions. He believes he is the toughest man on earth....The British soldier is the most heroic on earth, but do not confuse that with military toughness. He has the toughness of determination but he has not the toughness to kill his enemy."
This article prompted these comments by Wilhelm Reich, the famous psychiatrist, sociologist and writer, in his classic work, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1942-Third Edition):
"This is the best description of mechanical militarism that I have ever read. It discloses in one blow the complete identity of mechanistic natural science, mechanical human structure, and sadistic murder. This identity found its highest and most consummate expression in the totalitarian dictatorship-ideology of German imperialism. This mechanical trinity is set in relief against the view of life that regards man not as a machine, the machine not the master of man, and militarism not as his greatest asset. This living functional view has found its last refuge in the Western democracies. It remains to be seen whether it will survive the chaos." (page 332)
Reich goes on to excoriate Aldridge for entreating the British to abandon their appreciation for human live in favor of imitating the Fascists. Again quoting Reich, "Those who attempt to beat the mechanical automations with their own methods will only jump out of the frying pan into the fire, i.e., in their efforts to become more efficient killers, they will transform themselves into mechanical automations and perpetuate the process their opponents have set in motion....
"Our conception of the anti-fascist fight is different. It is a clear, relentless recognition of the historical and biological causes that lead to such murders. The deracination of the fascist plague will come solely from such a recognition and not by imitating it. One cannot vanquish fascism by imitating and subduing it with its own methods, without becoming a fascist oneself. The way of fascism is the way of the automation, death, rigidity, hopelessness. The way of the living is fundamentally different...." (page 333)
Unfortunately, the American Establishment, with its fledgling new CIA, couldn't wait to embrace the research of captured Nazi scientists at the end of WWII and utterly failed to heed this advice. Instead, America has, over time, journeyed into the heart of darkness, succumbing to the fascist plague, and no matter how much various demagogic American politicians project this dark shadow onto those they hypocritically call "Islamo-Fascists" and countless other terms of demonization, this is but deep denial compounding brutal militarism and imperialism, with no end in sight to the ongoing carnage, unless those Americans not infected with this plague can find the will to confront and defeat them.
If you would care to see the truth about Hamas use of human shields and the extent to which Israel goes to prevent civilian casualties just go to the Jerusalem Post and see video IDF took of booby-trapped school and zoo. Also showed video of IAF diverting missiles from Hamas targets in three cases to avoid injuring civilians. But Hamas targets only civilians in Israel with its ball bearing packed missiles. But you don't want to report the truth, just keep on with your lies. But of course you will say the videos are all fake. Of course you would.
I say again, WP does not "carmelize" skin. It burns it. It removes it and any clothing. The smoke rounds are not chemical weapons nor incendiaries. Bits of WP are in the round and can burn you. WP was used against combatants. Not civilians.
Effects of WP: via wiki...
hite phosphorus can cause injuries and death in three ways: by burning deep into tissue, by being inhaled as a smoke, and by being ingested. Extensive exposure in any way is fatal.
[edit] Effects of exposure to WP weapons
Incandescent particles of WP cast off by a WP weapon's initial explosion can produce extensive, deep (second and third degree), burns. Phosphorus burns carry a greater risk of mortality than other forms of burns due to the absorption of phosphorus into the body through the burned area, resulting in liver, heart and kidney damage, and in some cases multi-organ failure.[26] These weapons are particularly dangerous to exposed people because white phosphorus continues to burn unless deprived of oxygen or until it is completely consumed. In some cases, burns are limited to areas of exposed skin because the smaller WP particles do not burn completely through personal clothing before being consumed. According to GlobalSecurity.org, quoted by The Guardian, "White phosphorus results in painful chemical burn injuries"[27] .
[edit] Exposure and inhalation of smoke
Burning WP produces a hot, dense white smoke. Most forms of smoke are not hazardous in the kinds of concentrations produced by a battlefield smoke shell. Exposure to heavy smoke concentrations of any kind for an extended period (particularly if near the source of emission) does have the potential to cause illness or even death.
WP smoke irritates the eyes and nose in moderate concentrations. With intense exposures, a very explosive cough may occur. However, no recorded casualties from the effects of WP smoke alone have occurred in combat operations and to date there are no confirmed deaths resulting from exposure to phosphorus smoke.
The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has set an acute inhalation Minimum Risk Level (MRL) for white phosphorus smoke of 0.02 mg/m³, the same as fuel oil fumes. By contrast, the chemical weapon mustard gas is 30 times more potent: 0.0007 mg/m³ [28].
[edit] Oral ingestion
The accepted lethal dose when white phosphorus is ingested orally is 1 mg per kg of body weight, although the ingestion of as little as 15 mg has resulted in death.[29] It may also cause liver, heart or kidney damage.[26] There are reports of individuals with a history of oral ingestion who have passed phosphorus-laden stool ("smoking stool syndrome")[29]
No carmelizing. Deep burns.
Wishing does not make the use of WP smoke or WP against combatants illegal. Use of WP inside Gaza WOULD be wrong since the combatants are within a densely populated area and NOT entrenched or barricaded. Use of WP smoke is not.
Of course WP carmelizes victims who are saturated by it. Do I have to show you a whole morgue full of bodies beyond the first photo I posted? How do you think that woman, who had only recently died by the way, since there are maggot larvae all over it growing in the remaining organs, got that way? Was she dipped in a caramel vat? There were scores of human and animal bodies found in this state in Fallujah after the second siege.
This is what it does in sufficient quantity when it hits the skin:
"White phosphorus results in painful chemical burn injuries. The resultant burn typically appears as a necrotic area with a yellowish color and characteristic garliclike odor. White phosphorus is highly lipid soluble and as such, is believed to have rapid dermal penetration once particles are embedded under the skin. Because of its enhanced lipid solubility, many have believed that these injuries result in delayed wound healing. This has not been well studied; therefore, all that can be stated is that white phosphorus burns represent a small subsegment of chemical burns, all of which typically result in delayed wound healing.
..... Phosphorus burns on the skin are deep and painful; a firm eschar is produced and is surrounded by vesiculation.
White Phosphorus shells apparently react with human flesh by sort of melting it, giving victims a carmelized, melted appearance while the clothes remain intact.
If a "smoke" shell is shot and explodes a thousand feet into the air, its concentration will likely be diluted enough so as not to saturate someone. If it is exploded close to the ground, the concentration is going to do significant to lethal damage to a body.
Meanwhile, doctors in Gaza state that they are receiving patients with horrific burns on their bodies.
HI! This is BULLSHIT. These corpses actually belong to marines. I know a marine who was there and i can in fact confirm this is BULLSHIT. you can also see clothes. If they had been incinerated, dont you think the clothes wouldve gone too? also, there are maggots. this corpse is just rotting. it was proably shot, or in an explosion, but not incinerated because there is still hair, clothes and the body is wet from the decomposition process. skin also tends to become dark and leathery after the body has been rotting for a while. Dont let this propaganda fool you folks. this is just a body thats been out for a while. Im studying in the medical field and i know what a rotting corpse looks like. this is it. maggots and all. Nice try though.
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