The Crimes of Fallujah Revisited

The Crimes of Fallujah Revisited
Kurt Nimmo, Another day in the empire
November 9, 2005

Earlier today I received an email from an Italian, directing me to the RAI News 24 website where there is a video documenting the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Fallujah. I was unable to download the video because the connection to the RAI News site was so slow. However, even if I was able to view the video report (entitled ¡°Fallujah, The Concealed Massacre¡±) filed by correspondent Sigfrido Ranucci, I don¡¯t think I¡¯d want to see it. ¡°I received the order use caution because we had used white phosphorus on Fallujah,¡± a former soldier told Ranucci. ¡°In military slag it is called ¡®Willy Pete¡¯. Phosphorus burns the human body on contact¨Cit even melts it right down to the bone.¡± A report published in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica runs as follows:



I gathered accounts of the use of phosphorus and napalm from a few Fallujah refugees whom I met before being kidnapped, says Manifesto reporter Giuliana Sgrena, who was kidnapped in Fallujah last February, in a recorded interview. I wanted to get the story out, but my kidnappers would not permit it.



RAI News 24 will broadcast video and photographs taken in the Iraqi city during and after the November 2004 bombardment which prove that the US military, contrary to statements in a December 9 communiqu¨¦ from the US Department of State, did not use phosphorus to illuminate enemy positions (which would have been legitimate) but instead dropped white phosphorus indiscriminately and in massive quantities on the city¡¯s neighborhoods.



In the investigative story, produced by Maurizio Torrealta, dramatic footage is shown revealing the effects of the bombardment on civilians, women and children, some of whom were surprised in their sleep.



The investigation will also broadcast documentary proof of the use in Iraq of a new napalm formula called MK77. The use of the incendiary substance on civilians is forbidden by a 1980 UN treaty. The use of chemical weapons is forbidden by a treaty which the US signed in 1997.



First, this makes you wonder who really kidnapped Giuliana Sgrena. As you may remember if you followed the Sgrena story, Harald Doornbos, a Dutch reporter ¡°embedded¡± with U.S. occupation forces, wrote an article claiming Sgrena told him the Iraqi resistance did not pose a threat to her or her companions. Sgrena had reported on the devastation of Fallujah and the use of napalm by U.S. forces and this information would have obviously served the propaganda purposes of the Iraqi resistance and thus it is unlikely, although not entirely improbable, that the Iraqi resistance abducted the reporter. I speculated at the time that Sgrena had been kidnapped by a military intelligence counter-gang precisely because she had damaging information about what actually happened in Fallujah, facts of course left unreported by the corporate media. I am, however, at a loss to explain why this counter-gang did not kill Sgrena, although the U.S. military sent a strong message when it shot up her car, killing the SISMI agent Nicola Calipari, following her release on March 4, 2005. Calipari¡¯s intervention may have had something to do with the fake military intelligence ¡°insurgents¡± not killing Sgrena and dumping her body on a Baghdad street, a fate suffered by no shortage of others. Of course, all of this is merely speculation¡ªalthough may supersede speculation when the history of U.S. counterinsurgency is considered, in particular Major Edward Geary Lansdale¡¯s ¡°psy-war tactics¡± used in the Philippines against the Huk (see Toward a New Counterinsurgency: Philippines, Laos, and Vietnam, by Michael McClintock).


In March of this year, months after the November 2004 assault on Fallujah, Khalid ash-Shaykhli, an official at Iraq¡¯s health ministry, told a Baghdad press conference that the U.S. military used internationally banned weapons during its deadly November 2004 offensive in the city of Fallujah, according to Joel Wendland of Political Affairs.



¡°Dr. ash-Shaykhli stated that his medical teams, assigned the responsibility of investigating the health situation in Fallujah by Iraq¡¯s health ministry, had done research that proved U.S. occupation forces used substances, including mustard gas, nerve gas, and other burning chemicals there.¡± A news source reported ash-Shaykhli as stating:


¡°I absolutely do not exclude their use of nuclear and chemical substances, since all forms of nature were wiped out in that city. I can even say that we found dozens, if not hundreds, of stray dogs, cats, and birds that had perished as a result of those gasses.¡±

USINFO, a propaganda arm of the Department of State, wasted no time in declaring the ¡°Iraqi Ministry of Health has denied that it ever compiled such a report¡± and went on the affix blame on the usual suspect¡ªal Qaeda or their imagined (or intelligence asset) symps. ¡°The false ¡®mustard gas¡¯ claim was first made on March 1 on Islammemo.cc, a pro-al Qaeda, Arabic-language website run by a Saudi computer company that has been under U.S. suspicion for supporting terrorist activities,¡± claims the USINO website (¡±Identifying Misinformation¡±).



In addition (making sure to cover all bases and blame the usual if threadbare suspects), USINFO blamed the commies. ¡°An Arab communist named Muhammad Abu Nasr, a member of the editorial board of the Web site Free Arab Voice, translated the Islammemo.cc story into English and posted it as an ¡®Iraqi Resistance Report.¡¯¡± As for Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, it was explained that ¡°Dr. Shaker Al-Aineji, the Director-General of the Medical Operation Department of the Iraqi Ministry of Health stated that no one named Khalid ash-Shaykhli worked for the ministry, and that no such report existed.¡± Of course, since the Pentagon and the Bush administration control all aspects of the Iraqi bureaucracy, it¡¯s not out of the realm of possibility ash-Shaykhli suffered the fate of many Iraqi intellectuals.



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