[Marxism] REPORT: Napalm, mustard gas and nerve gas used by US in Fallujah

[Ralph Johansen <michele@xxxxxxxx>]

<Reportedly, Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli of the Iraq Ministry of Health held
a press conference last month and charged the U.S. with using napalm,
mustard gas, and nerve gas when it attacked Fallujah in November 2004.
Dr. ash-Shaykhli described "melted" bodies and fires that could not be
put out with water. Similarly, Dr. ash-Shaykhli described entire
sections of the city where nothing, neither cats nor dogs nor birds, was
left alive, suggesting the use of chemical weapons.>
<On February 26, 2005, the German newspaper Junge Welt published an
interview with Dr. Mohammad J. Haded, a member of the medical staff of
the Central Hospital of Fallujah, and Mohammad F. Awad, a member of the
Iraqi Red Crescent Society who helped gather corpses in Fallujah for
identification. In that interview, Dr. Haded described Fallujah as
"Dresden in Iraq" and Awad recounted the "remarkable number of dead
people [who] were totally charred." Dr. Haded also described how U.S.
forces "wiped out" the hospital in Fallujah, attacked rescue vehicles,
and destroyed a makeshift field hospital.>

http://www.politicsofdissent.blogspot.com/

April 12, 2005

Fallujah: Dresden in Iraq
by Ken Sanders

Although studiously ignored by the mainstream news media, last month
came reports that the U.S. used napalm and chemical weapons in its
assault upon the city of Fallujah. The assault of November 2004 resulted
in the near-total destruction of the city, as well as the deaths of
thousands of non-insurgent Iraqi civilians. If the reports about napalm
and chemical weapons are true, not only would the U.S. be in violation
of international law, it would be guilty of the very crimes against
humanity that it previously leveled against Saddam Hussein and used as a
justification for invading Iraq.

Reportedly, Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli of the Iraq Ministry of Health held
a press conference last month and charged the U.S. with using napalm,
mustard gas, and nerve gas when it attacked Fallujah in November 2004.
Dr. ash-Shaykhli described "melted" bodies and fires that could not be
put out with water. Similarly, Dr. ash-Shaykhli described entire
sections of the city where nothing, neither cats nor dogs nor birds, was
left alive, suggesting the use of chemical weapons.

Promptly, the United States denied Dr. ash-Shaykhli's allegations about
mustard and nerve gasses. The U.S. even went so far as to deny the very
existence of Dr. ash-Shaykhli or that anyone by that name ever worked
for Iraq's Ministry of Health. According to the U.S., the false story
about the U.S. military's use of chemical and nerve gasses in Fallujah
was invented by a web site pretending to be that of the Qatari
television network Al Jazeera.

Unfortunately, the U.S. denial of wrongdoing in Fallujah cannot
withstand scrutiny.

For example, while the U.S. is correct that a fake Al Jazeera
("aljazeera.com") published a story about U.S. atrocities in Fallujah,
the U.S. glosses over the fact that the real Al Jazeera
("aljazeera.net") published a similar story. On March 17, 2005, the real
Al Jazeera reported on the wholesale killings of civilians by U.S.
forces in Fallujah, including through the use of napalm. In that story,
the real Al Jazeera provided eye-witness accounts of U.S. forces killing
entire families, including women and children. Likewise, the real Al
Jazeera reported that the U.S. raided the only hospital in Fallujah at
the beginning of the assault in order to prevent reports of civilian
casualties.

The U.S. has yet to attempt to discredit the story published by the real
Al Jazeera.

Furthermore, U.S. denials about using prohibited weapons in Fallujah,
particularly napalm, lack credibility inasmuch as the U.S. was forced to
retract previous denials of similar accusations. On March 22, 2003,
following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Sydney Morning Herald
reported that U.S. forces had used napalm. Noting that napalm had been
banned by a United Nations convention in 1980 (a convention never signed
by the U.S.), U.S. military spokesmen denied using napalm in Iraq. On
August 5, 2003, however, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that U.S.
officials confirmed using "napalm-like" weapons in Iraq between March
and April 2003.

In a feat of semantic hair-splitting of which Bill Clinton would have
been proud, the U.S. claimed the incendiaries used in Iraq contained
less benzene than the internationally-banned napalm and, therefore, were
"firebombs" and not napalm. According to U.S. officials, had reporters
asked about firebombs in March of 2003, the U.S. would have confirmed
their use. Nonetheless, the U.S. was forced to concede that regardless
of the technicalities, the napalm-like weapons were functionally
equivalent to napalm. In fact, the difference between napalm and
firebombs is so minute that U.S. forces still refer to the weapons as
napalm.

With that kind of track-record, it is difficult to swallow the recent
denials by the U.S. that it used napalm or any other banned weapons in
Fallujah.

Such denials are even less convincing when contrasted with eye-witness
reports of what happened in Fallujah. There are, first of all, the
findings by Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhil of Iraq's Ministry of Health that
U.S. forces used napalm and chemical weapons in Fallujah. However, even
taking as true the U.S. claim that Dr. ash-Shaykhli never existed, much
less worked for Iraq's Ministry of Health, he is not the only individual
to claim that the U.S. used banned weapons in Fallujah.

For instance, on November 10, 2004, the San Francisco Chronicle quoted
Kamal Hadeethi, a physician from a hospital near Fallujah, as saying,
"The corpses of the mujahedeen which we received were burned, and some
corpses were melted."

When he spoke from Baghdad on November 29, 2004 with Amy Goodman on
Democracy Now!, American journalist Dahr Jamail recounted stories told
to him by refugees from Fallujah. According to Jamail, the refugees
described bombs which covered entire areas with fire that could not be
extinguished with water and which burned bodies beyond recognition.

Likewise, in a November 26, 2004 story for the Inter Press Service,
Jamail reported eye-witness accounts of U.S. forces using chemical
weapons and napalm in Fallujah. Later, in a January 18, 2005 report for
Electronic Iraq, Jamail reported eye-witness accounts of U.S. forces
using bulldozers and dump-trucks to remove tons of soil from various
sections of Fallujah. Eye-witnesses also described U.S. forces using
water tankers to "power wash" some of the streets in Fallujah. It does
not take a conspiracy-theorist to conclude that U.S. forces wanted to
"decontaminate" the city and remove evidence of chemical weapons.

On November 29, 2004, Al Jazeera TV (the real Al Jazeera) interviewed
Dr. Ibrahim al-Kubaysi in Baghdad after his medical delegation was
denied access to Fallujah. In that interview, Dr. al-Kubaysi recounted
eye-witness descriptions of blackened corpses and corpses without bullet
holes strewn throughout the streets of Fallujah.

On February 26, 2005, the German newspaper Junge Welt published an
interview with Dr. Mohammad J. Haded, a member of the medical staff of
the Central Hospital of Fallujah, and Mohammad F. Awad, a member of the
Iraqi Red Crescent Society who helped gather corpses in Fallujah for
identification. In that interview, Dr. Haded described Fallujah as
"Dresden in Iraq" and Awad recounted the "remarkable number of dead
people [who] were totally charred." Dr. Haded also described how U.S.
forces "wiped out" the hospital in Fallujah, attacked rescue vehicles,
and destroyed a makeshift field hospital.

American documentary-maker Mark Manning made similar observations while
in Fallujah, as reported in the March 17, 2005 edition of the Santa
Barbara Independent. Manning visited Fallujah in January 2005 and
interviewed Iraqi physicians who told him that the first target of U.S.
forces in the November
2004 assault on Fallujah was the hospital and that ambulances were
fair-game. Iraqi physicians told Manning they were certain chemical
weapons had been used in Fallujah "because they handled many dead bodies
bearing no evident sign of trauma." As for the use of napalm by U.S.
forces, Manning returned home from Fallujah with photographs of charred
corpses "whose clothes had been melted into their skin."

Michele Naar-Obed, of the Chicago-based Christian Peacemaker Team, also
visited Fallujah in early 2005. Naar-Obed described her trip in the March
13, 2005 edition of the Duluth News Tribune of Minnesota. As with
Manning, Naar-Obed described Iraqi physicians who were convinced that
chemical weapons and napalm were used by U.S. forces in Fallujah.
According to Naar-Obed, U.N. representatives confirmed to her reports of
execution-style killings of handcuffed and blindfolded Iraqis, as well
as reports of bodies that were burned and horribly disfigured.

Finally, on March 21, 2005, the Commission for the Compensation of
Fallujah Citizens, established by the Iraqi transitional government,
reported that approximately 100,000 wild and domesticated animals were
found dead in Fallujah, killed by chemical or gaseous munitions.

An estimated 600 non-insurgent civilians died in the U.S. assaults upon
Fallujah. Over half of them were women and children. According to an April
4, 2005 report by IRIN, a U.N. humanitarian information unit, as many as
70 percent of all structures were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable.
There is similarly no water, electricity, or sewage treatment in
Fallujah. Not surprisingly, a mission that was meant to pacify an
insurgent stronghold ended up breeding anti-American hatred among
Fallujah's survivors and their sympathizers.

U.S. denials of wrongdoing notwithstanding, there are numerous
independent sources making similar reports about U.S. forces employing
banned weapons in Fallujah, as well as targeting hospitals and
civilians. In the face of such independent and corroborating reports, it
is hard to escape the sickening conclusion that the U.S. violated
international law and committed war crimes in its assaults upon
Fallujah. In doing so, the U.S. became the evil the Bush administration
has vowed to eradicate.

Suddenly, the Bush administration's open hostility toward the
International Criminal Court in particular, and international law in
general, makes a whole lot more sense.

Ken Sanders is a writer based in Tucson, Arizona. Visit his weblog at:
http://www.politicsofdissent.blogspot.com/ tkensand@xxxxxxxxx

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