As well as Depleted Uranium, we’re also seeing reports of chemical and biological weapons having been used by coalition forces in Iraq by BSN Editor
How cruelly ironic that it was our leaders claims that the Iraqi government possessed these types of weapons with a capability to attack UK interests within 45 minutes that was sold as the primary reason for the Iraq war.
American documentary film-maker, Mark Manning, told of “American forces deploying – in violation of international treaties – napalm, chemical weapons, phosphorous bombs, and ‘bunker-busting’ shells laced with depleted uranium. Use of any of these against civilians is a violation of international law.”
…US marines have already +admitted+ that they have used an upgraded version of napalm. A weapon which uses kerosene rather than petrol was deployed when dozens of bombs were dropped near bridges over the Saddam Canal and the Tigris river, south of Baghdad. Andrew Buncombe reported in the Independent on Sunday: ‘We napalmed both those bridge approaches,’ said Colonel James Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11.
“‘Unfortunately there were people there… you could see them in the cockpit video. They were Iraqi soldiers. It’s no great way to die. The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect.'” (Buncombe, ‘US admits it used napalm bombs in Iraq,’ Independent on Sunday, August 10, 2003)’
BBC Worldwide Monitoring picked up this report by one London-based Arabic news agency of “US military aircraft bombarded a number of neighbourhoods that had fallen into the hands of gunmen such as the Al-Askari neighbourhood, which was the target a fierce aerial attack. B-52 bombers capable of dropping bombs weighing up to a tonne were used for the first time in recent battles and dropped a number of shells and cluster bombs on the city.” (Quds Press news agency, ‘Iraqi gunmen claim to regain control of Al-Fallujah districts,’ December 12, 2004)
The testimony of human rights workers such as Michele Naar-Obed based in Duluth, Minnesota. Naar-Obed was a participant on a recent peace delegation to Iraq, her third visit. She noted: “our delegation heard reports from refugees, human rights workers, sheiks and imams about the November 2004 invasion of Fallujah. We learned of execution-style killing of men handcuffed and blindfolded, of women and children killed while holding white flags and of bodies burned and grossly disfigured. Doctors are convinced chemical weapons or, at the very least, napalm was used. Men between 16 and 50 years were not allowed to leave the city even if they weren’t part of the ‘insurgency.’ U.N. representatives confirmed these reports and told us they have spent weeks negotiating access into Fallujah to begin investigation and have been denied.” Why have such reports of alleged atrocities, as related by Iraqi refugees, doctors and human rights workers, and confirmed by UN representatives, not been covered by the BBC?
Dahr Jamail, an unembedded journalist in Iraq, reported of the US assault on Fallujah in November 2004: “The military estimates that 2,000 people in Fallujah were killed, but claims that most of them were fighters. Relief personnel and locals, however, believe the vast majority of the dead were civilians.” (Jamail, ‘An Eyewitness Account of Fallujah,’ December 16, 2004)
American documentary film-maker Mark Manning recently returned from Fallujah after delivering medical supplies to refugees. Manning was able to secretly conduct 25 hours of videotaped interviews with dozens of Iraqi eyewitnesses – men, women and children who had experienced the assault on Fallujah first-hand. In an interview with a local newspaper in the United States, Manning recounted how he:
“… was told grisly accounts of Iraqi mothers killed in front of their sons, brothers in front of sisters, all at the hands of American soldiers. He also heard allegations of wholesale rape of civilians, by both American and Iraqi troops. Manning said he heard numerous reports of the second siege of Falluja [November 2004] that described American forces deploying – in violation of international treaties – napalm, chemical weapons, phosphorous bombs, and ‘bunker-busting’ shells laced with depleted uranium. Use of any of these against civilians is a violation of international law.”(Nick Welsh, ‘Diving into Fallujah,’ Santa Barbara Independent, March 17, 2005)
A report on Fallujah presented recently to the 61st session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights by the Baghdad-based Studies Center of Human Rights and Democracy appealed to the international community: “What more tragedies are the international bodies waiting for in order to raise their voices demanding to stop the massacres and mass killings of the civilians?” The report warns that “there are mass graves in the city” and “the medical authorities and the citizens could not find the burial ground of 450 bodies of the citizens of Fallujah that the American occupation forces have photographed and buried in a place that is still unknown.” (SCHRD, ‘Report on the current situation in Fallujah,’ March 26, 2005)
A newspaper interview with two men from Falluja – physician Mahammad J. Haded and Mohammad Awad, director of a refugee centre – in the German daily Junge Welt, on February 26, 2005. Mr Awad said: “I saw in Falluja with own eyes a family that had been shot by U.S. soldiers: The father was in his mid-fifties, his three children between ten and twelve years old. In the refugee camp a teacher told me she had been preparing a meal, when soldiers stormed their dwelling in Falluja. Without preliminary warning they shot her father, her husband and her brother. Then they went right out. From fear the woman remained in the house with the dead bodies. In the evening other soldiers came, who took her and her children and brought them out of the city. Those are only two of many tragedies in Falluja.” (International Action Center, ‘Fallujah was wiped out’)
