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Invasion of Iraq: The Crimes of Fallujah Revisited Posted on Wednesday, November 09 @ 22:21:13 UTC
Topic: Chemical Weapons
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by Kurt Nimmo kurtnimmo.com
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–it 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 communiqué 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—although 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—al 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.
But even if ash-Shaykhli never existed, there were others reporting atrocities (Kamal Hadeethi, a physician from a hospital near Fallujah, who reported witnessing burned and melted corpses, and Dahr Jamail, who interviewed Fallujah refugees). "Jamail reported eye-witness accounts of U.S. forces using chemical weapons and napalm in Fallujah," writes Ken Sanders. "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."
Not surprisingly, the USINFO site also accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the Cuban government of spreading "misinformation" that was repeated in "Iran, China, Turkey, and other countries, and on hundreds of Web sites." USINFO characterized the well-documented facts surrounding the use of chemicals weapons—against civilians as well as resistance fighters—as "outrageous charges" and as an example of "how totally false, fabricated charges can rocket from obscurity to worldwide attention within a matter of days." Of course, the story was virtually ignored by the corporate media in America, thus demonstrating that the State Department and the Bush administration had nothing to worry about—until now.
It will be interesting to see how the Bushites react to the RAI News 24 story, complete with "dramatic footage ... revealing the effects of the bombardment on civilians, women and children, some of whom were surprised in their sleep." No doubt USINFO will be ordered to work overtime to counter the horrific video footage. Maybe they can blame al-Qaeda.
It should now be obvious—and it is to most of the world beyond America—the United States is a nation of people in denial (or are so ill-informed and ignorant as to be functional cretins) of the fact their rulers are psychopathic killers bent on destroying hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, especially Muslims, although in the not too distant past the murder victims included Asians (three or more million Vietnamese) and Central Americans (hundreds of thousands tortured and killed) by the likes of demented sadists such as Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and two members of the Bush crime family (earlier members of the mobster family supported the Nazis). Every single American who pays taxes (myself included) shares responsibility for these crimes and those currently unfolding—including the almost unimaginable radiological poisoning of the planet through the use of depleted uranium. I believe these are crimes that surpass or equal the crimes the Nazis stood accused of at the Nuremberg tribunal.
For those crimes, criminals were sent to the gallows.
Addendum
I was able to view Sigfrido Ranucci's documentary here (this particular version is QuickTime; for additional video formats, visit this page on the Uruknet.info site).
Reprinted from: http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=105
VIDEO | Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre
WARNING: This video contains graphic and possibly disturbing footage.
QuickTime DSL | 56K Windows Media DSL | 56K RealMedia DSL | 56K
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