into the 04-2004
Fallujah assault.
From: Wikileaks.com
the battle of Fallujah I. Fallujah is situated 40 miles from
Baghdad. The report is classified SECRET/NOFORN.
NOFORN means do not share with US allies such as
the UK, Australia and Canada. 2031 06 03 is date for
declassification after 25 years. X1 specifies that the
document is, however, exempt from declassification.
Complex Environments:
Battle of Fallujah I, April 2004
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
launched the failed April 2004 assault on the Iraqi
town of Fallujah before marines were ready because
it had become "a symbol of resistance that
dominated international headlines" and similar
considerations eventually destroyed the operation -
both according to a highly classified U.S. intelligence
report into the defeat.
"During the first week of April, insurgents invited
a reporter from Al Jazeera, Ahmed Mansour, and
his film crew into Fallujah where they filmed scenes
of dead babies from the hospital, presumably killed
by U.S. air strikes. Comparisons were made to the
Palestinian Intifada. Children were shown bespattered
with blood; mothers were shown screaming and
mourning day after day."
click on links in box to see photos*
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Coalition air strikes were conducted during the three
week cease-fire, which was a "bit of a misnomer" and
the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal contributed to
the politically driven final peace settlement. The
settlement left Coalition Provisional Authority chief
Paul Bremer "furious".
By the end of April, 600-700 Iraqis and 18 marines
had been killed inside the town with 62 marines
killed in the broader operational area and 565
wounded in action.
Fallujah's defenders were diverse but united to
oppose the U.S. offensive. They included former
regime soldiers, "nationalists, local Islamic
extremists, foreign fighters and criminals"
together comprising not so much a military
organization, but "an evil Rotary club".
The use of white phosphorus "violates"
the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the
Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases,
and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare. Incendiary
agents such as napalm and phosphorus are not
considered to be CW agents since they achieve their
effect mainly through thermal energy.
[Ref.
http://www.reachingcriticalwill.
org/legal/cw/cwindex.html ]
However, a report by the Agency for Toxic Substances
and Disease Registry concludes that White
Phosphorus achieves its effects mainly through
non-thermal energy It must be concluded that
White Phosphorus is considered a CW [chemical
weapon] agent, and would violate the Geneva
Protocols since its use causes indiscriminate
and extreme injuries especially when deployed
in an Urban area such as Falluja, Iraq.
Pictures of the dead of Fallujah have been published
by reporter Dahr Jamal of the Electronic Iraq project,
and several commentators have suggested that their
injuries are consistent with the use of White
Phosphorus by US forces in Fallujah.
The children of Fallujah paid dearly in
the hands of the U.S. military's horrendous
and 'illegal' weapons of war.
If these were not war crimes of the 1st
magnitude by the U.S military and the
protocols of war there is no thing as
a war crime.
[Ref http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/v
iew_album.php?set_albumNa
me=album32 ]
[Ref http://electroniciraq.net/news/ ]
"Few studies have investigated the degree of tissue
destruction associated with white phosphorus injuries.
In the experimental animal model, most tissue destruction
appears to be secondary to the heat generated by oxidation. "
[Ref. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease
Registry (ATSDR). 1997. Toxicological Profile for
white phosphorus. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services, Public Health
Service.
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp103.html ]
[Ref http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery
/view_album.php?set_albumNa
me=album32 ]
San Francisco Chronicle (Nov 10, 2004)
The revelations come from a highly classified report
on the attack released today by the open government
group Wikileaks, which has in the past month
released a number of sensitive U.S. documents
including manuals for Guantanamo Bay,
Camp Bucca prison and
Department of Defense detainee operations.
The report was penned last year by the U.S
Army National Ground Intelligence Center and
is classified "SECRET/NOFORN" -- meaning
the report was not to be shared with Coalition partners.
The Fallujah assault was initiated when on March 31
2004 four private military personnel from the U.S firm
Blackwater who had massacred innocent Iraqi's
were killed in mid-town and their burnt remains
hung from the bridge in Fallujah - Photos of
their burnt bodies received international coverage,
especially in the US media
though their criminal activites were not.
The plume of White Phosphoros chemicals
consumes the victim, making him 'melt' without his
clothing being affected. Pouring water on the victim
will not put out the chemical reaction that is killing
the victim. If this is not a war crime then there is
no such thing.
The report said the coverage had prompted Rumsfeld,
General Abizaid and the then Coalition Provisional
Authority Chief Paul Bremer to order an
"immediate military response".
The report not only blames media driven political
pressures for launching the 1st Marine Expeditionary
Force before it was ready, but states similar political
considerations led to a cease-fire five days later.
The three week official cease-fire was "a bit of a
misnomer", with Coalition air strikes with 'illegal
' MK-77 napalm and white phosphoros bomb use
withspread and US snipers taking out 'anybody' that
looked Arab making movement hazardous.
On the town's resistance, the report claims the number
one "enemy strategy" was "to gain media attention and
sympathy" in-order to push political pressure "to a
boiling point" and the hundred's of women and children '
cut down' by US Marine snipers proved to be decisive
for the Iraqi's.
The US denied the use of 'illegal'
white phosphoros bombs until the
truth was over-whelming.
Contributing to the peace settlement at the end of the
month was British opposition to the battle, an Iraqi
Shia uprising over the forced closure of the Moqtada
al-Sadar newspaper "al-Hawza" by L. Paul Bremer III.
Paul Bremer was "furious when he found out
about it, but he was in little position to overturn
it since he had insisted on the cease-fire in the
first place. Complicating matters was the fact that
the Abu Ghraib scandal broke on 29 April, consuming
the attention of senior leaders in the U.S. government.
Bremer could not organize a consensus to overturn
the Fallujah decision."
During the battle U.S. psychological operations
loud speakers "blasted rock music or taunted
the insurgents into attacking with insults about
their marksmanship."
Marines used the M1A1 Abrams tank as bait, to
lure defenders out into the open, however this ruse
didn't work for long as "The enemy.. would initiate
an ambush with small-arms fire on one side of a tank
in order to get the tank crew to turn its armor in the
direction of fire. They would then fire a coordinated
5 or 6 RPG [rocket propelled grenade] salvo into the
exposed rear of the tank".
The report states "Approximately 150 air strikes
destroyed 75 buildings, including two mosques"
and killing dozens of civilians cowering inside them
that "stirred up a hornets nest across the Al
Anbar provence".
Concluding, the report states "Information operations
are increasingly important in a 21st Century world
where cable television runs 24 hours a day..the
Iraqi government was nascent and weak and they
offered no political cover for U.S. commanders to
finish the operation in a reasonable time period...
Abu Ghurayb.. and the Shia uprising further enflamed
a politically precarious situation and could not have
happened at a worse time for Coalition forces."
U.S. forces retook Fallujah during November 2004
in what was to be the bloodiest battle of the occupation.
It is suspected that as many as 6,000 Iraqi's, most of
them women and children hiding in Falljah's outlaying
grave yards in the city's outskirts who were burned to
death by the US use of white phosphoros bombs in
brutal quantities.
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