just Googled to see what information I could find. "Falluja white
phosphorus". I saw a picture. I'm not going to link to it.

Holy God.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/11/9/174518/797I
Nothing New/Nov 2004

One final thing: those who quibble over the legalities of using Greek
Fire on children, and say that no, no, we're not war criminals if we
did it because our UN - remember, we have Veto power, we are one of
the 5 permanent Members of the Security Council, power that no other
country has nor ever had, not even the SSSR - hasn't forced us to
sign the 1980 Convention banning it, like a Mafia don who's got the
state legislature wrapped around his finger gloating that the rules
were tailor-made to let him off the hook - you have put yourselves
very clearly on the side of the historical line.

It's the opposite side of the law in Nuremberg in 1945.

Perhaps there should be one law for the victors and another for the
losers. Perhaps the only real law is that of the jungle, that of raw
Strength.

But if you believe that, you're putting yourself on the side of
General von Bernhardi, and the people who sacked Louvain in 1914 and
Lidice in 1939...

Again.

~~~~Nov 08, 2005 there is a torrent version of it as well, to save
bandwidth:

http://66.92.170.13/...

~~~~Mon Nov 07, 2005 What is White Phosphorus
http://www.emedicine.com/...

"White phosphorus has been used commonly by the military as an
incendiary agent or as an igniter for munitions. It commonly is found
in hand grenades, mortar and artillery rounds, and smoke bombs.
Munitions-quality white phosphorus commonly is found in solid form.
When exposed to air, it spontaneously ignites and is oxidized rapidly
to phosphorus pentoxide. Such heat is produced by this reaction that
the element bursts into a yellow flame and produces a dense white
smoke. Phosphorus also becomes luminous in the dark, and this
property is conveyed to "tracer bullets." This chemical reaction
continues until either all the material is consumed or the element is
deprived of oxygen. "

details of manufacturing facility

for White Phosphorous munitions located at Pine Bluff Arsenal,
Arkansas can be found here:
www.pba.army.mil/Ammun.htm

Includes a nice image of WP canisters.

This facility may be operated under contract to the infamous Shaw
Group, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. See down thread...

Tue Nov 08, 2005

here is a link to a comment I made in another diary.

Basically, white phosphorus reacts/burns with air and humidity to
release a thick aerosol cloud of corrosive phosphorus acid vapors
that chemically burn tissue and lungs, plus significant amounts of a
very lethal gas called phosphine, and other related toxic phosphorus
substances.

Mon Nov 07, 2005 at 10:16:05 PM PDT

Another thing about WP Particles of WP which are spread by grenades
and other explosive delivery systems will stick to a body and burn
their way in. You can get a minor wound from a regular fragmentation
grenade or a bomb. If you are hit by white phosphorous, even a small
amount, you will likely be horribly and agonizingly burned.

~~~~If the State Department admitted that, then the USA just admitted
that it uses banned chemical weapons in warfare. Hey, wasn't the
threat of chemical weapons the whole purpose of why Bush invaded Iraq?

http://insomnia.livejournal.com/~~Date: Fri. Nov. 11th, 2005
Subject: White phosphorus use in Fallujah violated law of land
warfare?!

Security: Public

In the Battle Book of the US Army Command and General Staff College,
Section 5-11 (b4), it states:

(4) Burster Type White phosphorus (WP M110A2) rounds burn with
intense heat and emit dense white smoke. They may be used as the
initial rounds in the smokescreen to rapidly create smoke or against
material targets, such as Class V sites or logistic sites. It is
against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel
targets.

But of course, a journalist witnessed it being fired "into a cluster
of buildings" in Fallujah where insurgents were previously spotted,
and it was used "against the insurgents in trench lines and spider
holes when we could not get effects on them with HE"... There's even
a section in the same document where the analysts commented that they
wish that they had more HC smoke munitions to use for screening
missions in place of white phosphorus, so that they could've "saved
our WP for lethal missions."

One mystery until now is what kind of ordinance does this to a city.
The documentary shows what appears to be WP mortar shells being
fired, which is presumably part of the "shake and bake" or screening
missions mentioned, but it also shows a helicopter raining burning,
smoking hell down upon several blocks of the city.

My best guess is that it was an Apache helicopter with a M261
multiple rocket launcher, firing M156 white phosphorus rockets:

M156 White Phosphorous (Smoke). The M156 (diagram) is primarily used
for target marking and incendiary purposes. . . Filler for the M156
is 2,2 pounds of WP with .12-pound bursting charge of composition B.
The approximate weight of the fuzed warhead is 9.7 pounds.

Unsurprisingly, where there is smoke, there's also fire.

It's time for the Bush administration to come clean, issue a
retraction to the State Department denial, and 'fess up to the full
truth of how white phosphorus was used in Fallujah. The full story
may not be public yet, but it won't be long, and the earlier they
respond, the better it will be for the country.

~~Date: Fri. Nov. 11th, 2005 - 12:37 pm
Subject: Truth 1, U.S. State Department 0.
Security: Public

U.S. State Department admits to the offensive use of white phosphorus
in Fallujah.

They have issued an update / retraction to their denial of WP at the
bottom of their page, saying:

"White phosphorous shells, which produce smoke, were used in Fallujah
not for illumination but for screening purposes, i.e., obscuring
troop movements and, according to an article, "The Fight for
Fallujah," in the March-April 2005 issue of Field Artillery
magazine, "as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in
trench lines and spider holes …." The article states that U.S. forces
used white phosphorous rounds to flush out enemy fighters so that
they could then be killed with high explosive rounds."

It's still an understatement of the article, which conveniently cuts
out the mention of "shake and bake" and saving their WP ordinance
for "lethal missions", but it's probably as close to the truth as
those bastards are going to get. Good for them for correcting their
misstatement/lie/whatever. Negative marks for the U.S. media, though,
for not adequately covering and investigating the issue. Once again,
they leave all the work for the webloggers.

So, the obvious question left to ask is where the hell did the U.S.
State Department get the idea previously that white phosphorus was
only used for "illumination"? Was it an intentional deceit, or just
half-assed asscovering? That, of course, is the question that will
probably never be answered, but at least truth won another small
battle without having to wait fifty years for the historians to
figure it out.

http://insomnia.livejournal.com/
http://www.fumento.com/military/fallujah.html

~Funny numbers
Just a few days ago the U.S. Department of Defense corrected the
published number of U.S. soldiers injured in Iraq, without comment,
lowering it by 638. A similar mistake occurred in a report released
by the American Forces Press Service, last Thursday, on the web site
of the DoD.

In its original version, archived by Gobal Security, it was reported
that bombs had killed "over half of all those killed in Iraq--more
than 8,100 soldiers--according to Pentagon statistics."

Then, just a day later, on Friday, this report was also ammended,
without comment. But the applicable sentence was significantly
changed. Now it says that bombs killed "more than half of all those
killed in Iraq and injured more than 8,100 soldiers, according to
Pentagon statistics. The change is evident in a notice of both
versions in one screenshot from Google News:

So, the dashes were replaced by "and injured"--a small change with a
weighty consequence. Of course, the first version of the report could
really have been a simple mistake of composition. However, if the
original version of the report is the truth, it would indicate that
until now 16,000 U.S. soldiers had been killed in Iraq, while the
official report at the time stood at 2,045.

This difference of about 14,000 dead U.S. soldiers--eight times the
official report--seems hardly convincing at first glance. On the
other hand, there was already credible evidence in September of 2003
that the number of soldiers killed at that time was close to 5,000.
In addition, the numbers of those killed in the Vietnam War was
significantly underestimated by the military establishment.


Posted by Hannah at November 6, 2005 12:58 PM

~~http://hannah.smith-family.com/archive/000929.html

~~Hannah's Blog « Funny numbers | Main | Extreme Variability--Not »
November 06, 2005
Fallujah Truth
IRAQ: Fallujah: the truth at last

Dr Salam Ismael took aid to Fallujah in January.

It was the smell that first hit me, a smell that is difficult to
describe, and one that will never leave me. It was the smell of
death. Hundreds of corpses were decomposing in the houses, gardens
and streets of Fallujah. Bodies were rotting where they had fallen ?
bodies of men, women and children, many half-eaten by wild dogs.

A wave of hate had wiped out two-thirds of the town, destroying
houses and mosques, schools and clinics. This was the terrible and
frightening power of the US military assault.

The accounts I heard over the next few days will live with me
forever. You may think you know what happened in Fallujah. But the
truth is worse than you could possibly have imagined.

In Saqlawiya, one of the makeshift refugee camps that surround
Fallujah, we found a 17-year-old woman. ?I am Hudda Fawzi Salam
Issawi from the Jolan district of Fallujah?, she told me. ?On
November 9, American marines came to our house. My father and the
neighbour went to the door to meet them. We were not fighters. We
thought we had nothing to fear. I ran into the kitchen to put on my
veil, since men were going to enter our house and it would be wrong
for them to see me with my hair uncovered.

?This saved my life. As my father and neighbour approached the door,
the Americans opened fire on them. They died instantly.

?Me and my 13-year-old brother hid in the kitchen behind the fridge.
The soldiers came into the house and caught my older sister. They
beat her. Then they shot her. But they did not see me. Soon they
left, but not before they had destroyed our furniture and stolen the
money from my father?s pocket.?

Hudda told me how she comforted her dying sister by reading verses
from the Koran. After four hours her sister died. For three days,
Hudda and her brother stayed with their murdered relatives. But they
were thirsty and had only a few dates to eat. They feared the troops
would return and decided to try to flee the city. But they were
spotted by a US sniper.

Hudda was shot in the leg, her brother ran but was shot in the back
and died instantly. ?I prepared myself to die?, she told me. ?But I
was found by an American woman soldier, and she took me to hospital.?
She was eventually reunited with the surviving members of her family.

I also found survivors of another family from the Jolan district.
They told me that at the end of the second week of the siege the US
troops swept through the Jolan. The Iraqi National Guard used
loudspeakers to call on people to get out of the houses carrying
white flags, bringing all their belongings with them. They were
ordered to gather outside near the Jamah al Furkan mosque in the
centre of town.

On November 12, Eyad Naji Latif and eight members of his family ? one
of them a six-month-old child ? gathered their belongings and walked
in single file, as instructed, to the mosque.

When they reached the main road outside the mosque they heard a
shout, but they could not understand what was being shouted. Eyad
told me it could have been ?now? in English. Then the firing began.

US soldiers appeared on the roofs of surrounding houses and opened
fire. Eyad?s father was shot in the heart and his mother in the
chest.

They died instantly. Two of Eyad?s brothers were also hit, one in the
chest and one in the neck. Two of the women were hit, one in the hand
and one in the leg.

Then the snipers killed the wife of one of Eyad?s brothers. When she
fell her five year old son ran to her and stood over her body. They
shot him dead too.

Survivors made desperate appeals to the troops to stop firing.

But Eyad told me that whenever one of them tried to raise a white
flag they were shot. After several hours he tried to raise his arm
with the flag. But they shot him in the arm. Finally he tried to
raise his hand. So they shot him in the hand.

The five survivors, including the six-month-old child, lay in the
street for seven hours. Then four of them crawled to the nearest home
to find shelter.

The next morning, the brother who was shot in the neck also managed
to crawl to safety. They all stayed in the house for eight days,
surviving on roots and one cup of water, which they saved for the
baby.

On the eighth day they were discovered by some members of the Iraqi
National Guard and taken to hospital in Fallujah. They heard the US
soldiers were arresting any young men, so the family fled the
hospital and finally obtained treatment in a nearby town.

They do not know in detail what happened to the other families who
had gone to the mosque as instructed. But they told me the street was
awash with blood.

I had come to Fallujah in January as part of a humanitarian aid
convoy funded by donations from Britain.

Our small convoy of trucks and vans brought 15 tonnes of flour, eight
tonnes of rice, medical aid and 900 pieces of clothing for the
orphans. We knew that thousands of refugees were camped in terrible
conditions in four camps on the outskirts of town.

There we heard the accounts of families killed in their houses, of
wounded people dragged into the streets and run over by tanks, of a
container with the bodies of 481 civilians inside, of premeditated
murder, looting and acts of savagery and cruelty that beggar belief.
Through the ruins

That is why we decided to go into Fallujah and investigate. When we
entered the town I almost did not recognise the place where I had
worked as a doctor in April 2004, during the first siege.

We found people wandering like ghosts through the ruins. Some were
looking for the bodies of relatives. Others were trying to recover
some of their possessions from destroyed homes.

Here and there, small knots of people were queuing for fuel or food.
In one queue some of the survivors were fighting over a blanket.

I remember being approached by an elderly woman, her eyes raw with
tears. She grabbed my arm and told me how her house had been hit by a
US bomb during an air raid. The ceiling collapsed on her 19-year-old
son, cutting off both his legs.

She could not get help. She could not go into the streets because the
Us military had posted snipers on the roofs and were killing anyone
who ventured out, even at night.

She tried her best to stop the bleeding, but it was to no avail. She
stayed with him, her only son, until he died. He took four hours to
die.

Fallujah?s main hospital was seized by the US troops in the first
days of the siege. The only other clinic, the Hey Nazzal, was hit
twice by US missiles. Its medicines and medical equipment were all
destroyed.

There were no ambulances ? the two ambulances that came to help the
wounded were shot up and destroyed by US troops.

We visited houses in the Jolan district, a poor working-class area in
the north-western part of the city that had been the centre of
resistance during the April siege.

This quarter seemed to have been singled out for punishment during
the second siege. We moved from house to house, discovering families
dead in their beds, or cut down in living rooms or in the kitchen.
House after house had furniture smashed and possessions scattered.

In some places we found bodies of fighters, dressed in black and with
ammunition belts.

But in most of the houses, the bodies were of civilians. Many were
dressed in housecoats, many of the women were not veiled ? meaning
there were no men other than family members in the house. There were
no weapons, no spent cartridges.

It became clear to us that we were witnessing the aftermath of a
massacre, the cold-blooded butchery of helpless and defenceless
civilians.

Nobody knows how many died. The occupation forces are now bulldozing
the neighbourhoods to cover up their crime. What happened in Fallujah
was an act of barbarity. The whole world must be told the truth.

Posted by Hannah at November 6, 2005 01:19 PM

~~http://hannah.smith-family.com/archive/000929.html

~~http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/default_02112005.asp

~~RaiNews24 non è responsabile del contenuto dei Blog citati
Fight To Survive

Il Blog di Jeff Englehart, uno dei due ex-militari USA intervistati
nell'inchiesta

Gennaro Carotenuto
"Io sono stato a Falluja" - l'intervista a Javier Couso, fratello di
José Couso ucciso all'Hotel Palestina a Baghdad
Kevinsites

Taking Fallujah: foto-blog sulla conquista di Fallujah
Hannah's Blog: Fallujah Truth
It was the smell that first hit me, a smell that is difficult to
describe, and one that will never leave me
Michael Fumento