[nasional_list] [ppiindia] Army struggles to defend use of phosphorus
- From: "Ambon" <sea@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <"Undisclosed-Recipient:;"@freelists.org>
- Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 23:20:10 +0100
** Forum Nasional Indonesia PPI India Mailing List **
** Untuk bergabung dg Milis Nasional kunjungi:
** Situs Milis: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/ **
** Beasiswa dalam negeri dan luar negeri S1 S2 S3 dan post-doctoral
scholarship, kunjungi
http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com ** Army struggles to defend use of
phosphorus
By Scott Shane The New York Times
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2005
WASHINGTON On Nov. 8, Italian public television showed a scathing
documentary that renewed persistent charges that the United States had used
white phosphorus weapons against Iraqis in Falluja last year. Many civilians
died of burns from the weapons, the report said.
U.S. officials and independent military experts contend that the
half-hour film was riddled with errors and exaggerations. But the State
Department and the Pentagon have so bungled their response - making and then
withdrawing incorrect statements about what American troops really did when
they fought a pitched battle against insurgents in the rebellious city - that
the charges have produced dozens of stories in the foreign news media and on
Web sites suggesting that the Americans used banned weapons and tried to cover
that up.
The Iraqi government has announced it will open an investigation, and a
UN spokeswoman has expressed concern.
"It's discredited the American military without any basis in fact," said
John Pike, an expert on weapons who runs GlobalSecurity.org, an independent
clearinghouse for military information. He said the "stupidity and
incompetence" of official U.S. comments had fueled the suspicions of a coverup.
"The story most people around the world have is that the Americans are up
to their old tricks - committing atrocities and lying about it," Pike said.
"And that's completely incorrect."
Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association, a nonprofit
organization that researches nuclear issues, was more cautious. In light of the
issues raised since the film was shown, he said, the Defense Department, and
perhaps an independent body, should review whether the American use of white
phosphorus had been consistent with international weapons conventions.
"There are legitimate questions that need to be asked," he said. Given
the history of Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons in Iraq and Iran, he
said, "we have to be extremely careful" to comply with treaties and the rules
of war.
Technically, white phosphorus is not a chemical weapon. It is commonly
used to create smoke screens or fires. But the issue has reinforced the worst
suspicions about U.S. military actions in Iraq.
The film was posted as a video file on Web sites worldwide. Bloggers
picked it up and trumpeted its allegations. Foreign newspapers and television
stations reported the charges and rebuttals, with such headlines as "The Big
White Lie" in The Independent of London.
U.S. officials now acknowledge that the government's initial response was
sluggish and misinformed. "There's so much inaccurate information out there now
that I'm not sure we can unscrew it," Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable, a
Defense Department spokesman who has handled dozens of inquiries about white
phosphorus, said last Friday.
The State Department declined to comment on the dispute, but an official
there conceded privately that the episode has been a public relations failure.
The Italian documentary, "Falluja: The Hidden Massacre," included
gruesome images of victims of the fierce fighting in the Iraqi city in November
2004. U.S. troops recaptured the city from insurgents, in battles that
destroyed 60 percent of the city's buildings.
Opening with prolonged shots of Vietnamese children and villages burned
by American napalm in 1972, the documentary went on to suggest an equivalence
between Saddam's use of chemical weapons in the 1980s and the use of white
phosphorus by the U.S. military.
The film showed disfigured bodies and suggested that hot-burning white
phosphorus had melted the flesh while somehow leaving clothing intact. Sigfrido
Ranucci, the correspondent who made the documentary, said in an interview this
month that he had received the photographs from an Iraqi doctor. "We are not
talking about corpses like the normal deaths in war," he said.
Those familiar with white phosphorus, known in the military as "WP" or
"Willie Pete," said it could deliver terrible burns. An exploding round
scatters bits of the compound that burst into flames on exposure to air and can
burn into flesh, penetrating to the bone. But white phosphorus would have
burned victims' clothing, too, they said. The bodies in the film, they said,
appeared to be decomposed after lying for days in the sun.
In their first comments after the broadcast on Nov. 8, American officials
made some of those points. But they relied on an inaccurate State Department
fact sheet posted on the Internet last December, when similar accusations first
surfaced during and after the battle of Falluja. The fact sheet said American
forces had used white phosphorus shells "very sparingly in Falluja, for
illumination purposes." It added: "They were fired into the air to illuminate
enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."
The Americans stuck to that position last spring after an official of the
Iraqi Health Ministry called a news conference and asserted that there was
proof of civilian casualties from extensive use of the weapons.
After the documentary was broadcast, the American ambassadors to Italy,
Ronald Spogli, and to Britain, Robert Tuttle, echoed that stock defense,
denying that white phosphorus munitions had been used against enemy fighters,
let alone aimed at civilians. In the United States, on the public radio program
"Democracy Now," Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, a military spokesman,
declared, "I know of no cases where people were deliberately targeted by the
use of white phosphorus."
But those statements were incorrect. Firsthand accounts by American
officers in two military journals noted that the munitions had been aimed
directly at insurgents in Falluja to flush them out of houses and other
locations. War critics and journalists soon discovered those articles.
In the face of such evidence, the Bush administration reversed itself
last week. Pentagon spokesmen admitted that white phosphorus had been used
directly against Iraqi rebels. "It's perfectly legitimate to use this stuff
against enemy combatants," Venable of the Defense Department said Friday.
While he said he could not rule out that white phosphorus hit some
civilians, "U.S. and coalition forces took extraordinary measures to prevent
civilian casualties in Falluja."
Kimball, of the Arms Control Association, said the government should
conduct a review to determine whether American actions in Falluja complied with
an international treaty on conventional weapons that took force in 1983.
The treaty outlaws dropping incendiary weapons from the air in areas
where there is a "concentration of civilians," and requires "all feasible
precautions" to prevent harm to civilians.
The United States is a party to the treaty, and although it has not
ratified the protocol that addresses incendiary weapons, the State Department
considers the protocol to be legally binding, Kimball said.
Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, said that given the polarized attitudes about the Iraq
war, and the importance of world opinion, the U.S. government should have
swiftly countered the Italian film with candid and accurate information.
"People with antiwar views will see this as confirmation of all their
conspiracy theories about the war," he said. "And that's at least partly
because the government didn't get its facts straight."
Ian Fisher contributed reporting for this article from Rome.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
Give at-risk students the materials they need to succeed at DonorsChoose.org!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/wlSUMA/LpQLAA/E2hLAA/BRUplB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
***************************************************************************
Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg
Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny. http://www.ppi-india.org
***************************************************************************
__________________________________________________________________________
Mohon Perhatian:
1. Harap tdk. memposting/reply yg menyinggung SARA (kecuali sbg otokritik)
2. Pesan yg akan direply harap dihapus, kecuali yg akan dikomentari.
3. Reading only, http://dear.to/ppi
4. Satu email perhari: ppiindia-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
5. No-email/web only: ppiindia-nomail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
6. kembali menerima email: ppiindia-normal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
ppiindia-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
** Forum Nasional Indonesia PPI India Mailing List **
** Untuk bergabung dg Milis Nasional kunjungi:
** Situs Milis: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/ **
** Beasiswa dalam negeri dan luar negeri S1 S2 S3 dan post-doctoral
scholarship, kunjungi
http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com **
Other related posts:
- » [nasional_list] [ppiindia] Army struggles to defend use of phosphorus
