US Used Chemical Weapons against Iraqi Civilians, Documentary Alleges

A controversial documentary aired last week on Italian TV station RAI claims that the US military has used a napalm-like chemical weapon—white phosphorus—against civilian targets in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, an insurgent stronghold. Interviews with two former US Marines accompany graphic scenes of burned and melted bodies.

“It burned children; it burned women. White phosphorus kills indiscriminately. It’s a cloud that will, within, in most cases, 150 meters of impact, will disperse, and it will burn every human being or animal,” said ex-Marine Jeff Englehart in an interview in the documentary, which is entitled “Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre.”

The video is particularly controversial because it suggests both that white phosphorus is a chemical weapon and that it has been used in areas with a significant civilian population.

Civilians Targeted?

In a guerilla war situation like in Fallujah and many Iraqi cities, it is not always easy to identify enemy combatants, who wear civilian clothing and have made a practice of hiding among the general population, using civilians as shields. Even children have been known to carry guns and attack US troops.

“[Coalition troops] go to extreme lengths to ensure that everything possible is done to ensure that civilians and non-combatants are not put in harm’s way during operations,” said Department of Defense Spokesman Lt. Col. Brian Maka in a phone interview.

He admits that white phosphorus has been used not only as a smoke screen, but in “a secondary role as an incendiary” against enemy targets.

However, the March-April 2005 edition of the U.S. Army publication, Field Artillery magazine, depicts white phosphorous being used as a key weapon against enemies that are not always easy to see or even find. According to the magazine, white phosphorus was used as “a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes” to flush them out in what it terms “shake and bake” missions.

Lt. Col. Maka states “with absolute certainty,” however, that it was never used to deliberately target civilians. As to whether there were unintended civilian casualties, he said, “I don’t know that, and no documentary on Italian television or anybody else can accurately make that claim.”

Independent Assessments

Dahr Jamail, an independent American journalist who spent eight months in Iraq in 2004, believes that the intention is not as important as whether civilians were hit by white phosphorus or not. “And the bottom line is that civilians were hit by it,” he said.

Mr. Jamail, who has written for several major publications and done BBC radio shows, says that the U.S. military knew that well over 10,000 civilians were in Fallujah during the siege in November 2004. The siege is the centerpiece of the documentary.

If civilian population estimates at that time were correct, the use of white phosphorus would have been a violation of international law, says Jamail.

The documentary further suggests that there may be a cover-up of atrocities. One interviewee, Giuliana Sgrena, said that a journalist who captured and circulated footage of a Marine shooting a wounded and unarmed warrior was immediately expelled from his capacity as an invited journalist by the embassy. The claim has not been verified.

The U.S. military offensive in Fallujah aimed to crush followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an al Qaeda leader.

A New Type of Napalm?

The documentary also suggests that the effects of white phosphorus on the human body are similar to napalm, a chemical weapon used in the Vietnam War, now banned under international treaty.

The U.S. government claims that white phosphorus is simply another conventional weapon; it is neither a chemical weapon nor illegal.

A chemical weapon differs from a conventional weapon in that its primary damaging effects are not from explosives, but from chemical agents. Mustard gas is a classic example of a chemical weapon.

White phosphorus, considered an incendiary, produces intense heat. Its primary official uses are as a smoke screen and illuminating battlefields at night.

Former Marine Englehart said in the documentary, “I do know that white phosphorus was used, which is definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, a chemical weapon.

When [white phosphorus] makes contact with skin, then it’s absolutely irreversible damage, burning of flesh to the bone,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily burn clothes, but it will burn the skin underneath clothes... If you breathe it, it will blister your throat and your lungs until you suffocate, and then it will burn you from the inside.”

Footage from the documentary shows mutilated human bodies with no bullet wounds, with skin that appears melted. The clothing is in tact, so cadavers of insurgents with bullet-proof vests and civilians can be distinguished from one another.

In 1993, the United States was one of 130 signatories of the United Nations Chemical Weapons Convention, which specifically outlawed the development, production, and use of chemical weapons.

Whether white phosphorus is classified as a chemical weapon is a key factor in determining whether it can be legally used as a weapon; of course, whether its use is considered ethical is another matter.