Britain dragged into white phosphorus row
By Philippe Naughton
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1875057,00.html

Britain was drawn into the controversy surrounding America's use of white
phosphorus in last year's battle for Fallujah today when the Defence
Secretary conceded that British forces had also used the substance during
military operations in Iraq.

But John Reid said that the Army had used the incendiary metal only to

provide a smokescreen for British troops rather than deploying it as a
weapon directly against enemy personnel - as the Pentagon admits to having
done in Fallujah.

"I think the Americans have to answer the questions that are put to them on

that," Dr Reid told the BBC on a visit to Germany. "I can only speak for
the British and we only use it as a smokescreen, to give cover to our
troops."

Legally, the difference is a crucial one. Critics say that the American
military may have breached international conventions through their use of
the substance to flush out insurgents from the rebel stronghold of
Fallujah.

A wax-like metal that combusts spontaneously when exposed to oxygen, white
phosphorus can burn right through skin to the bone. In Vietnam, where it
was regularly used alongside Napalm, it was known as Willie Pete.

Its use in Fallujah was highlighted by a documentary on the Italian state
television channel RAI this month which alleged that American use of the
weapon had caused injuries and deaths not just to insurgents but to
civilians. One former US soldier told RAI that he had seen the "burnt
bodies of women and children".

After an embarrassing denial yesterday by the new US Ambassador to Britain,

Robert Tuttle, that white phosphorus had been used in Iraq, a Pentagon
spokesman confirmed its use but said that it was not a banned weapon.

"White phosphorus is a conventional weapon. It is not a chemical weapon,"
said the spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Venable. "They are not
outlawed or illegal.

"We use them primarily as obscurants, for smokescreens or target-making in
some cases. However, it is an incendiary weapon and may be used against
enemy combatants."

Protocol III of the UN's 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons
expressly forbids the use of white phosphorus against civilian targets or
military targets in civilian areas. The United States has not signed up to
that protocol, although Britain has.

But America is a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which it
ratified in 1997, and that agreement forbids the use of any substance to
kill or harm either soldiers or civilians if it is being used mostly for
its toxicity.

Although the Pentagon spokesman described it as an "incendiary weapon",
white phosphorus has clear chemical effects on its human targets - melting
away the skin of its victims and burning quickly into the tissue,
especially on exposed parts of the body like the face and hands.

A US Army handbook published in 1999 states clearly that the use of white
phosphorus burster bombs against enemy personnel is "against the law of
land warfare" and the US State Department clearly denied last year that any

such weapons were being deployed in Iraq.

But an article in an internal US Army magazine provided incontrovertible
evidence that such bombs were used against human targets in Fallujah and
the Pentagon appears to have changed its mind on the precise legal status
of the substance.

That article, in the March/April edition of Field Artillery was written by
three soldiers who were involved in the battle for Fallujah last November.

They wrote: "WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used
it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a
potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and
spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE (high
explosives).

"We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush
them out and HE to take them out."

Professor Paul Rodgers, an international security expert at Bradford
University, told Times Online: "The real difficulty is that it depends on
the way it is used - and it depends very narrowly on whether you define the

action of white phosphorus as chemical or incendiary.

"It's very much a grey area."

---
http://www.ElmerFudd.US/ http://www.rightard.org/ http://www.thedarkwind.org/
Yes, George W. Bush is a mass murdering Christian butcher. GET OVER IT!!!