VIOLATION OF GENEVA CONVENTION BY COALITION TROOPS
It is a delicious bit of irony that the ostensible reason for American invasion of Iraq remains the ABC weapons allegedly developed by Saddam Hussein. It has now become abundantly clear that not only was the intelligence with respect of the WMD program of the erstwhile President of Iraq flawed but there appears to have been what one senator delicately called "cherry picking ." So a savage brutal war was waged against a nation which was down on its heels due to the UN sanctions. The people of Iraq have been crushed under two oppressive regimes:One the warlord regime of Saddam Hussein and the "shoot and scoot"wild west regime of the Anglo-Saxon coalition troops. We have during the course of the last one year catalogued the awful story of the travails the ordinary Iraqi living outside of the Grren Zone is expriencing.
USA is a signatory of the Geneva Convention which bans the use of chemical weapons. In fact one of the charges that the regime in Bagdad has levelled against Saddam Hussein pertains to the use of a chemical against the Shiaa population in the South of the country at the end of the I st Gulf War. According to the Reprt prepared by William R Brankowitz of the US Army Chemical Materials Agency, a classified document printed for private circulation with security clearance,the USA dumped 7,346 canisters of a banned chemical White Phosphorous in the Atlantic Ocean in order to comply with the Geneva Convention against the use of Chemical Weapons.. Along with WP 421,157 pounds of radiological waste and 20 drums of cyanide were sunk in the Atlantic Ocean btween 1962 to 1989.
What is disturbing is the growing evidence that in thwe assault on Fallujah last year( extensively covered on our blog) the US troops used White Phosphorous against civillian population. Clincs in and around Fallujah treated hundreds of people including children with severe burns and lesions of the skin caused by exposure to the chemical. The patriotic "embedded journalists" who reproduce uncritically the lies dished out by the Bush and the Bushmen did not once report the use of the banned chemical in the American media. The world got wind of the use of the blatant violation of the Geneva Convention from the Italian Press.The Italian TV aired a documentary feature produced by Sigfrido Ramicci and Maurizio Torrealta where shocking visuals of the horrendous damage done by the indiscriminate use of WP are given.A web site called globalsecurity.org WP results in "painful chemkical burn injuries".This chemical burns the skin right up to the demal level and leaves the clothes intact. This is because the chemical is used as a highly lipis solution.
The response of the US state department to this war crime has been as expected flat denial followed by the most fraudlent of excuses. The use of the WP for illumination of the battle field is permitted and so the State Department spokeperson claimed the WP was used only as a battle field illuminator. Even the US battle manual ST100-3 permits the use of WP only as a smokescreen. Yet in complete violation of its own Internation obligations, and with total inhumanity to the Arab population, the Coalition used banned chemicals in an illegal outlaw manner in an illegal war of occupation.
Thinking Americans must write to their Senators and Congressmen asking for a bipartisan Inquiry into the conduct of the Fallujah assault.