Image fears, cost halt energy beam
Washington - Saddam Hussein had been gone just a few weeks, and U.S. forces
in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, were already being called unwelcome invaders. One
of the first big anti-American protests of the war escalated into shootouts
that left 18 Iraqis dead and 78 wounded.
It would be a familiar scene in Iraq's next few years: Crowds gather,
insurgents mingle with civilians. Troops open fire, and innocents die.
All the while, according to internal military correspondence obtained by the
Associated Press, U.S. commanders were telling Washington that many civilian
casualties could be avoided by using a new non-lethal weapon developed over the
past decade.
Military leaders repeatedly and urgently requested - and were denied - the
device, which uses energy beams instead of bullets and lets soldiers break up
unruly crowds without firing a shot.
It's a ray gun that neither kills nor maims, but the Pentagon has refused to
deploy it out of concern that the weapon itself might be seen as a torture
device.
Perched on a Humvee or a flatbed truck, the Active Denial System gives people
hit by the invisible beam the sense that their skin is on fire. They move out
of the way quickly and without injury.
On April 30, 2003, two days after the first Fallujah incident, Gene McCall,
then the top scientist at Air Force Space Command in Colorado, typed out a
two-sentence e-mail to Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff.
"I am convinced that the tragedy at Fallujah would not have occurred if an
Active Denial System had been there," McCall told Myers, according to the
e-mail obtained by AP. The system should become "an immediate priority," McCall
said.
Myers referred McCall's message to his staff, according to the e-mail chain.
McCall, who retired from government in November 2003, remains convinced the
system would have saved lives in Iraq.
"How this has been handled is kind of a national scandal," McCall said.
A few months after McCall's message, in August 2003, Richard Natonski, a
Marine Corps brigadier general who had just returned from Iraq, filed an
"urgent" request with officials in Washington for the energy-beam device.
The device would minimize what Natonski described as the "CNN Effect" - the
instantaneous relay of images depicting U.S. troops as aggressors.
A year later, Natonski, by then promoted to major general, again asked for
the system, saying a compact and mobile version was "urgently needed,"
particularly in urban settings.
Senior officers in Iraq have continued to make the case. One December 2006
request noted that as U.S. forces are drawn down, the non-lethal weapon "will
provide excellent means for economy of force."
The main reason the tool has been missing in action is public perception.
With memories of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal still fresh, the Pentagon is
reluctant to give troops a space-age device that could be misconstrued as a
torture machine.
"We want to just make sure that all the conditions are right, so when it is
able to be deployed the system performs as predicted - that there isn't any
negative fallout," said Col. Kirk Hymes, head of the Defense Department's Joint
Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate.
Reviews by military lawyers concluded it is a lawful weapon under current
rules governing the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a Nov. 15
document prepared by Marine Corps officials in western Iraq.
Private organizations remain concerned, however, because documentation that
supports the testing and legal reviews is classified. There's no way to
independently verify the Pentagon's claims, said Stephen Goose of Human Rights
Watch in Washington.
Another issue for the weapon is cost.
The Pentagon has spent $62 million developing and testing the system over the
past decade, a scant amount compared to other high-profile, multibillion-dollar
military programs.
Still, officials say the technology is too expensive, although they won't say
what it costs to build. They cite engineering challenges as another obstacle,
although one U.S. defense contractor says it has a model ready for production.
For now, there's no firm schedule for when the system might be made and
delivered to troops.
Richard LardnerAssociated Press
Thursday, August 30, 2007
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