[IslamCity] Fallujah: Dresden in Iraq

Although studiously ignored by the mainstream news media, last month came reports that the U.S. used napalm and chemical weapons in its assault upon the city of Fallujah. The assault of November 2004 resulted in the near-total destruction of the city, as well as the deaths of thousands of non-insurgent Iraqi civilians. If the reports about napalm and chemical weapons are true, not only would the U.S. be in violation of international law, it would be guilty of the very crimes against humanity that it previously leveled against Saddam Hussein and used as a justification for invading Iraq.

Reportedly, Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli of the Iraq Ministry of Health held a press conference last month and charged the U.S. with using napalm, mustard gas, and nerve gas when it attacked Fallujah in November 2004. Dr. ash-Shaykhli described "melted" bodies and fires that could not be put out with water. Similarly, Dr. ash-Shaykhli described entire sections of the city where nothing, neither cats nor dogs nor birds, was left alive, suggesting the use of chemical weapons.

Promptly, the United States denied Dr. ash-Shaykhli's allegations about mustard and nerve gasses. The U.S. even went so far as to deny the very existence of Dr. ash-Shaykhli or that anyone by that name ever worked for Iraq's Ministry of Health. According to the U.S., the false story about the U.S. military's use of chemical and nerve gasses in Fallujah was invented by a web site pretending to be that of the Qatari television network Al Jazeera.

Unfortunately, the U.S. denial of wrongdoing in Fallujah cannot withstand scrutiny.

For example, while the U.S. is correct that a fake Al Jazeera ("aljazeera.com") published a story about U.S. atrocities in Fallujah, the U.S. glosses over the fact that the real Al Jazeera ("aljazeera.net") published a similar story. On March 17, 2005, the real Al Jazeera reported on the wholesale killings of civilians by U.S. forces in Fallujah, including through the use of napalm. In that story, the real Al Jazeera provided eye-witness accounts of U.S. forces killing entire families, including women and children. Likewise, the real Al Jazeera reported that the U.S. raided the only hospital in Fallujah at the beginning of the assault in order to prevent reports of civilian casualties.

The U.S. has yet to attempt to discredit the story published by the real Al Jazeera.

Furthermore, U.S. denials about using prohibited weapons in Fallujah, particularly napalm, lack credibility inasmuch as the U.S. was forced to retract previous denials of similar accusations. On March 22, 2003, following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that U.S. forces had used napalm. Noting that napalm had been banned by a United Nations convention in 1980 (a convention never signed by the U.S.), U.S. military spokesmen denied using napalm in Iraq. On August 5, 2003, however, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that U.S. officials confirmed using "napalm-like" weapons in Iraq between March and April 2003.

In a feat of semantic hair-splitting of which Bill Clinton would have been proud, the U.S. claimed the incendiaries used in Iraq contained less benzene than the internationally-banned napalm and, therefore, were "firebombs" and not napalm. According to U.S. officials, had reporters asked about firebombs in March of 2003, the U.S. would have confirmed their use. Nonetheless, the U.S. was forced to concede that regardless of the technicalities, the napalm-like weapons were functionally equivalent to napalm. In fact, the difference between napalm and firebombs is so minute that U.S. forces still refer to the weapons as napalm.

With that kind of track-record, it is difficult to swallow the recent denials by the U.S. that it used napalm or any other banned weapons in Fallujah.

Such denials are even less convincing when contrasted with eye-witness reports of what happened in Fallujah. There are, first of all, the findings by Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhil of Iraq's Ministry of Health that U.S. forces used napalm and chemical weapons in Fallujah. However, even taking as true the U.S. claim that Dr. ash-Shaykhli never existed, much less worked for Iraq's Ministry of Health, he is not the only individual to claim that the U.S. used banned weapons in Fallujah.

Continued:

[IslamCity] Fallujah: Dresden in Iraq

Fallujah: Dresden in Iraq

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