Operation Phantom Fury: Encyclopedia II - Operation Phantom Fury - White phosphorus controversy

Operation Phantom Fury - White phosphorus controversy

On 9 November, 2005 the Italian state-run broadcaster RAI ran a documentary titled "Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre" depicting the United States' use of white phosphorus (WP) in the attack causing insurgents and civilians to be injured by chemical burns or killed. The resulting bodies were partially turned into what appears to be ash, but sometimes the hands of the bodies had skin or skin layers peeled off and hanging like gloves instead. The documentary further claims that the United States used incendiary MK-77 bombs (similar to napalm). The use of incendiary weapons against civilians is illegal by Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (1980), however the US is not a signatory. Moreover, the 1983 Chemical Weapons Convention (signed by the US) prohibit the use of the chemical properties of white phosphorus against personnel. The documentary stated:

: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. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out... We used improved WP for screening missions when HC smoke would have been more effective and saved our WP for lethal missions.

The US State Department initially denied using white phosphorus as a munition, a claim later contradicted by the Department of Defense when bloggers discovered a US Army magazine had run a story detailing its use in Fallujah. The US government maintains its denial of use against civilians, while trying to justify the offensive use of WP against enemy combatants. However, according to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, quoted by the RAI documentary, WP is allowed as an illumination device, not as an offensive weapon, for which its chemical properties are put to use. An article in Washington Post exactly year before also pointed out the use of White Phosphorus in the battle, but attracted little attention.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "White phosphorus controversy", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki