Category Archives: Iraq

Calendar of 2,319 US Military Dead in Iraqi War. (Somewhat slow to load.)

Remember that this is only part of the casualties. You have to add

• Allied military
• Civilians
• ‘Insurgents’ and other opposing forces
• Domestic civil rights

Writing in the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh has a must-read temporarily online. Among the main points: allegations by (CYAing?) unnamed former policy people that Bush sees Iraq as a holy war, or at any rate that he is not listening to any bad news about it. More credible stuff about how the armed forces are not reporting key statistics to the public, and how the US is dumping tons of bombs where the media isn’t looking; plus bonus info on who decides where they should be dropped today, and who may be doing that tomorrow.

The general tone is that Iraq is now a full-fledged Vietnam, complete with a case for bugout and a late Nixon in the White House. There’s even a suggestion that Syria is being treated like Cambodia, complete with covert border raids by US special forces. (If not Syria, then it would be Iran, wouldn’t it?)

Josh Marshall, unlike most of the media as far as I can tell, notices a deadline passing:

Talking Points Memo (November 16, 2005 03:02 PM): So it looks like the November 14th deadline Bill Frist set for a plan to pursue “phase two” of the senate Iraq intel investigation has come and gone. There’s been progress apparently. But no resolution. No plan on looking into what happened in Doug Feith’s office. And apparently no agreement from the majority as to whether the committee will actually be able to interview any of the key people in the administration. Roberts, Frist and Co. are still stonewalling for the White House.

William Arkin not only organizes what we know about the use of white phosphorus in Fallujah, but he puts in context — which just makes it all the more depressing. This is a rich posting, and I urge you to go read more than the excerpt below. (More kudos to the Washington Post for giving Arkin a platform!)

“White Death” Is A Losing Strategy: … When used in artillery ammunition, “Willy Pete” as it is called, can produce white smoke and illumination, and is particularly useful for target marking. It has been a standard and inexpensive weapon in world arsenals for decades.

… The [Italian TV] documentary shows close-ups of Fallujah civilians, badly burnt, their skin dissolved or caramelized. An Iraqi biologist in Fallujah is interviewed, saying “a rain of fire fell on the city,” burning people’s flesh, but strangely leaving “their clothes intact.”

…White phosphorus, though used, the Pentagon said, is “simply another conventional munition” that is neither outlawed nor illegal.

Well not simply. …

I for one am reluctant to pronounce whether the use of white phosphorous for “shake and bake” missions in Fallujah and the evident blundering use of white phosphorous in areas known to be occupied by civilians is illegal. Neither am I buying the State Department’s line that the use of white phosphorous in this way — that is, to possibly inflict unnecessary suffering — is not “illegal” use. What I’m sure of is that the use of white phosphorous is not just some insensitive act. It is not just bad P.R. It is the ill thought out and panicked use of a weapon in an illegitimate way.

U.S. military forces have the most stringent legal rules, the most aggressive internal lawyer class, the most constraining rules of engagement with regard to the laws of war and civilian casualties — even under the shoot-em-first-ask-questions-later Bush administration. Those rules are scrupulously followed, as long as everything is going well and the chain of command is strong and in control.

When the chain of command breaks down and military formations turn into a mob, Abu Ghraib’s result. …

When soldiers and commanders are discouraged and following a losing strategy, “taking” Fallujah, let’s say, not for the first or second or even third time; when they are trying to use “psychology,” that is, demoralize the enemy, then it is not enough to just defeat them. That is where shake and bake comes in, the desire to do something in a different way, to “shock and awe” the opposition, to sow chaos. …

In Fallujah, the Army employed a terribly ill-conceived method for using white phosphorous, evidently interested only in the immediate tactical gain and its felicitous shake and bake fun. Higher level commanders were either absent or oblivious to the larger issues. They did not impose order and encourage precision. They should be held accountable. They won’t.

It really is Vietnam all over again, isn’t it?

Someone has been going around the blogs posting a quite detailed and plausible rebuttal to the allegations raised by Italian TV and noted here under the title US Admits White Phosphorus Use In Fallujah. The core of it is that the white phosphorus artillery rounds in question are to make light or smoke, and that in any ordinary case you are more at risk if the cannister lands on your head than you are from the phosphorus itself. You can see a copy of it in the comments to that item, and on other blogs too. I would be delighted if this rebuttal proves correct.

Even so, alas, the other point remains: what did our bloody fighting in Fallujah achieve in the end, and was it worth the US and Iraqi casualties, not to mention the destruction of the city?

It was a year ago. Fallujah had become a battleground, many — but by no means all — residents had left; a substantial number were cowering in their homes or other buildings. The fighters opposing the US were mounting a stiff resistance.

It appears that the US has admitted that faced with this situation, it used white phosphorus. “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.” If, as appears to be the case, they were used in artillery rounds, this spreads the stuff over a wide area. It lands on the skin of everyone within range. And it’s now alleged that children in the area had their skin melted/burned off.

See Daily Kos: Melting the Skin Off of Children [GRAPHIC] for details. Like the commentator at Daily Kos says, the US obviously doesn’t consider melting the skin off children to be a military or political goal; the problem is that the US failed to make NOT melting the skin off children and other civilians a greater priority.

If George Bush is going to continue his policy of sending troops into hostile urban areas, it is almost inevitable that the troops will either suffer more casualties, or kill/maim more civilians (or fail in their mission). Take away an effecitve weapon because it is so horrible in its effects on civilians — and there are times when one must — you risk getting more troops shot. These are stark choices, tragic choices — and thus yet again call into further question the wisdom of the entire enterprise.

And what are the conditions in Fallujah today? Were they improved by the US military foray? Was all that sacrifice — civilian and military — of any value? Did it even rise to the level of a ‘famous victory’?

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