Everything about Fallujah The Hidden Massacre totally explained
Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre is a
documentary film by
Sigfrido Ranucci and
Maurizio Torrealta which first aired on
Italy's
RAI state
television network on
November 8 2005. The film documents the use of weapons that the documentary asserts are
chemical weapons, particularly the use of
incendiary bombs, and alleges indiscriminate use of violence against
civilians and children by military forces of the
United States of America in the city of
Fallujah in
Iraq during the
Fallujah Offensive of November 2004.
The film's primary themes are:
- Establishing a case for war crimes against civilians committed by the United States.
- Documenting evidence for the use of chemical devices by the US military.
- Documenting other human rights abuses by American forces and their Iraqi counterparts.
This article offers a
synopsis of the material presented in the documentary.
War crimes
The primary theme of the film is its establishment of a case for war crimes committed by the United States in its military offensive against Fallujah. The film documents the use of weapons based on
white phosphorus and other substances similar to
napalm, such as
Mark-77, by American forces.
Interviews with ex American military personnel who were involved in the Fallujah offensive back up the case for the use of weapons by the United States, while reporters who were stationed in Iraq discuss the American government's attempts to suppress the news by covert means.
Incendiary weapons used against personnel and civilians
The film states that the use of napalm and similar agents was banned by the
United Nations in
1980 for use against civilians and also for use against military targets in proximity to civilians.
White phosphorus when used as for screening or as a marker isn't banned by, but if used as a weapon it would be prohibited. The protocol specifically excludes weapons whose incendiary effect is secondary, such as smoke grenades. This has been often read as excluding white phosphorus munitions from this protocol, as well. The United States is among the nations that are parties to the convention but have not signed Protocol III. however, the article cited does classify direct skin contact by white phosphorus as either a thermal or chemical burn, and that the chemical burn can "result from several different compounds produced through white phosphorus reactions. These include phosphorus pentoxide which can react with the water in skin and produce corrosive phosphoric acids." Putting the burn in context, the article says "In addition, bathing the area in a bicarbonate solution will neutralize any phosphoric acid that may have been produced. Remaining WP particles should be immediately removed surgically. Removal requires care to prevent further contamination of the person or responders. After complete removal, the patient can be treated as a burn victim."
A subsequent documentary,
Star Wars in Iraq by
Sigfrido Ranucci and
Maurizio Torrealta, accounts for human heads being burned, without their bodies, clothes and nearby equipment suffering damage by alleging the use of US experimental weapons.
(External Link
) These journalists have no technical explanation of how the weapons might have caused the unusual effects, and the quoted article didn't reference comments from forensic pathologists or specialists in weapons effects.
Crucially, [theUS] statement that white phosphorus had been used as an incendiary wasn't an admission that a chemical or otherwise illegal weapon had been deployed. Still less was it evidence that a massacre of civilians had taken place in Falluja. |
The media couldn't have made a bigger pig's ear of the white phosphorus story. So, before moving on to the new revelations from Falluja, I'd like to try to clear up the old ones. There is no hard evidence that white phosphorus was used against civilians. The claim was made in a documentary broadcast on the Italian network RAI, called Falluja: the Hidden Massacre. It claimed that the corpses in the pictures it ran "showed strange injuries, some burnt to the bone, others with skin hanging from their flesh ... The faces have literally melted away, just like other parts of the body. The clothes are strangely intact." These assertions were supported by a human-rights advocate who, it said, possessed "a biology degree".
I, too, possess a biology degree, and I'm as well qualified to determine someone's cause of death as I'm to perform open-heart surgery. So I asked Chris Milroy, professor of forensic pathology at the University of Sheffield, to watch the film. He reported that "nothing indicates to me that the bodies have been burnt". They had turned black and lost their skin "through decomposition". We don't yet know how these people died." |
It should be noted that in this article Monbiot went on to claim the assault on Fallujah
was in fact a massacre.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Fallujah The Hidden Massacre'.
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