Speaking of American Exceptionalism. How about the main stream media (albeit, the foreign MSM) now reporting atrocities.
You’ve read about it early and often on the Booman Tribune’s own recommended list. But now the The Independent is weighing in.
Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.
Egads! Not the U.S. We don’t torture innocent people. Haven’t you people heard the President’s latest speech. This is all a mistake.
Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumours have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city.
You mean we in the U.S. aren’t getting any real news coverage. Preposterous. I watch Fox News daily. And I know damn well that those fucks in Falluja deserved to be chemically roasted alive. Yes. Even the children. They fucking were planning on making mushroom clouds in America, weren’t they? And they were helping train Osama’s guys right before the towers came down. Fuck. This Independent is a bunch of Commie bullshit. I’m calling O’Reilly.
In December the US government formally denied the reports, describing them as “widespread myths”. “Some news accounts have claimed that US forces have used ‘outlawed’ phosphorus shells in Fallujah,” the USinfo website said. “Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes.
See. I knew the U.S. wouldn’t do anything wrong. Sensationalist journalists. I’m sure the U.S. MSM will get this story right in a week or two. Like we would ever burn innocent people.
But now new information has surfaced, including hideous photographs and videos and interviews with American soldiers who took part in the Fallujah attack, which provides graphic proof that phosphorus shells were widely deployed in the city as a weapon.
In a documentary to be broadcast by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, this morning, a former American soldier who fought at Fallujah says: “I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it’s known as Willy Pete.
“Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone … I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for.”
That is just some Al Jazeera bullshit, right. Anybody who knows how to work Photoshop could have helped doctor that evidence together. Right?
Would that it was bullshit. Unfortunately most the bullshit in our country has taken up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
LOL… I’ve always described Washington DC as, “100 square miles of bullshit surrounded by reality.” Unfortunately, they have the ability and the willingness to force their bullshit down our throats if we let them.
We, as in this government, ARE the TERRORISTS. Pure and simple.
The media has blood on it’s hands as accessories to the crime before, during and after the facts… er dis and mis information.
Today the entire world will see the proof and what was on my news??? 50 Cents New Movie is out… Oh MY FUCKING GAWD!!! A movie!!!!!
The collective pronoun “we” doesn’t apply any more. The US government is no longer a government by, of, or for the people. Ever since the Supreme Court heard Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad in 1886, the US government has become increasingly a servant of the corporations, instead of a servant of the people.
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WASHINGTON (NYT) – The Pentagon has approved a new policy directive governing interrogations as part of an effort to tighten controls over the questioning of terror suspects and other prisoners by American soldiers.
The eight-page directive, which was signed without any public announcement last Thursday by Acting Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England, will allow the Army to issue a long-delayed field manual for interrogators that is supposed to incorporate the lessons gleaned from the prisoner-abuse scandals last year.
The Army intends, for example, to ensure that interrogation techniques are approved, up to the highest levels in the Pentagon, that interrogators are properly trained and that personnel in the field are required to report any abuses, Army officials said.
It also reaffirms that military dogs may not be used in interrogations and that military police may provide interrogators information about detainees’ behaviour, but may not take part in the interrogations themselves.
“Acts of physical or mental torture are prohibited,” said a copy of the directive obtained by the daily, which added that the document only elaborated that detainess must be treated humanely “in accordance with applicable law and policy.”
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
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Cheney in the Bunker
By Daniel Klaidman and Michael Isikoff – Newsweek
Bloodied but unbowed, the veep has a new number two. Game on.Nov. 14, 2005 issue – As usual, Dick Cheney insisted on doing business behind closed doors. Last Tuesday, Senate Republicans were winding up their weekly luncheon in the Capitol when the vice president rose to speak. Staffers were quickly ordered out of the room–what Cheney had to say was for senators only.
Normally taciturn, Cheney was uncharacteristically impassioned, according to two GOP senators who did not want to be on the record about a private meeting. He was very upset over the Senate’s overwhelming passage of an amendment that prohibits inhumane treatment of terrorist detainees.
Cheney said the law would tie the president’s hands and end up costing “thousands of lives.”
He dramatized the point, conjuring up a scenario in which a captured Qaeda operative, another Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, refuses to give his interrogators details about an imminent attack. “We have to be able to do what is necessary,” the vice president said, according to one of the senators who was present.
The lawmakers listened, but they weren’t moved to act. Sen. John McCain, who authored the anti-torture amendment, spoke up.
John McCain: “This is killing us around the world”.
The House, which will likely vote on the measure soon, is also expected to pass it by a large margin.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Pocket protector firmly in place, my coping mechanism for this horror is to go technical on you:
White phosphorus: #19 on the CDC’s list of compounds of concern at toxic waste sites.
If the pictures weren’t enough and you want the thousands of words of what this crap is, try here and here.
According to the first of those two links, it’s used by the military not only to identify targets, but to generate smoke to conceal troop movements (the smoke it makes after burning apparently is relatively non-toxic). That would help explain why it was widespread in Fallujah. Tragically, the victims got exposed to the unburnt form – which oxidized their bodies as we’ve seen.
In dry air, it would burn rapidly at 10-15 degrees above room temperature, or if an unignited dust in the air it would react “within minutes.” If it was under water, or got covered with soil, it would hang around in the dangerous unreacted form for hours or days.
and posted them up on another Diary here as well.
* U.S. Broadcast Exclusive – “Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre” on the U.S. Use
of Napalm-Like White Phosphorus Bombs
Democracy Now! airs an exclusive excerpt of “Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre,”
featuring interviews with U.S. soldiers, Iraqi doctors and international
journalists on the U.S. attack on Fallujah. Produced by Italian state
broadcaster RAI TV, the documentary charges U.S. warplanes illegally dropped
white phosphorous incendiary bombs on civilian populations, burning the skin
off Iraqi victims. One U.S. soldier charges this amounts to the U.S. using
chemical weapons against the Iraqi people.
Listen/Watch/Read
A Debate: Did the U.S. Military Attack Iraqi Civilians With White
Phosphorous Bombs in Violation of the Geneva Conventions? *
We speak with a former U.S. soldier who witnessed orders being given to drop
white phosphorous bombs over Fallujah; a Pentagon spokesperson in Baghdad
who admits such bombs were used but denied they were used as a chemical
weapon; and the news director of RAI TV, the Italian TV network that
produced ³Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre.²
Listen/Watch/Read
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10PM-1AM Tonight 11-08-05 Stream It If You Don’t Have A Local Radio Connection To ‘Air America’
The Independent UK:
“Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.
Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumors have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city.
On 10 November last year, the Islam Online website wrote: ‘US troops are reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous gas in its large-scale offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion of Fallujah, a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein’s alleged gassing of the Kurds in 1988.'”
The full story — accompanied by a very graphic and disturbing video produced by Italian television and scheduled for broadcast tonight can be found HERE:
Once again, the rest of the world is shown graphic proof of US troops, acting on orders from George W. Bush, committing war crimes; incinerating civilians, destroying hospitals, bombing neighborhoods, obliterating whole sections of a city in a mad act of revenge against “terrorists” who have the temerity to resist the invading US military.
This is all — the war, the political corruption, the inability to function in the aftermath of natural disasters at home, the ruining of our financial resources, the domestic criminality of the ruling clique, the sanctioning of torture (!) — becoming much worse than the inability to perform even the most basic functions of government (which is an incompetence the Bush Crime Family demonstrates daily).
It is taking on the nightmarish feel of a horrific dream from which one struggles to escape.
The most recent example of the uselessness of Bush himself was the so-called economic summit of hemispheric leaders in Argentina. Bush walked out after making one of his useless press conference cum photo op appearances. No meetings, no discussions, no plans made for regional economic security. Nothing. Bush arrives. People violently protest his presence in their country. Bush struts for the cameras. Bush leaves and flies to a fund-raiser in Virginia after a quick stopover for another photo-op, this one in Panama.
It is all appalling.
It is disgusting.
And we have another 39 months of this.
Or do we?
Join me tonight for the discussion.
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AMERICA IN DISTRESS
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This is war, this is what the chickenhawks and the swift boaters rally around. Our God given right to melt men, women and children. Sick fucks.
If this is such a “noble cause”, why confiscate and bury the evidence? If this is “democracy”, why hold off until after the US election? If this is what Coulters, O’Reilly’s and Limbaughs trumpet morning, noon and night, they should be proud of airing these photos.
This war is exponential hell that will ripple throughout time. The best thing that could happen is to have Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Bolton, Hadley, Libby, Rove tried for crimes against humanity. Short of that, the blood thirst will continue unabated.
that at least some of the horrific details of the collective punishment of Falluja are finally coming out a bit more publically.
Maybe next the Falluja issues of the deliberate targeting of doctors and ambulances and the denial of medical care to civilians will be examined.