A Mediterranean Battlefield - Syria

[Jan Klimkowski]

TARIQ ALI: Well, I think the main evidence which has been supplied is from an ally, certainly, but the name of the ally is Israel. Israeli intelligence has supplied the signals intelligence to the United States. It should be made public so we can judge it for ourselves. But virtually no one who knows the region believes that these attacks were carried out by the Syrian government, or on its orders. It's crazy, if you think about it. They let the inspectors in, and then in a hotel barely 10 miles fromin a location barely 10 miles from where the inspectors are staying, there's a chemical attack. And what good does it do the Syrian government to actually open fire on these inspectors? They want them there. So, I think it's slightly incredible. And given that citizens in the United States and Europe were lied to in the run-up to the Iraq Warsimple, straightforward liesit's very difficult to take the West seriously when it cries wolf again. So, 'til the evidence is there, it's impossible to take this at face value.
Secondly, the country that has of course used chemical weapons is the United States, which used white phosphorus in Fallujah. No red lines were drawn them, except the red lines of Iraqi blood.

Ah yes. The persuasive but suppressed evidence that the US used white phosphorus in its medieval siege of Fallujah.

On November 15, 2005, the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed to the BBC that white phosphorus had been used as an incendiary antipersonnel weapon in Fallujah, stating "When you have enemy forces that are in covered positions that your high explosive artillery rounds are not having an impact on and you wish to get them out of those positions, one technique is to fire a white phosphorus round into the position because the combined effects of the fire and smoke - and in some case the terror brought about by the explosion on the ground - will drive them out of the holes so that you can kill them with high explosives."

Source: wiki artcile on military use of white phosphorus.

A spokesman for the U.S. military has admitted that soldiers used white phosphorus as an "incendiary weapon" while trying to flush out insurgents in the northern Iraqi city of Fallujah last year.

"White phosphorus is a conventional munition," Lt.-Col. Barry Venable told the British Broadcasting Corporation. "It is not a chemical weapon. They are not outlawed or illegal."

He added that though used mostly to provide smokescreens and flashes of light, in the Fallujah battle, "it was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants."

High-ranking U.S. officials had earlier insisted that the substance, which can burn skin to the bone, was used only to help illuminate battle scenes.

"U.S. forces do not use napalm or white phosphorus as weapons," the American ambassador to London, Robert Tuttle, wrote in a letter to the Independent newspaper.

Source: CBC News