Read it yourself: An Italian documentary, entitled Fallujah: La strage nascosta, (in English, Fallujah, the Concealed Massacre), to be broadcast tomorrow is claiming that the US military used white phosphorus indiscriminately as a chemical weapon against the people of the Iraqi city of Fallujah. The documentary also claims that the US used napalm in its attack. Both white phosphorus and napalm are forbidden weapons, and their use is forbidden by treaties signed by the United States.
Is it true? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I haven’t seen any proof that the allegations are true. But, I haven’t seen any proof that the allegations are false, either. You can read an article about it from ADNKronosInternational and see what you think.
In the past, there have been allegations by journalists that Iraqi families came under deliberate attack from the the American military during the American assault on Fallujah. Those allegations were denied, but never disproven, by the American military. The American military has a record of denying things that actually did happen. For example, for years the American military denied that it was keeping records of the deaths of civilians in Iraq. Last month, we learned that those denials were lies. The American military was keeping secret records of civilian deaths in Iraq after all.
It is possible that the American military committed serious war crimes in its attack on the city of Fallujah. It is also possible that no such war crimes occurred. Given the circulation of allegations of American war crimes in Fallujah, and given the reduced credibility of Pentagon claims about its activities in Iraq, the wise thing for our government to do would be to stop just making denials, and authorize a non-military, politically independent investigation of the seige on Fallujah, to clear up these questions once and for all.
With the Bush Administration’s poor record of telling the truth, a continued refusal to launch such an independent investigation will be interpreted by the international community as a sign that the allegations of war crimes are true.