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Tue 15 Nov, 2005 09:26 pm
Published on Tuesday, November 15, 2005 by the Guardian/UK
The US Used Chemical Weapons in Iraq - And Then Lied About It
Now we know napalm and phosphorus bombs have been dropped on Iraqis, why have the hawks failed to speak out?
by George Monbiot
Did US troops use chemical weapons in Falluja? The answer is yes. The proof is not to be found in the documentary broadcast on Italian TV last week, which has generated gigabytes of hype on the internet. It's a turkey, whose evidence that white phosphorus was fired at Iraqi troops is flimsy and circumstantial. But the bloggers debating it found the smoking gun.
The first account they unearthed in a magazine published by the US army. In the March 2005 edition of Field Artillery, officers from the 2nd Infantry's fire support element boast about their role in the attack on Falluja in November last year: "White Phosphorous. WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. 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 [high explosive]. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."
The second, in California's North County Times, was by a reporter embedded with the marines in the April 2004 siege of Falluja. "'Gun up!' Millikin yelled ... grabbing a white phosphorus round from a nearby ammo can and holding it over the tube. 'Fire!' Bogert yelled, as Millikin dropped it. The boom kicked dust around the pit as they ran through the drill again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives they call 'shake'n'bake' into... buildings where insurgents have been spotted all week."
White phosphorus is not listed in the schedules of the Chemical Weapons Convention. It can be legally used as a flare to illuminate the battlefield, or to produce smoke to hide troop movements from the enemy. Like other unlisted substances, it may be deployed for "Military purposes... not dependent on the use of the toxic properties of chemicals as a method of warfare". But it becomes a chemical weapon as soon as it is used directly against people. A chemical weapon can be "any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm".
White phosphorus is fat-soluble and burns spontaneously on contact with the air. According to globalsecurity.org: "The burns usually are multiple, deep, and variable in size. The solid in the eye produces severe injury. The particles continue to burn unless deprived of atmospheric oxygen... If service members are hit by pieces of white phosphorus, it could burn right down to the bone." As it oxidizes, it produces smoke composed of phosphorus pentoxide. According to the standard US industrial safety sheet, the smoke "releases heat on contact with moisture and will burn mucous surfaces... Contact... can cause severe eye burns and permanent damage."
Until last week, the US state department maintained that US forces used white phosphorus shells "very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes". They were fired "to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters". Confronted with the new evidence, on Thursday it changed its position. "We have learned that some of the information we were provided ... is incorrect. White phosphorous shells, which produce smoke, were used in Fallujah not for illumination but for screening purposes, i.e. obscuring troop movements and, according to... Field Artillery magazine, 'as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes...' The article states that US forces used white phosphorus rounds to flush out enemy fighters so that they could then be killed with high explosive rounds." The US government, in other words, appears to admit that white phosphorus was used in Falluja as a chemical weapon.
The invaders have been forced into a similar climbdown over the use of napalm in Iraq. In December 2004, the Labour MP Alice Mahon asked the British armed forces minister Adam Ingram "whether napalm or a similar substance has been used by the coalition in Iraq (a) during and (b) since the war". "No napalm," the minister replied, "has been used by coalition forces in Iraq either during the war-fighting phase or since."
This seemed odd to those who had been paying attention. There were widespread reports that in March 2003 US marines had dropped incendiary bombs around the bridges over the Tigris and the Saddam Canal on the way to Baghdad. The commander of Marine Air Group 11 admitted that "We napalmed both those approaches". Embedded journalists reported that napalm was dropped at Safwan Hill on the border with Kuwait. In August 2003 the Pentagon confirmed that the marines had dropped "mark 77 firebombs". Though the substance these contained was not napalm, its function, the Pentagon's information sheet said, was "remarkably similar". While napalm is made from petrol and polystyrene, the gel in the mark 77 is made from kerosene and polystyrene. I doubt it makes much difference to the people it lands on.
So in January this year, the MP Harry Cohen refined Mahon's question. He asked "whether mark 77 firebombs have been used by coalition forces". The US, the minister replied, has "confirmed to us that they have not used mark 77 firebombs, which are essentially napalm canisters, in Iraq at any time". The US government had lied to him. Mr Ingram had to retract his statements in a private letter to the MPs in June.
We were told that the war with Iraq was necessary for two reasons. Saddam Hussein possessed biological and chemical weapons and might one day use them against another nation. And the Iraqi people needed to be liberated from his oppressive regime, which had, among its other crimes, used chemical weapons to kill them. Tony Blair, Colin Powell, William Shawcross, David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen, Ann Clwyd and many others referred, in making their case, to Saddam's gassing of the Kurds in Halabja in 1988. They accused those who opposed the war of caring nothing for the welfare of the Iraqis.
Given that they care so much, why has none of these hawks spoken out against the use of unconventional weapons by coalition forces? Ann Clwyd, the Labour MP who turned from peace campaigner to chief apologist for an illegal war, is, as far as I can discover, the only one of these armchair warriors to engage with the issue. In May this year, she wrote to the Guardian to assure us that reports that a "modern form of napalm" has been used by US forces "are completely without foundation. Coalition forces have not used napalm - either during operations in Falluja, or at any other time". How did she know? The foreign office minister told her. Before the invasion, Clwyd traveled through Iraq to investigate Saddam's crimes against his people. She told the Commons that what she found moved her to tears. After the invasion, she took the minister's word at face value, when a 30-second search on the internet could have told her it was bunkum. It makes you wonder whether she really gave a damn about the people for whom she claimed to be campaigning.
Saddam, facing a possible death sentence, is accused of mass murder, torture, false imprisonment and the use of chemical weapons. He is certainly guilty on all counts. So, it now seems, are those who overthrew him.
EM Notes: Bush: how is he different from Saddam?
www.Monbiot.com
I don't care how many times you post this topic. (I think this is the 4th incarnation of it.)
Saying it a million times won't make it true. There is a HUGE difference between WP and napalm and REAL chemical weapons like Sarin, Soman, Chlorine Gas, GB and all associated blood, blister and nerve agents.
Lets get something straight, napalm and white phosphorus are NOT 'chemical weapons' and the title of the thread is both misleading and more than a bit partisan. The video, while horrific, is trying to make it appear that the U.S. is dropping something other than WP (White Phosphorus) or Napalm upon the people of Iraq. This, while making a great fairy tale, is false.
For a better definition of what Chemical Weapons are go to:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/cw/intro.htm
Napalm
Napalm is a mixture of benzene (21%), gasoline (33%), and polystyrene (46%). Benzene is a normal component of gasoline (about 2%). The gasoline used in napalm is the same leaded or unleaded gas that is used in automobiles.
Red and White Phosphorus
a. At ordinary temperatures, white phosphorus (WP) is a solid which can be handled safely under water. When dry, it burns fiercely in air, producing a dense white smoke. Fragments of melted particles of the burning substance may become embedded in the skin of persons close to a bursting projectile, producing burns which are multiple, deep and variable in size. The fragments continue to burn unless oxygen is excluded by flooding or smothering.
b. WP may be used to produce a hot dense white smoke composed of particles of phosphorus pentoxide which are converted by moist air to droplets of phosphoric acid. The smoke irritates the eyes and nose in moderate concentrations. Field concentrations of the smoke are usually harmless although they may cause temporary irritation to the eyes, nose or throat. The respirator provides adequate protection against white phosphorus smoke.
c. In an artillery projectile white phosphorus is contained in felt wedges which ignite immediately upon exposure to air and fall to the ground. Up to 15% of the white phosphorus remains within the charred wedge and can re-ignite if the felt is crushed and the unburned white phosphorus exposed to the atmosphere.
d. Red phosphorus (RP) is not nearly as reactive as white phosphorus. It reacts slowly with atmospheric moisture and the smoke does not produce thermal injury, hence the smoke is less toxic.
These weapons are classified under the term Incendiary Weapons.
Incendiary agents are used to burn supplies, equipment and structures. The main agents in this group are thermite (TH), magnesium, white phosphorus (WP) and combustible hydrocarbons (including oils and thickened gasoline).
Burns may be produced by flame-throwers, oil incendiary bombs which may also contain phosphorus and sodium, and fire bombs containing thickened gasoline. Lung damage from heat and irritating gases may be a complication added to the injuries from incendiaries, especially in confined spaces.
While it is extremely unpleasant to be on the receiving end of either of these weapon types, neither of them is a Chemical Weapon and any reference to them as such, is totally disingenuous.
P.S.: Just FYI for you partisan types, if you claim I am splitting hairs and you DO consider White Phosphous to BE Chemical Weapons and thus Weapons of Mass Destruction, we can all consider President Bush to have told the 100% unvarnished truth about Iraq having WMD's since, to date, the US and British military have captured thousands of White Phosphorus shells from Iraqi ammo dumps all over Iraq.
Just my 2 cents (pre tax)
NO. This is the first post of this topic. If you can find others that I have posted on chemical weapons please show proof, or shut your pie hole.
Chemical Weapons as defined below, in case you aren't able to hold your attention span long enough to actually READ the entire article, are defined as:
'any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm".
How would you like that stuff attached to your body parts?
I repeat, for those with the attention span of a fruit flly:
The first account they unearthed in a magazine published by the US army. In the March 2005 edition of Field Artillery, officers from the 2nd Infantry's fire support element boast about their role in the attack on Falluja in November last year: "White Phosphorous. WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. 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 [high explosive]. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."
White phosphorus is not listed in the schedules of the Chemical Weapons Convention. It can be legally used as a flare to illuminate the battlefield, or to produce smoke to hide troop movements from the enemy. Like other unlisted substances, it may be deployed for "Military purposes... not dependent on the use of the toxic properties of chemicals as a method of warfare".
But it becomes a chemical weapon as soon as it is used directly against people.
THAT IS THE POINT HERE. DO YOU GET THAT THESE ARE HUMAN BEINGS? DO YOU GET THAT IRAQ HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11? DO YOU GET THAT IRAQ WANTS AMERICA OUT OF THEIR COUNTRY? THAT IS WHY THERE ARE INSURGENTS. WOULD YOU LIKE THEM IN YOUR COUNTRY?
Partisan type? I'd have to be an american and be limited to 2 parties. I am Canadian and not therefore limited to 2 parties. We have at least 4 parties in Canadian gov't, not counting the Greens, which makes 5.
Causing extreme, unnecessary pain to people is what this is about. That your government lied about it is the MAIN POINT. You can split hairs all you want, but America is despicable and makes Saddam look like Santa Claus. America has become worse, with it's torture and murder, as what they overthrew. What goes around, comes around, and America's turn is coming. Shame on you.
Saddam, facing a possible death sentence, is accused of mass murder, torture, false imprisonment and the use of chemical weapons. He is certainly guilty on all counts. So, it now seems, are those who overthrew him.
And I'll post it a thousand times if that's what it takes to get through thick yankee skulls. Wake up. Get out of Iraq. They are worse off now than they were before. At least they had electricity, running water, and food. What have you Americans given them besides misery?
Fugitive GI on Iraq war
By Jeff Riley
15 November 2005
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
Two years ago, after witnessing first-hand the atrocities carried out by the US military in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Private First Class Joshua Key decided to desert the US Army rather than face redeployment in the criminal war.
Key is now in Canada with his wife and four young children, having joined a growing number of US soldiers who have fled there seeking refugee status.
He spoke to the WSWS in Toronto shortly before moving with his family to Gabriola Island, British Columbia, where they are currently living.
When he returned to Fort Carson, Colorado on a two-week leave at the end of November 2003, Joshua Key had already made the decision that he was not going to return to the war in Iraq. After seven months in the country, he did not want to participate in what he described as crimes against the Iraqi people, who regarded the American military as an unwanted and illegal occupation force.
He fled the base with his wife and three young children in what would be 14 months of hiding out from the Army and law enforcement before fleeing to Canada.
Born in 1978 in Guthrie, Oklahoma, Joshua Key grew up on a ranch and dreamed of becoming a welder, but didn't have the money to go through school to gain his certification. He met his future wife Brandi at the age of 18, and together they had two children with one more on the way when he met an Army recruiter in February 2002. The recruiters promised him that he would be assigned as bridge-builder in a non-deployable unit and assured him that he would never see combat.
Key would later realize that the recruiters knew exactly what to say to him, appealing to his lack of job security and health care for himself and his family. Taking their assurances?-that they would never send the father of three small children into combat and that he could acquire the skills needed for his trade?-at face value, he felt joining the Army was a sound decision.
Key went off to boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri by the end of May 2002, and after nine weeks he was stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado with the 43rd Company of Combat Engineers in a rapid deployment unit. By the time he arrived, troops were already being prepared to ship out to Kuwait in preparation for the invasion of Iraq.
"I immediately had the feeling that I was going to go despite all of their promises. As soon as they started to deploy large numbers of troops to Kuwait, I was one of the first to leave my base. I ended up in Iraq one month after the invasion in April of 2003," Key recalled.
"I was with the 43rd Combat Engineer Company 2/3 ARC [Armed Cavalry Regiment]. We were an asset to the Army because they could put us anywhere they wanted. Our main objective, at least what we thought it was when we first arrived, was to clear mines and explosives. But after we got there, that wasn't the case at all. We were never trained in how to raid houses and do traffic control points, or how to institute curfews throughout cities and make it work, but that's what we were doing. When we arrived we expected the war to be over because that's the way they made it sound. They told us that we were going to Ramadi, a city of 300,000 Iraqis. I think there was only one platoon of the 82nd Airborne there, and we were going in to keep control of the city."
Key explained that they were all told that the Iraqi people would welcome the American troops with open arms, one of the central themes of the Bush administration's prewar propaganda. Like the WMDs, it quickly proved a lie.
"When we first arrived it was difficult to tell much from the expressions on the Iraqi people's faces?-many people were coming out of their houses just sort of standing there as we would drive by," Key recalled.
"But then we learned that when Saddam was in power, if his military rolled through the city, if everyone didn't come out and run and cheer, his people would go into their houses and give them a reality check. It was mandatory for people to come out and cheer and clap. So it got to the point where we knew that's just what the people are used to doing out of obligation. So if they came out as we rolled through town, it was more because they didn't want anything to happen to them or their homes. It's what you would call habit?-minus the clapping and cheering. You actually saw anger in their faces."
The anger of the Iraqi people was fueled by widespread and seemingly indiscriminate raids of their homes, routinely executed with force and violence. The so-called intelligence that led to targeting certain homes, Key said, was almost invariably groundless.
"You know, it [the intelligence] never panned out," Key said. "It could be something as simple as a wedding?-where it's a tradition for Iraqi people to fire guns in the air when someone gets married?-they've been doing that for God knows how many years. So suddenly you have a QRF [Quick Reaction Force] that moves in and starts raiding the home; and your commander gets mad because there's nothing there and cordons off an entire neighborhood and starts raiding every house."
"But usually you raid a house in the middle of the night or early in the morning, almost always in the dark," Key continued. "Most of the time we would pull up in civilian vehicles. You drive up to an address. If the door was made out of wood we would simply kick it in. Most of the time we would put C-4 explosives in and just blow the door right off. You run in there and people are running around and crying?-let's face it, it's pretty traumatic to have the door blown off your home with C-4 in the middle of the night?-and there's usually about six or seven of us doing the raiding."
"You just clear room after room forcing everyone down to the ground at gunpoint." Key added. "Then you zip-cuff the males and throw them out the door. They say that we only do that to the males that are over a certain age, but it generally happens to every male in the house no matter how old. Thirteen and fourteen year-old-boys are taken and zip-cuffed and thrown out to a squad waiting out front. They get thrown into the back of a five-ton truck and who knows what happens to them from there.
"People are detained for a very long time before they ever see their families again, and I can say that I never saw anyone returned and I definitely never returned anyone back to their home myself. There are tens of thousands sitting in jails for no reason whatsoever. Farming families that depend on the men of the house to survive are ripped apart, with the women left alone to fend for themselves."
The violence directed against US troops in the Iraq began to escalate dramatically after the first several months of the invasion as a direct result of the actions of the American forces against the people of the country.
Key explained: "There was not a lot of violence at first. I got to Iraq on the 27th of April, 2003. We were in Ramadi, and for the first month there was hardly anything. Every now and then you'd have small arms fire, but you weren't getting mortar attacks and RPGs right and left, I mean it was real calm. And then you start bringing in inexperienced soldiers into the mix?-they just move people around all the time so it's never clear what we're doing. Everyone has the same objective, to raid homes, patrol and do traffic control points, and Iraqi civilians were getting shot up during all of it."
He continued, "Then you start getting people that are real jumpy. When we got into the country we were told that if you feel threatened, you shoot, and a lot of us did just that. We all heard stories from some of the other platoons about soldiers just shooting down people during raids or in the streets in neighborhoods, because someone may have thrown a rock. Well the commanders say if you can't tell the difference between a rock and a grenade, go ahead and shoot. Me personally, I can tell the difference and I was just not okay with that. I mean, come on, if you can't handle a rock being thrown at you in a situation like this, then there is something just not right. It has only made the Iraqi people hate us that much more."
Checkpoints, or traffic control points, where there have been numerous innocent civilians killed, became another focus of the military's violence against the Iraqi population. Key recalled a checkpoint that he was part of where American soldiers just stood waving their hands in the air trying to get people to stop. He explained how he had to pull a young wounded boy from a car that was shot up by his squad for failing to stop when signaled.
"They just opened fire on the car because that's what we're told to do," Key explained. "Rather than think for a second, ?'Hey, they don't know what the hell we are saying here and it looks like a man and a child?-let's just hold off until they get up here,' they just open fire on them. And then you have to pull the bodies out of the car and take the injured off to the hospital, and you know they are just innocent people."
Joshua Key discussed the war in Iraq with his wife Brandi in depth on the eve of his deployment. There was the bitterness over the recruiters' deception, but they tried their best to rationalize what was happening. Digesting the news reports on the war, they concluded that there were in fact terrorists and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Brandi supported his going to war, telling Joshua to get back in one piece as soon as possible. Joshua went, but his opinion of the war changed almost as soon as he got to Iraq.
"When do we get to go home?"
"Even in the first month I felt that we shouldn't be there, and my only concern?-and the concern of most of the guys I knew?-was when do we get to go home," Key explained. "And then it got to the point where we were being attacked every day?-and we were being mortar attacked throughout the night. We were in hell, and we couldn't even sleep.
"And then people you know start getting hurt, and there were even some who were shooting themselves in the foot just to come home. So then you're asking yourself, ?'What's going on here?' Obviously they don't have weapons of mass destruction or they would have used them on us?-we all felt that way."
Key continued, "They have all these people searching for this stuff?-they can't find it. And all we're hearing about is how highly guarded the oil fields are, and that this is really the main concern for America. And then you start getting demonstrations by the Iraqi people and they send you in there to calm them down, and when you get there, they're all pissed off with the US government.
"But they're pissed off at you because you are the American government to them, when you are actually just a soldier doing what you're told. And they're asking you, ?'Why the hell are you guys still here? Why are you monopolizing our Benzine [gas]? Why are you here?' I mean, I'd like to tell them the truth: ?'We're here to take your oil, take all of your natural resources;' and ?'How long are you going to be here for? Well, we're gonna be here forever.' You're not supposed to say that of course, but that's what I wanted to say all the time."
Key summed up the rapid transformation of his views on the war?-and those of other soldiers.
"At first it didn't matter if I was going to die or not because we were dying for a purpose?-you're dying because your country is at war and we had to take care of Saddam Hussein," he said. "He was a dictator and you're thinking of it all as sort of a Hitler situation. But then it sinks in?-the lies, and you start getting mad?-your friends are getting hurt and then you start thinking, ?'Man, if I die for this, what did I die for?'
"And everybody's asking the same thing, ?'If I die here, what the hell did I die for?' Well, we died for the greed of President Bush. We died so his friends' companies can thrive over in the Middle East. And it got to the point that I realized I wasn't going to die for that, and I wasn't going to sit in prison for it either."
"Most of the Joes felt that way," Key continued, "at least those with a conscience?-most of the guys like myself with ranks up to E-5, and after that it becomes all political. For the officers it's a life deal, but even some of them felt that way.
"At one point I had a squad leader who was a Staff Sergeant who was getting ready to be promoted to Sergeant First Class. He'd been in the military for 16 years, and he told me ?'When I get home, I'm not going to do this **** again, I'm getting out as fast as possible because I don't know what we're doing here.' I think that demoralized us all."
Questioning the purpose of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, Key attests, was more prevalent within the ranks than anyone on the outside knew. Many were constantly asking?-in some cases to their superiors?-why they were there. This question was all too frequently driven home with incidents of devastating violence.
Key explained, "One of my [squad] sergeants got his leg blown off. I used to talk to him even before that happened, and even he couldn't give us a reason for us being there. All of us would ask him, ?'What is the good of this?' After a combat situation, there are those that you become friends with, and those you don't, and he was one that you did. We became good friends, and you felt like you could talk with him. But to my platoon sergeants or platoon leaders, you could never ask anything like that because they were all ?'Go Army', while the rest of us, the Joes as they call us, are sitting around saying, ?'Why are we putting our lives in danger for this?'"
Key continued, "I always felt bad that I wasn't there during the incident when my sergeant lost his leg. I had just finished an eight-hour guard shift, and they were on patrol and then they got shot up with an RPG-17 that tore the legs off of three people in their APC [Armored Personnel Carrier]. And they later discovered it was actually one of the United States' own weapons that was given to them during the Iran/Iraq war."
"It's coming across the radio," Key continued, "so we're all waiting for them to get back and help them as much as we can, and then they get there and you actually have to sit there and pick up one of your friend's legs and set it beside them so it's with them when they get medivaced out. Our superiors then made us take their weapons and their vehicle that was totally blood-soaked and told us that we had to clean it all up. I'm like, ?'You've got to be shitting me.' This was my friend, and that's all their blood, and they're telling you that you have to clean it all up so that someone else can use it."
After returning from Iraq, Key became aware that the administration and the media were portraying the war to the American public as a struggle against foreign terrorists seeking to disrupt "democracy."
"When I was in hiding I would watch the news trying to see what exactly was going on, I just wanted to keep on top of it," Key recalled. "And every day, that's all you would have. You know, ?'Two American soldiers die from terrorists,' or ?'Ten wounded from terrorists.' It was always terrorists?-they never consider it just being people that are fighting for their country. It's still a war to them and they are fighting against the invasion of their country.
"The American government just calls them all terrorists and that's how they present it to the American public. Of course the American public is very much against the idea of terrorists ever since 9/11, so the government just focuses on that word, and that keeps the war going. They think that if they say that every American soldier that dies, that for all the boys and girls that are being killed, that they are being killed by terrorists, they can keep the American people behind it."
Key continued, "Even when I was there you're hearing all the time about insurgents coming in from Syria, ?'they're coming in from Jordan, they're coming in from everywhere,' and there may be a few, but for the most part they are the farmers, they're the people whose homes you invaded for no reason and took their family members off to jail and destroyed their lives, maybe killed their son or their father and they want you out of their country. They look at us as being guilty of war crimes and we are. We impose killing, we detain them, we torture them?-we're the ones that caused it all."
As for the myth of Iraq's connection to Al Qaeda, Key explained that he and other soldiers never bought into it.
Key recalled, "We were getting letters from back home saying that everyone is being told that Iraq was linked to Al Qaeda and we were all saying, ?'There's no way that's true.' Saddam Hussein didn't like terrorists, I mean he was not a good man himself, but he didn't allow terrorists into his country. We knew that he was not a radical fundamentalist like Osama bin Laden?-I mean there was no connection. But we had all pretty much figured that out right away and we couldn't believe that the American people were standing behind us because they believed that we were fighting terrorists that were involved in September 11, and that was basically Bush's reason for invading Iraq."
In early 2003, back at Fort Carson in the weeks before leaving for Iraq, Key was told that he would be there no more six months. On the day before he left, the Army changed that to 18-24 months. That was the same time that the military implemented a Stop-Loss program, preventing soldiers who have served their full term in the military from retiring or leaving. In Iraq, as Key recalled, there was no sense of how long or how many tours they would have to serve there.
When he was given two weeks leave from Iraq in November 2003, Joshua and his wife and children climbed into a used car, left the base at Fort Carson and drove east. They decided to stay in Philadelphia, thinking that it was a big enough city to remain anonymous. Running out of cash, Key took a welding job, and his wife Brandi worked in a restaurant. For over a year, they moved every 30 days to a new motel so people wouldn't ask questions, all the while fearing a knock on the door from law enforcement.
Key was a wanted man, and the FBI had already contacted his mother in Oklahoma, who hadn't seen her son since before his deployment in 2003. Agents threatened her with being charged with aiding and abetting a criminal.
One day, Key logged onto the Internet and typed ?'Deserter?-Need Help.' He eventually made contact with the War Resisters League in Toronto and lawyer Jeffry House, who advised the couple to wait for their soon-expected fourth child to be born before heading north.
The Canadian government of Prime Minister Paul Martin rejected US soldier Jeremy Hinzman's appeal for refugee status last March. The decision in this test case demonstrated Ottawa's subservience to the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, while leaving soldiers like Joshua Key, who have turned against the Iraq war, to face an uncertain future.
(EM: It's too bad Canada didn't take him, but we cannot afford another Vietnam exodus).
Fugitive GI on Iraq war
By Jeff Riley
15 November 2005
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
Two years ago, after witnessing first-hand the atrocities carried out by the US military in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Private First Class Joshua Key decided to desert the US Army rather than face redeployment in the criminal war.
Key is now in Canada with his wife and four young children, having joined a growing number of US soldiers who have fled there seeking refugee status.
He spoke to the WSWS in Toronto shortly before moving with his family to Gabriola Island, British Columbia, where they are currently living.
When he returned to Fort Carson, Colorado on a two-week leave at the end of November 2003, Joshua Key had already made the decision that he was not going to return to the war in Iraq. After seven months in the country, he did not want to participate in what he described as crimes against the Iraqi people, who regarded the American military as an unwanted and illegal occupation force.
He fled the base with his wife and three young children in what would be 14 months of hiding out from the Army and law enforcement before fleeing to Canada.
Born in 1978 in Guthrie, Oklahoma, Joshua Key grew up on a ranch and dreamed of becoming a welder, but didn't have the money to go through school to gain his certification. He met his future wife Brandi at the age of 18, and together they had two children with one more on the way when he met an Army recruiter in February 2002. The recruiters promised him that he would be assigned as bridge-builder in a non-deployable unit and assured him that he would never see combat.
Key would later realize that the recruiters knew exactly what to say to him, appealing to his lack of job security and health care for himself and his family. Taking their assurances?-that they would never send the father of three small children into combat and that he could acquire the skills needed for his trade?-at face value, he felt joining the Army was a sound decision.
Key went off to boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri by the end of May 2002, and after nine weeks he was stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado with the 43rd Company of Combat Engineers in a rapid deployment unit. By the time he arrived, troops were already being prepared to ship out to Kuwait in preparation for the invasion of Iraq.
"I immediately had the feeling that I was going to go despite all of their promises. As soon as they started to deploy large numbers of troops to Kuwait, I was one of the first to leave my base. I ended up in Iraq one month after the invasion in April of 2003," Key recalled.
"I was with the 43rd Combat Engineer Company 2/3 ARC [Armed Cavalry Regiment]. We were an asset to the Army because they could put us anywhere they wanted. Our main objective, at least what we thought it was when we first arrived, was to clear mines and explosives. But after we got there, that wasn't the case at all. We were never trained in how to raid houses and do traffic control points, or how to institute curfews throughout cities and make it work, but that's what we were doing. When we arrived we expected the war to be over because that's the way they made it sound. They told us that we were going to Ramadi, a city of 300,000 Iraqis. I think there was only one platoon of the 82nd Airborne there, and we were going in to keep control of the city."
Key explained that they were all told that the Iraqi people would welcome the American troops with open arms, one of the central themes of the Bush administration's prewar propaganda. Like the WMDs, it quickly proved a lie.
"When we first arrived it was difficult to tell much from the expressions on the Iraqi people's faces?-many people were coming out of their houses just sort of standing there as we would drive by," Key recalled.
"But then we learned that when Saddam was in power, if his military rolled through the city, if everyone didn't come out and run and cheer, his people would go into their houses and give them a reality check. It was mandatory for people to come out and cheer and clap. So it got to the point where we knew that's just what the people are used to doing out of obligation. So if they came out as we rolled through town, it was more because they didn't want anything to happen to them or their homes. It's what you would call habit?-minus the clapping and cheering. You actually saw anger in their faces."
The anger of the Iraqi people was fueled by widespread and seemingly indiscriminate raids of their homes, routinely executed with force and violence. The so-called intelligence that led to targeting certain homes, Key said, was almost invariably groundless.
"You know, it [the intelligence] never panned out," Key said. "It could be something as simple as a wedding?-where it's a tradition for Iraqi people to fire guns in the air when someone gets married?-they've been doing that for God knows how many years. So suddenly you have a QRF [Quick Reaction Force] that moves in and starts raiding the home; and your commander gets mad because there's nothing there and cordons off an entire neighborhood and starts raiding every house."
"But usually you raid a house in the middle of the night or early in the morning, almost always in the dark," Key continued. "Most of the time we would pull up in civilian vehicles. You drive up to an address. If the door was made out of wood we would simply kick it in. Most of the time we would put C-4 explosives in and just blow the door right off. You run in there and people are running around and crying?-let's face it, it's pretty traumatic to have the door blown off your home with C-4 in the middle of the night?-and there's usually about six or seven of us doing the raiding."
"You just clear room after room forcing everyone down to the ground at gunpoint." Key added. "Then you zip-cuff the males and throw them out the door. They say that we only do that to the males that are over a certain age, but it generally happens to every male in the house no matter how old. Thirteen and fourteen year-old-boys are taken and zip-cuffed and thrown out to a squad waiting out front. They get thrown into the back of a five-ton truck and who knows what happens to them from there.
"People are detained for a very long time before they ever see their families again, and I can say that I never saw anyone returned and I definitely never returned anyone back to their home myself. There are tens of thousands sitting in jails for no reason whatsoever. Farming families that depend on the men of the house to survive are ripped apart, with the women left alone to fend for themselves."
The violence directed against US troops in the Iraq began to escalate dramatically after the first several months of the invasion as a direct result of the actions of the American forces against the people of the country.
Key explained: "There was not a lot of violence at first. I got to Iraq on the 27th of April, 2003. We were in Ramadi, and for the first month there was hardly anything. Every now and then you'd have small arms fire, but you weren't getting mortar attacks and RPGs right and left, I mean it was real calm. And then you start bringing in inexperienced soldiers into the mix?-they just move people around all the time so it's never clear what we're doing. Everyone has the same objective, to raid homes, patrol and do traffic control points, and Iraqi civilians were getting shot up during all of it."
He continued, "Then you start getting people that are real jumpy. When we got into the country we were told that if you feel threatened, you shoot, and a lot of us did just that. We all heard stories from some of the other platoons about soldiers just shooting down people during raids or in the streets in neighborhoods, because someone may have thrown a rock. Well the commanders say if you can't tell the difference between a rock and a grenade, go ahead and shoot. Me personally, I can tell the difference and I was just not okay with that. I mean, come on, if you can't handle a rock being thrown at you in a situation like this, then there is something just not right. It has only made the Iraqi people hate us that much more."
Checkpoints, or traffic control points, where there have been numerous innocent civilians killed, became another focus of the military's violence against the Iraqi population. Key recalled a checkpoint that he was part of where American soldiers just stood waving their hands in the air trying to get people to stop. He explained how he had to pull a young wounded boy from a car that was shot up by his squad for failing to stop when signaled.
"They just opened fire on the car because that's what we're told to do," Key explained. "Rather than think for a second, ?'Hey, they don't know what the hell we are saying here and it looks like a man and a child?-let's just hold off until they get up here,' they just open fire on them. And then you have to pull the bodies out of the car and take the injured off to the hospital, and you know they are just innocent people."
Joshua Key discussed the war in Iraq with his wife Brandi in depth on the eve of his deployment. There was the bitterness over the recruiters' deception, but they tried their best to rationalize what was happening. Digesting the news reports on the war, they concluded that there were in fact terrorists and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Brandi supported his going to war, telling Joshua to get back in one piece as soon as possible. Joshua went, but his opinion of the war changed almost as soon as he got to Iraq.
"When do we get to go home?"
"Even in the first month I felt that we shouldn't be there, and my only concern?-and the concern of most of the guys I knew?-was when do we get to go home," Key explained. "And then it got to the point where we were being attacked every day?-and we were being mortar attacked throughout the night. We were in hell, and we couldn't even sleep.
"And then people you know start getting hurt, and there were even some who were shooting themselves in the foot just to come home. So then you're asking yourself, ?'What's going on here?' Obviously they don't have weapons of mass destruction or they would have used them on us?-we all felt that way."
Key continued, "They have all these people searching for this stuff?-they can't find it. And all we're hearing about is how highly guarded the oil fields are, and that this is really the main concern for America. And then you start getting demonstrations by the Iraqi people and they send you in there to calm them down, and when you get there, they're all pissed off with the US government.
"But they're pissed off at you because you are the American government to them, when you are actually just a soldier doing what you're told. And they're asking you, ?'Why the hell are you guys still here? Why are you monopolizing our Benzine [gas]? Why are you here?' I mean, I'd like to tell them the truth: ?'We're here to take your oil, take all of your natural resources;' and ?'How long are you going to be here for? Well, we're gonna be here forever.' You're not supposed to say that of course, but that's what I wanted to say all the time."
Key summed up the rapid transformation of his views on the war?-and those of other soldiers.
"At first it didn't matter if I was going to die or not because we were dying for a purpose?-you're dying because your country is at war and we had to take care of Saddam Hussein," he said. "He was a dictator and you're thinking of it all as sort of a Hitler situation. But then it sinks in?-the lies, and you start getting mad?-your friends are getting hurt and then you start thinking, ?'Man, if I die for this, what did I die for?'
"And everybody's asking the same thing, ?'If I die here, what the hell did I die for?' Well, we died for the greed of President Bush. We died so his friends' companies can thrive over in the Middle East. And it got to the point that I realized I wasn't going to die for that, and I wasn't going to sit in prison for it either."
"Most of the Joes felt that way," Key continued, "at least those with a conscience?-most of the guys like myself with ranks up to E-5, and after that it becomes all political. For the officers it's a life deal, but even some of them felt that way.
"At one point I had a squad leader who was a Staff Sergeant who was getting ready to be promoted to Sergeant First Class. He'd been in the military for 16 years, and he told me ?'When I get home, I'm not going to do this **** again, I'm getting out as fast as possible because I don't know what we're doing here.' I think that demoralized us all."
Questioning the purpose of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, Key attests, was more prevalent within the ranks than anyone on the outside knew. Many were constantly asking?-in some cases to their superiors?-why they were there. This question was all too frequently driven home with incidents of devastating violence.
Key explained, "One of my [squad] sergeants got his leg blown off. I used to talk to him even before that happened, and even he couldn't give us a reason for us being there. All of us would ask him, ?'What is the good of this?' After a combat situation, there are those that you become friends with, and those you don't, and he was one that you did. We became good friends, and you felt like you could talk with him. But to my platoon sergeants or platoon leaders, you could never ask anything like that because they were all ?'Go Army', while the rest of us, the Joes as they call us, are sitting around saying, ?'Why are we putting our lives in danger for this?'"
Key continued, "I always felt bad that I wasn't there during the incident when my sergeant lost his leg. I had just finished an eight-hour guard shift, and they were on patrol and then they got shot up with an RPG-17 that tore the legs off of three people in their APC [Armored Personnel Carrier]. And they later discovered it was actually one of the United States' own weapons that was given to them during the Iran/Iraq war."
"It's coming across the radio," Key continued, "so we're all waiting for them to get back and help them as much as we can, and then they get there and you actually have to sit there and pick up one of your friend's legs and set it beside them so it's with them when they get medivaced out. Our superiors then made us take their weapons and their vehicle that was totally blood-soaked and told us that we had to clean it all up. I'm like, ?'You've got to be shitting me.' This was my friend, and that's all their blood, and they're telling you that you have to clean it all up so that someone else can use it."
After returning from Iraq, Key became aware that the administration and the media were portraying the war to the American public as a struggle against foreign terrorists seeking to disrupt "democracy."
"When I was in hiding I would watch the news trying to see what exactly was going on, I just wanted to keep on top of it," Key recalled. "And every day, that's all you would have. You know, ?'Two American soldiers die from terrorists,' or ?'Ten wounded from terrorists.' It was always terrorists?-they never consider it just being people that are fighting for their country. It's still a war to them and they are fighting against the invasion of their country.
"The American government just calls them all terrorists and that's how they present it to the American public. Of course the American public is very much against the idea of terrorists ever since 9/11, so the government just focuses on that word, and that keeps the war going. They think that if they say that every American soldier that dies, that for all the boys and girls that are being killed, that they are being killed by terrorists, they can keep the American people behind it."
Key continued, "Even when I was there you're hearing all the time about insurgents coming in from Syria, ?'they're coming in from Jordan, they're coming in from everywhere,' and there may be a few, but for the most part they are the farmers, they're the people whose homes you invaded for no reason and took their family members off to jail and destroyed their lives, maybe killed their son or their father and they want you out of their country. They look at us as being guilty of war crimes and we are. We impose killing, we detain them, we torture them?-we're the ones that caused it all."
As for the myth of Iraq's connection to Al Qaeda, Key explained that he and other soldiers never bought into it.
Key recalled, "We were getting letters from back home saying that everyone is being told that Iraq was linked to Al Qaeda and we were all saying, ?'There's no way that's true.' Saddam Hussein didn't like terrorists, I mean he was not a good man himself, but he didn't allow terrorists into his country. We knew that he was not a radical fundamentalist like Osama bin Laden?-I mean there was no connection. But we had all pretty much figured that out right away and we couldn't believe that the American people were standing behind us because they believed that we were fighting terrorists that were involved in September 11, and that was basically Bush's reason for invading Iraq."
In early 2003, back at Fort Carson in the weeks before leaving for Iraq, Key was told that he would be there no more six months. On the day before he left, the Army changed that to 18-24 months. That was the same time that the military implemented a Stop-Loss program, preventing soldiers who have served their full term in the military from retiring or leaving. In Iraq, as Key recalled, there was no sense of how long or how many tours they would have to serve there.
When he was given two weeks leave from Iraq in November 2003, Joshua and his wife and children climbed into a used car, left the base at Fort Carson and drove east. They decided to stay in Philadelphia, thinking that it was a big enough city to remain anonymous. Running out of cash, Key took a welding job, and his wife Brandi worked in a restaurant. For over a year, they moved every 30 days to a new motel so people wouldn't ask questions, all the while fearing a knock on the door from law enforcement.
Key was a wanted man, and the FBI had already contacted his mother in Oklahoma, who hadn't seen her son since before his deployment in 2003. Agents threatened her with being charged with aiding and abetting a criminal.
One day, Key logged onto the Internet and typed ?'Deserter?-Need Help.' He eventually made contact with the War Resisters League in Toronto and lawyer Jeffry House, who advised the couple to wait for their soon-expected fourth child to be born before heading north.
The Canadian government of Prime Minister Paul Martin rejected US soldier Jeremy Hinzman's appeal for refugee status last March. The decision in this test case demonstrated Ottawa's subservience to the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, while leaving soldiers like Joshua Key, who have turned against the Iraq war, to face an uncertain future.
(EM: It's too bad Canada didn't take him, but we cannot afford another Vietnam exodus).
I was posting that this TOPIC was posted multiple times before, not that YOU yourself posted it multiple times you self important prig , so lets talk about shuting another piehole as you are fond of saying.
The other topics I was speaking of are here:
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=63549&sid=e1d130022e68f43b317ca20e05b44dec
and here:
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=62960
Just because YOU say that using WP and napalm against personnel 'magically' turns those weapons from conventional into chemical weapons is the height of arrogance and totally untrue.
I was in the U.S. Army Artillery, MOS 15E (Pershing II Missile Crewman) back in the mid to late '80's, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
My system was a vehicle transported short/medium ranged tactical nuclear missile. IT was a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
I trained at Fort Sill, the home of U.S. Army Artillery and I had many friends in the tube and rocket artillery, and let me inform you of something:
Any and ALL deployments of nuclear or chemical weapons requires approval and release by NCA (National Command Authority aka the President and Joint Chiefs of Staff)
White Phosphorus is merely a conventional weapon with some very nasty effects at the target point.
Napalm is a CONVENTIONAL weapon with some rather nasty effects as well.
Just because you desperately want to turn the U.S. into the moral equivalent of Saddam's military will not make it so.
Just because I say over and over: Hillary Clinton is the Anti Christ doesn't make it true... I may believe it, but it doesn't make it true.
Do you see the freaking difference?
Now I've seen the news. Apparently, the US has retracted any denials and has admitted to using white phosphorous. It acts chemically with your body. It's just powder. That's not the same as napalm, which kills through burning. It's a chemical powder that chemically reacts with your body.
Though, I guess the US wouldn't care. It isn't a signatory of an international treaty restricting white phosphorous use, so as far as it's concerned, what it has done isn't illegal.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1108/dailyUpdate.html
Semantics.....................Fedral You're missing the forest because of the trees. Everything about us has a chemical composition
Semantics? The term "Chemical weapon" means something specific. It is a defined term. It is not semantics.
This is a non-issue.
rodeman wrote:Semantics.....................Fedral You're missing the forest because of the trees. Everything about us has a chemical composition
Then a pistol and a rifle count as chemical weapons because they use the chemical reaction of burning gunpowder to propel a projectile into the body of a target and the cloud of gunpowder smoke can cause irritation of the eyes and mucous membranes.
Do you see how EVERY weapon used chemical reactions to make them work ... this doesn't make them CHEMICAL WEAPONS!
Just because you want something to be true doesn't make it so.
If white phosphorus, which was used "to flush out enemy fighters so that they could then be killed with high explosive rounds", is not a chemical weapon, what is it then?
a) nuclear
b) biological
c) conventional
???
I blieve it would be classified as a conventional incendiary device.
old europe wrote:If white phosphorus, which was used "to flush out enemy fighters so that they could then be killed with high explosive rounds", is not a chemical weapon, what is it then?
a) nuclear
b) biological
c) conventional
???
It is a purely conventional weapon, in the same class as:
Fragmentation Weapons
Improved Conventional Munitions (Small sub munitions loaded in artillery rounds)
Aerial Illumination Rounds (Parachute Flares)
High Explosive Rounds
Laser Guided Rounds (Copperhead)
White Phosphorus
FASCAM (A shell which spreads a temporary minefield)
All the above are conventional artillery rounds and can be requested by troops on the line for fire support missions.
They do not require any release by National Command Authority before firing.
Below are the classes of shells fired by 155 mm artillery pieces that can be classified as CHEMICAL WEAPONS and require approval by NCA before release on a battlefield:
M104 - Delivers H or HD blister gas [not in active service, slated for destruction].
M110A1/A2 - Delivers H or HD blister gas [not in active service, slated for destruction].
M121/A1 - GB or VX nerve gas [not in active service, slated for destruction]
M122 - GB nerve gas [not in active service, slated for destruction]
M687 - Binary GB nerve gas [not in active service]
Can you see the difference??
US admits it used white phosphorus in Iraq as a weapon
BBC
11/16/05
US used white phosphorus in Iraq
The US Military called it their "shake and bake" weapon.
US troops used white phosphorus as a weapon in last year's offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja, the US has said.
"It was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants," spokesman Lt Col Barry Venable told the BBC - though not against civilians, he said. The US had earlier said the substance - which can cause burning of the flesh - had been used only for illumination.
BBC defence correspondent Paul Wood says having to retract its denial is a public relations disaster for the US.
Col Barry Venable, Pentagon spokesman, denied that white phosphorous constituted a banned chemical weapon. White phosphorus is an incendiary weapon, not a chemical weapon.
Washington is not a signatory to an international treaty restricting the use of the substance against civilians. The US state department had earlier said white phosphorus had been used in Falluja very sparingly, for illumination purposes.
Col Venable said that statement was based on "poor information".
'Incendiary'
The US-led assault on Falluja - a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency west of Baghdad - displaced most of the city's 300,000 population and left many of its buildings destroyed.
Col Venable told the BBC's PM radio programme that the US army used white phosphorus incendiary munitions "primarily as obscurants, for smokescreens or target marking in some cases.
"However it is an incendiary weapon and may be used against enemy combatants."
And he said it had been used in Falluja, but it was a "conventional munition", not a chemical weapon. It is not "outlawed or illegal", Col Venable said. He said US forces could use white phosphorus rounds to flush enemy troops out of covered positions.
"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," he said.
San Diego journalist Darrin Mortenson, who was embedded with US marines during the assault on Falluja, told the BBC's Today radio programme he had seen white phosphorous used "as an incendiary weapon" against insurgents.
However, he "never saw anybody intentionally use any weapon against civilians", he said.
'Particularly nasty'
White phosphorus is highly flammable and ignites on contact with oxygen. If the substance hits someone's body, it will burn until deprived of oxygen.
Globalsecurity.org, a defence website, says: "Phosphorus burns on the skin are deep and painful... These weapons are particularly nasty because white phosphorus continues to burn until it disappears... it could burn right down to the bone."
A spokesman at the UK Ministry of Defence said the use of white phosphorus was permitted in battle in cases where there were no civilians near the target area.
But Professor Paul Rodgers, of the University of Bradford's department of peace studies, said white phosphorus could be considered a chemical weapon if deliberately aimed at civilians.
He told PM: "It is not counted under the chemical weapons convention in its normal use but, although it is a matter of legal niceties, it probably does fall into the category of chemical weapons if it is used for this kind of purpose directly against people."
When an Italian TV documentary revealing the use of white phosphorus in Iraq was broadcast on 8 November it sparked fury among Italian anti-war protesters, who demonstrated outside the US embassy in Rome.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/4440664.stm
Published: 2005/11/16 11:25:36 GMT
Re: US admits it used white phosphorus in Iraq as a weapon
BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:
The US Military called it their "shake and bake" weapon.
And the artillery call aerial illumination parachute flares: 'Starshells'
They call High explosive framentation shells: 'Frags'
They call Improved Conventional Munitions: 'Firecracker rounds'
Soldiers nickname EVERYTHING, just because you don't like the mane and it isn't PC, doesn't change its nature.
WP are NOT chemical weapons ... period.
Re: US admits it used white phosphorus in Iraq as a weapon
Fedral wrote:WP are NOT chemical weapons ... period.
Quote:White phosphorus results in painful chemical burn injuries. The resultant burn typically appears as a necrotic area with a yellowish color and characteristic garliclike odor. White phosphorus is highly lipid soluble and as such, is believed to have rapid dermal penetration once particles are embedded under the skin. Because of its enhanced lipid solubility, many have believed that these injuries result in delayed wound healing. This has not been well studied; therefore, all that can be stated is that white phosphorus burns represent a small subsegment of chemical burns, all of which typically result in delayed wound healing.
Incandescent particles of WP may produce extensive burns. Phosphorus burns on the skin are deep and painful; a firm eschar is produced and is surrounded by vesiculation. The burns usually are multiple, deep, and variable in size. The solid in the eye produces severe injury. The particles continue to burn unless deprived of atmospheric oxygen. Contact with these particles can cause local burns. These weapons are particularly nasty because white phosphorus continues to burn until it disappears. If service members are hit by pieces of white phosphorus, it could burn right down to the bone. Burns usually are limited to areas of exposed skin (upper extremities, face). Burns frequently are second and third degree because of the rapid ignition and highly lipophilic properties of white phosphorus.
from
globalsecurity.org
White phosphorus shells have been used by both sides in every war since World War 2.
This includes all signatories of the 1925 Geneva Accords.
Not one of the signatories, their propagandists, their militaries and their press EVER considered them to be Chemical Weapons.
Almost every one of the countries involved in these conflicts had a 'No first use' policy and declared that they would use chemical weapons in response to any first use by the other side.
During every conflict, White Phosphorus shells were used and yet NO SIDE considered the use of these weapons to be chemical weapons.
Only now, the revisionist historians have decided to re define the scope of 'chemical weapons' for the sake of some good headlines.
White Phosphorus is as much a 'chemical weapon' as is gunpowder.
Do you get it yet??????
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