Did the U.S. use chemical weapons in Iraq?

November 16, 2005

Update: John Cole wants to make it absolutely clear that white phosphorous is not a chemical weapon. He seems to feel pretty strongly about it.

Earlier this month, a report on Italian television accused U.S. forces of using chemical weapons in Iraq, specifically utilizing white phosphorus as a weapon during an assault on insurgents in Fallujah. The Bush administration responded by calling the report “disinformation.”

“The United States categorically denies the use of chemical weapons at any time in Iraq, which includes the ongoing Fallujah operation. Furthermore, the United States does not under any circumstance support or condone the development, production, acquisition, transfer or use of chemical weapons by any country.”

Yesterday, the Bush administration changed its story.

Pentagon officials acknowledged Tuesday that U.S. troops used white phosphorous as a weapon against insurgent strongholds during the battle of Falluja last November. […]

Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman, said that while white phosphorous is used most frequently to mark targets or obscure positions, it was used at times in Falluja as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants.

I won’t pretend to be an expert on such matters, but the AP described white phosphorous as “a colorless-to-yellow translucent wax-like substance with a pungent, garlic-like smell. The form used by the military ignites once it is exposed to oxygen, producing such heat that it bursts into a yellow flame and produces a dense white smoke. It can cause painful burn injuries to exposed human flesh.”

And according to the Bush administration yesterday, American forces used this substance as a weapon — and denials to the contrary are no longer operative.

Yesterday, the State Department began to mount a defense.

“There is a great deal of misinformation feeding on itself about U.S. forces allegedly using ‘outlawed’ weapons in Falluja,” the department said. “The facts are that U.S. forces are not using any illegal weapons in Falluja or anywhere else in Iraq.”

Venable said white phosphorous shells are a standard weapon used by field artillery units and are not banned by any international weapons convention to which the United States is a signatory.

It seems there are two controversies — the use of white phosphorous and the administration’s denials that turned out to be untrue. On the prior, the administration apparently admits that it used chemical weapons, but it wants to make clear we didn’t use the really bad chemical weapons. On the latter, the administration hasn’t come up with a compelling spin yet.

Writing for the Washington Post yesterday, William Arkin explained that this is yet another Iraq-related fiasco for the Bush administration, calling its handling of the allegations, “typically clumsy and confused, fueling the controversy.”

What I’m sure of is that the use of white phosphorous is not just some insensitive act. It is not just bad P.R. It is the ill thought out and panicked use of a weapon in an illegitimate way. It is a representation of a losing strategy.

The controversy surrounding the use of white phosphorous hasn’t generated significant media attention, at least not in the U.S., but after yesterday’s Pentagon admission, that’s likely to change.

And whether the justification that white phosphorous isn’t one of the “illegal” chemicals, news reports around the world that the U.S. admits that it used chemical weapons WP as a weapon in Iraq probably won’t help with the whole “hearts and minds” problem.

Update 2: That last sentence was clearly wrong. I corrected it to say what I originally meant. My apologies.

Update 3: John says the sentence is still wrong, because WP is no more a chemical weapon than TNT is. This is just about the point when I start to wonder why I didn’t check with him before writing the post…

“It is a representation of a losing strategy.”

Man, that sentence can be used to accurately describe a number of strategies being utilized by this administration.

  • We invaded Iraq in the first place because we suspected they had chemical weapons they were going to use on us. So our response is to commit the very act we went to over and send our grandchildren into debt to pay for it? Well played, Bu$h. The irony is staggering.

  • troll…I mean Buzz,

    White phosphorus is a chemical. It was dropped on people. It burned them alive – until they died. That’s pretty much the definitiion of a chemical weapon. And ‘willy pete’ specifically has been internationally illegal to use on people for a long time – until recently. In classic Bush style, on July 26, 2001, the administration rejected an international treaty on germ warfare and biological weapons – thereby clearing the way for the America to use chemical weapons on whoever the fuck we want. Yippee! Wikipedia that…and perhaps dabble a bit on your own goddam family since its so bleedin’ safe. Here’s what they’ll look like:
    http://comearmageddon.blogspot.com/2005/11/stunning-hypocrisyfirst-and-foremost.html

  • I’ll preface this by stating that I don’t know much about chemical weapons, and that lack of knowledge may have brought me to some false conclusions. I’m certainly willing to look at this with an open mind and am willing to change my opinion on the matter if presented with sufficient facts. Having said this…

    “the administration apparently admits that it used chemical weapons”

    BEGIN MILD SARCASM
    Of course the U.S. used “chemical” weapons. I specifically recall from my high school chemistry class that lead is a chemical. It has an atomic number of 82 and is represented by the symbol “Pb”. This chemical is toxic to humans and according to the EPA “can harm virtually every system in the human body”. It is particularly harmful to the developing brain and nervous system of young children. I’m pretty certain that most soldiers are carrying a weaponized version of this chemical. I’m also pretty certain that most soldiers that have fired their gun have used this weaponized chemical.
    END MILD SARCASM

    Now I realize that this particular “chemical” weapon is not used in a way intended to react chemically with the body causing burns or poisoning, but I while I know VERY LITTLE about what weapons the U.S. armed forces does use, I would certainly expect them to use incendiary devices as well smoke-screens and perhaps even some irritants (pepper sprays?) all of which will fit into the same “chemical weapons” category as white phosphorus, a legal chemical that can be used as an incendiary, smoke-screen, or irritant.

    Isn’t there a more narrowly defined legal term of “illegal chemical weapons” that does not include typical incendiary devices, smoke bombs, or irritants, and also doesn’t include white phosphorus.

    So while it’s rare that I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the current White House administration for much of anything lately. I must say that I am willing to accept that when they say “The United States categorically denies the use of chemical weapons at any time in Iraq” they don’t mean that they didn’t use any weapon that was made of any chemical at all (considering all weapons are made of chemicals), but rather that they didn’t use any “illegal chemical weapon” (like sarin or VX).

    I’m not saying that I agree with the war in the first place. All weapons kill and injure people and incendiary devices are intended to cause fires. The result is always disgusting. I’m also not saying that this administration doesn’t seem to lie about almost everything, but based on the information in this CB post, I’m not sure that the administration is necessarily guilty of lying about their use of chemical weapons in this particular case.

    – Danny

  • My point is that WP, while certainly a depraved and noxious substance, is not a chemical weapon but an incendiary. ‘Burning alive until they died’ is not how a chemical weapon kills. You also seem to confuse biological and germ agents with chemical agents. Maybe some research would inform your position. HTH.

  • Here’s a link to two articles on Truthout
    about this:

    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111505J.shtml

    For some reason, the first, by Dahr Jamail, is
    posted twice.

    I don’t know what to make of the whole
    story, but we know we can’t believe the
    administration on it. That in itself is
    horrifying. They will do whatever lying
    it takes to cover up what we did wrong,
    if we did wrong. I suspect that we did
    burn civilians with the stuff. Collateral
    damage, as they say.

  • Melting the Skin Off of Children

    Whether you call it a chemical weapon or not, Hunter over at DKos had what I consider the definitive take on this:

    I think we need to take a step back from the newest Fallujah revelations. There’s been a lot of confusion over what is or isn’t a “chemical weapon” vs. an “incendiary”; what aspects of the Geneva conventions the United States is or is not signatory to; and whether or not the United States is still bound by rules of warfare that they are not direct signatories to.

    Allow me to try to clear things up, if I can.

    First, I think it should be a stated goal of United States policy to not melt the skin off of children.

    As a natural corollary to this goal, I think the United States should avoid dropping munitions on civilian neighborhoods which, as a side effect, melt the skin off of children. You can call them “chemical weapons” if you must, or far more preferably by the more proper name of “incendiaries”. The munitions may or may not precisely melt the skin off of children by setting them on fire; they do melt the skin off of children, however, through robust oxidation of said skin on said children, which is indeed colloquially known as “burning”. But let’s try to avoid, for now, the debate over the scientific phenomenon of exactly how the skin is melted, burned, or caramelized off of the aforementioned children. I feel quite confident that others have put more thought into the matter of how to melt the skin off of children than I have, and will trust their judgment on the matter.

    Now, I know that we may be melting the skin off of children in order to give them freedom, or to prevent Saddam Hussein from possibly melting the skins off of those children at some future date. These are good and noble things to bring children, especially the ones who have not been killed by melting their skin.

  • My point, which I thought uncontroversial, was that calling WP a chemical weapon is a misuse of a , like when people use the word ‘holocaust’ or ‘rape’ when talking about sports. WP is standard issue in any infantry kit, and is horrible, horrible stuff. But it is a far cry from having the destructive power of Sarin, VX or other chemical weapons. A pint of WP can destroy a house, a pint of Sarin can kill a village.

    We certainly should highlight the use of this horrible substance and lobby for its disuse, but not through hyperbole.

  • We would all do well to research the topic before we jump to conclusions on this one, I think. I skimmed Wikipedia for chemical weapons, myself. And I will stand by Buzz. WP is not a chemical weapon, not in the sense that we ban chemical weapons. Those weapons that we label chemical weapons and ban as such are poisonous and often outlast the battle they were used in, and end up having serious effects on civilians. We ban and denounce chemical weapons because their effects are indiscriminate as well as terrible. Historically, their deployment was VERY indiscriminant. WP is not that indiscriminant, not by far. Nor is is poisonous. It is an explosive, like dynamite. You don’t inhale it, you get hit with it. It’s about as indiscriminant as a grenade. And I don’t think we want to start telling our soldiers they can’t use those, do we?

    So in this case I have to actually agree with the White House line, and can understand why they said what they did before. WP is not a banned weapon, and probably shouldn’t be, certainly not under the classification of “chemical weapon”.

    And please, let’s not jump to name-calling. I take pride in the fact that the communities of people I associate with are tolerant of other viewpoints, and are capable of agreeing to disagree without labeling someone a troll. It’s something I’d like to think seperates us from the fascists in the White House, GOP, and GOP media. I, for one, am not a troll. I hang out here and agree with CB on a lot of points, and I hate Bush and the right-wing GOP leadership, as much as the rest of us. Attacking and punishing disagreement, that’s something Bush does, not us.

  • DrLaniac,

    I agree, I’d prefer we not melt the skin off of children, and while we’re at it I’d prefer that we not shoot the children with bullets, or blow off their limbs with grenades or other explosives. I’d prefer we not damage their access to clean potable water and nutritious unspoiled food. I’d also prefer that we not damage the homes that provide them with shelter from the elements.

    Of course the only way to prevent all these things is not to fight the war in the first place, and as I stated before, I’m not saying that I agree with the war.

    This post isn’t about agreeing with the administration about if the war is justified. This post is about if the administration lied about their use of chemical weapons in the war. On that topic, I’m not yet convinced that the administration is guilty of lying about their use of chemical weapons in this particular case.

    – Danny

  • All weapons are made of chemicals. White phosphorus is an incendiary device. It is meant to incinerate people. Chemical weapons are meant to poison people. I suppose I would rather be poisoned than incinerated, but regardless,we Democrats can only keep the high ground if we avoid resorting to ‘rhetorical deception’. So let’s stick to the facts so that our opponents cannot claim that everyone is lying. Besides, Americans will certainly abhor the use of incendiary devices in cities.

  • Y’know, by mere happenstance, having had a couple of plane rides recently, I picked up a book which has been gathering dust on my shelf for a while- We Were Soldiers Once… and Young. As this story has been happening, I have taken particular note of how many people quoted in the book make special mention when White Phosphorus was used, including incidents where it hit close enough to G.I.s to burn them.
    Reading in these passages, there were clearly times when W.P. was used directly as an offensive material against the enemy soldiers.
    Definitely not placing any blame here, but if we knew and actively used it as an offensive weapon in Vietnam, what’s going to be the excuse today?

  • All of the semantic debate – chemical or not, illegal or not, useful in some circumstances or not – is missing the point.

    Arkin hits the nail precisely on the head. Assume for the sake of argument WP is legal and useful. How we chose to use it in this case – at best in reckless disregard for civilian harms – is a sure loser in the “hearts and minds” category. This is no way to conduct ourselves, semantics be damned.

  • Buzz is right on all his points. And I happen to like the Carpetbagger community for its intelligence and general civility enough to say that the people who went after him were either ill-informed, trolls themselves, or too illiterate to read what he was writing. On any of those points, they weren’t living up to the standards I expect here.

    Back in Vietnam, we used Willie-Pete as a marker – the artillery forward observer would throw a grenade of it to mark where an airstrike or artillery strike was wanted. As far as I know, it wasn’t used intentionally against people (but in an up close and personal firefight anything could have been and would have been used. The fact the military in Iraq would use it intentionally against people seriously pisses me off and continues to prove that the military – which is, after all, representative of society – is going down the same rathole of barbarianism that 20 years of undeterred far right Republicanism has pushed the rest of the country.

  • Zeitgeist,

    I agree, we shouldn’t use tactics the result in unnecessary collateral damage. But this post and this controversy isn’t about whether the U.S. military caused unnecessary collateral damage, it’s about whether they used “chemical weapons” and whether the use of white phosphorous is proof that the White House administration lied about using “chemical weapons” when they said:

    “The United States categorically denies the use of chemical weapons at any time in Iraq”

    On that topic, I’m not yet convinced that the administration is guilty of lying about their use of chemical weapons in this particular case.

    – Danny

  • Geee, there we go again.

    White phosphorus is, like napalm, an incendiary weapon. Like napalm, it sticks to the skin and burns. And like most types of napalm and for that matter like most chemicals, it has a toxicity of its own if ingested, inhaled or held in prolonged dermal contact. But it is not a “chemical” weapon as normally understood. It is not used for its poisonous effects but its incendiary effects. See for instance this reference on nitramines, a class of chemical compounds that comprise most of the commonly used high explosives. Those things are meant to explode and kill and maim people by blast and shrapnel but when you ingest them or if they leach in the water tables, you can expect loads of trouble. So, yes, napalm and WP are nasty shits but other conventional weapons aren’t much better. Just go prowl the Web for trophy pics posted by soldiers in Iraq and you will find every degree of horror inflicted by good olde gun, grenades and so-called IED.

    I’m pissed at this controversy for 2 reasons:
    – It adds even more confusion to the meaning of WMD and that’s precisely what helped the Bush gang to smoke out American citizens by bundling together some vague suspicions of lab-bench cultures of rotavirus or camelpox with the threat of mass-produced Sarin, VX or nuclear weapons. Liberals cannot whine about Bush’s methods and then add to the confusion when it makes it suits their fancy.
    – It proceeds from the illusion that, provided we create enough rules, there can be clean humane wars that the progressively minded can support while keeping a clean conscience. THERE IS NO SUCH THING! War is dirty, no matter how you wage it. No matter what the rules are. War is about killing people and blowing things up. Nothing else. And if you believe otherwise, you should go visit the municipal morgue after a gang gunfight. Multiply by 100,000 and you have war. There are justified wars (Afghanistan) and there are unjustified wars (Iraq) but there are no good wars. So, if you support a war, any war, horror is what you have to deal with.

    My problem with the Iraq war is not that the US forces are using WP. If the guys on the ground believe it’s tactically appropriate, they should use it. And talking of much worse stuff, banned stuff, I would have been very happy if the boys had used VX against Al Qaeda’s fixed positions in Tora Bora, one of the rare cases where chemical weapons (the real ones) are efficient. Bin Laden and his followers would have died atrocious death and it would have been a good thing.

    By the way, oh morally torn amateurs of warfare rule-makers, why do you think CW were used in combat during WWI but not during WWII? Just out of the Nazis and Japs’ kind hearts? Here’s a hint : WWI was a war of fixed position. WWII was a war of movement. Why do you think nearly everybody, Western or Commie, agreed to ban those weapons? Here’s a hint: They don’t work in modern warfare. They don’t work in a war of movement. They suck arse against mobile units. That’s why they were banned. Because they had become just a useless annoyance in modern warfare. Not because they are immoral!

    My problem with the Iraq war is not WP. My problem is that this war should not be going on at all and that’s what matter. The WP controversy just make liberals look like weak-kneed hand-wringing doofus and it’s well-deserved in the light of this “controversy”.

  • Danny –

    I appreciate that distinction, but my view is in some ways like Fifi’s – although where Fifi argues that the bottom line is that “war in inhumane,” my bottom line is a little less ideological and more pragmatically political: the Bush Gang time and time and time again has wholly screwed up the implementation of this war (and, more broadly and importantly, the war on terrorism) from teh biggest of decisions by top generals, to the smallest implementation steps in the field.

    Rather than engaging the Rethugs on the definition of “chemical weapons,” a legalistic fight that they have a 50-50 chance of winning through pure obfuscation, why not add this as example 1,428 in the fight they cannot win (and one that conveniently avoids splitting the Dem party between those who voted for the war and those who did not): whether the war was right or wrong at the inception, these clowns have shot themselves – and us – in the foot more than they have shot any al Quieda leadership. They have shown absolute ineptitude – and in doing so, lack of concern for the lives of our sons and daughters or those of innocent Iraqi civilians – in the most important role the President has, that of Commander in Chief.

    Misuse of WP is only the latest example of exceedingly poor judgement, poor controls and discipline, and the lack of a broader strategy to save Iraq without destroying it, to extract our troops with honor and dignity, and to focus on eliminating real terrorist threats rather than inflaming more of them.

  • Zeitgeist,

    I agree with nearly everything you said, except “why not add this as example 1,428 in the fight they cannot win”.

    If Dems and the media continue to complain about the use of CW and the adminstration lying about it when it can be demonstrated that WP isn’t really a CW per se, then they’re helping to convince the public that maybe Bush and his supporters are right when they say Dems are trying to use “mis-information” and deception to attack Bush’s administration.

    The Bush republicans screw things up enough that Dems really shouldn’t need to resort to deception and misleading descriptions to convince the public of the administrations ineptitude. To do so will risk convincing more people that the many descriptions of the administration lying and law-breaking are based on deception in general.

    – Danny

  • As has been said before, WP is not, nor ever was, a chemical weapon in the sense of nerve gas, but is an incendiary. That being said, I’m having a hard time deciding why an incendiary weapon is somehow worse than any other form of conventional weapon. Yes, it can kill kids, but so can bullets. We should take great pains to avoid hitting civilians with whatever we use.

    We allow out soldiers to shoot the enemy, kill him with blast overpressure, cut him to ribbons with shrapnel, even stick a knife in his skull, but it’s not okay to burn them? I do not understand that.

  • “If on the other hand the toxic properties of white phosphorus, the caustic properties, are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because the way the Convention is structured or the way it is in fact applied, any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons.”

  • Even if it is a CW this is nasty, evil stuff. As I see it the point is that this is what war is about, not strutting around a flight deck in a flight suit.
    Anyone who causes a war is responsible for the hell that it is and better have powerful reasons to justify it. Bush’s twisting of the facts to start this war are absolutely NO justification for bringing about horrors like this – and that makes him an evil man.

  • I doubt the world, or even many Americans, will appreciate the legalistic and semantic wrangling going on here. Whether it violates some treaty somewhere or not, the WP story, along with Abu Ghraib, the administration’s advocacy of torture (though we’re certainly not doing it!), the secret prisons and flouting of the Geneva Conventions, make us look like barbarians to the rest of the world–friend and foe alike. Our once great nation now engenders contempt and disgust for the government’s lies and dissembling and casual atrocities. Let’s not forget that the battles in Iraq are usually in cities. Most people realize that that sterile term “collateral damage” means the death of innocent civilians. Discriminate or indiscriminate, in that sense, who the hell cares? Mohammed Atta may have deemed the people who died in the World Trade Center just collateral damage as he tried to deal an economic blow to the U.S. Can we only feel the horror of this approach when our own innocent citizens die? Shouldn’t there be lines we won’t step over in this already criminal misadventure?

  • Yes, there should be lines we don’t cross, but using WP is not one of them. Long term, chronic exposure to WP smoke leads to a condition known as Phossy Jaw. It was common among workers in matchstick factories back at the turn of the last century. It takes years to contract, and months to kill you. That’s simply too long a time frame for it to be useful as a battlefeild weapon. In fact, not a single person has ever been reported killed by WP smoke on the battlefeild.

    If you want to condem the war as a whole, fine, that’s a consistant position that makes sense. But to single out WP as an extra special atrocity by pointing to it as proof of US deployment of chemical weapons, you just don’t understand what this stuff really is. Our soldiers use it for smoke grenades- they deploy this stuff on thier own positions. How exactly would that be a good idea if this stuff’s smoke is so deadly?

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