Global Research

This carefully researched article by Dirk Andriensens was first  published on on November 13, 2005

“Injuries to everyone involved in war – civilians and troops of all sides – shown supreme contempt for international humanitarian law ever since WW2. If this war shows one thing it is the need for the World to start to get control over the barbarity of the US military industrial complex. Criticisms of Saddam Hussein’s record of atrocities fade into history as they are eclipsed by the industrialised killing that US Forces have spent billions of dollars perfecting.”  (Dai Williams, April 06 2003)

The war on Iraq is an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. Many health workers, professionals and students the world over added their voices to the massive protest movement. They were of the opinion that, apart from providing health services, their task also includes the prevention of diseases, injuries, and death because of this unjust war.

Despite the global protests, war was unleashed on Iraq. The Belgian NGOs Medical Aid for the Third World (MATW) www.m3m.be in cooperation with S.O.S. Iraq ( www.irak.be ) had a Medical Team of two doctors in Baghdad, Dr. Geert Van Moorter and Dr. Colette Moulaert. They remained in Iraq during the bombings and the invasion to witness the American and British aggression. They coordinated with the Ministry of Health, the Iraqi Red Crescent and international institutions including the World Health Organization and Unicef.

Their report from April 3 2003, that I copied underneath, described the use of some terrible weapons used by the US forces. I sent this report at the time to Dai Williams, weapons expert, to analyze the descriptions given by Dr. Geert Van Moorter.

Dai Williams’ answer, also copied underneath, includes a report from BBC reporter Adam Mynot (5 April 2003), who described civilian casualties with severe burns near Nasiriyah. “The Phosphorus turned the inside of his house white hot”. Even Dai Williams couldn’t believe then that White Phosphorus was used against civilians. But now we know the US aggressors DID use it.

The use of Napalm was reported by Martin Savidge from CNN as early as March 22 2003, so there’s no need to be surprised. ( http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/21/otsc.irq.savidge/ ):

“There is a lookout there, a hill referred to as Safwan Hill, on the Iraqi side of the border. It was filled with Iraqi intelligence gathering. From that vantage point, they could look out over all of northern Kuwait.

It is now estimated the hill was hit so badly by missiles, artillery and by the Air Force, that they shaved a couple of feet off it. And anything that was up there that was left after all the explosions was then hit with napalm. And that pretty much put an end to any Iraqi operations up on that hill.”

The United Nations banned the use of napalm against civilians in 1980 after pictures of a naked wounded girl in Vietnam shocked the world. The United States, which didn’t endorse the convention, is the only nation in the world still using napalm.

Here’s the story.

Diary from Baghdad, April 3, 20 O’clock: Dr. Geert Van Moorter through satellite telephone

About the horrors of war, 100 km south of Baghdad

Dr. Bert de Belder (coordinator of Medical Aid For The Third World)

“I have two awful stories to tell”, Geert immediately starts when I get him on the line. “Today we drove to Hilla, a small town near Babylon that was heavily bombed yesterday. One poor district was hit by 20 to 25 bombs. The hospital of Hilla received in the next half an hour 150 seriously injured patients. Dr. Mahmoud Al-Mukhtar said that the wounds were caused by clusterbombs. These are bombs that explode into many small bombs that again explode individually and cause enormous damage. Clusterbombs are banned by the International Laws on War, but Bush completely disregards these! In the hospital I have seen very many abrading situations. A family of eleven persons, of whom six are dead… A father who is left with one child; his wife and two sons are dead… Small children with amputated limbs…”

“My second story is even more horrible”, warns Geert. “About a bus with civilians that was fired upon. Not the one in Najaf, which reached the news everywhere, but a case that according to me has not yet been covered by western media. Three days ago, In Al Sqifal, near Hilla, a passenger bus was fired upon from an American checkpoint, with ghastly results. According to witnesses the bus stopped on time and had, on orders of the American Military, turned back. Dr. Saad El-Fadoui, a 52 years old surgeon who still has studied in Scotland, was immediately on the place of incident from the hospital in Hilla. When he told me what he had seen there, he again became very emotional, three days after it had happened. ‘The bodies were al carbonized, terribly mutilated, torn into pieces, he sighs. ‘In and around the bus I saw dismembered heads, brains and intestines….’ One wonders what a criminal weapon of mass destruction could have caused these horrors. Nobody had heard the sound of an explosion; on the bodies no traces of shrapnel were found. A journalist spoke of a heat-weapon with liquid cupper or something like that… Can the Americans be really that cruel? Dr. Saad El-Fadoui asked us repeatedly to do everything to help stop this horrible war of aggression.

Geert understands me poorly when I say something, the line is not always clear. “We are momentarily without electricity”, he explains. “Large blocks in Baghdad are without electricity, last night the bombardment was very severe”. Colette (Geert’s college-doctor Dr. Collete Moulaert) saw from her hotel room, just behind the mosque in this neighborhood, two enormous fireballs coming down. I think that these are containerbombs of about 7-8 tons each that cause enormous vibrations. “I am shivering of the cold”, Collete said, but this was the vibration caused by the bomb explosion.

“You should not believe verything what CNN and BBC are showing”, Geert informs us. “That we were able to travel today up to Hilla (near Babylon, south of Kerbala) with a large group ‘human shields’, 100 km south-west of Baghdad, proves convincingly that the Iraqi capital is not being completely surrounded and besieged. Along the way we hardly saw Iraqi troop movements. On the 100 km route we didn’t pass any Iraqi checkpoint, and hardly saw signs of war. There were groups of scattered houses, trees, even children playing with paper kites… One time we were told to take a side road because a colon of 20 to 30 Iraqi tanks had to pass. This again disproves the charges that the Iraqi army is using civilians as shield for military operations: our civilian vehicle was first sent safely to another road before the Iraqi army passed. On our way back the Americans and British were bombing the area. For our safety we had to take a new another road, but this was also nearly hit by a bomb, followed by a tick plume of smoke. This was frightening for a while, because we were not safely in our hotel, but in the open air.

http://www.irak.be/ned/missies/medicalMissionColetteGeert/report_04_04_2003.htm

And here is Dai Williams‘ evaluation (06 April 2003) of the weaponry used. His recommendations for the international community still stand today.

(…) Please can you ask the Pentagon to explain why and how many Daisy cutters, fragmentation bombs and suspected uranium weapons it has used in the last week in the region around now in the outskirts of Baghdad? And please can you ask the UK Government whether it condones the use of Daisy cutters in populated areas with large numbers of civilians?

I have been investigating US guided weapons as an independent researcher for 2 years. My primary concern are the 23 suspected uranium weapon systems. But my investigations include similar weapons like thermobaric bombs, daisy cutters etc.

Full weapons identification requires inspection on site by trained and independent weapons analysts. This must be a high priority for the UN. Ex-military personnel, HALO or similar demining organisations may help. Serving military personnel will simply lie about more advanced, prototype or illegal weapons.

Less trained observers can partly narrow down suspected weapon systems from descriptions of their explosions and from injuries on victims.

The following reports were received yesterday from two Belgian Doctors in Baghdad.

Partial answers to their questions are as follows:

[INCIDENT 1 ] “I have two awful stories to tell”, Geert immediately starts when I get him on the line. “Today we drove to Hilla, a small town near Babylon that was heavily bombed yesterday. One poor district was hit by 20 to 25 bombs. The hospital of Hilla received in the next half an hour 150 seriously injured patients. Dr. Mahmoud Al-Mukhtar said that the wounds were caused by clusterbombs. These are bombs that explode into many small bombs that again explode individually and cause enormous damage.
Clusterbombs are banned by the International Laws on War, but Bush completely disregards these! In the hospital I have seen very many abrading situations. A family of eleven persons, of whom six are dead. A father who is left with one child; his wife and two sons are dead. Small children with amputated limbs.”

Incident 1:
is a clusterbomb description. These are already recognised as weapons of indiscriminate effect by the media.

[INCIDENT 2 ] “My second story is even more horrible”, warns Geert. “About a bus with civilians that was fired upon. Not the one in Najaf, which reached the news everywhere, but a case that according to me has not yet been covered by western media. Three days ago, In Al Sqifal, near Hilla, a passenger bus was fired upon from an American checkpoint, with ghastly results. According to witnesses the bus stopped on time and had, on orders of the American Military, turned back. Dr. Saad El-Fadoui, a 52 years old surgeon who still has studied in Scotland, was immediately on the place of incident from the hospital in Hilla. When he told me what he had seen there, he again became very emotional, three days after it had happened. ‘The bodies were al carbonized, terribly mutilated, torn into pieces, he sighs. ‘In and around the bus I saw dismembered heads, brains and intestines…’ One wonders what a criminal weapon of massdestruction could have caused these horrors. Nobody had heard the sound of an explosion; on the bodies no traces of shrapnel were found. A journalist spoke of a heat-weapon with liquid cupper or something like that.. Can the Americans be really that cruel? Dr. Saad El-Fadoui asked us repeatedly to do everything to help stop this horrible war of aggression.

Incident 2:

3 April, Al Sqifal, near Hilla ‘The bodies were al carbonized, terribly mutilated, torn into pieces… One wonders what a criminal weapon of massdestruction could have caused these horrors. Nobody had heard the sound of an explosion; on the bodies no traces of shrapnel were found. A journalist spoke of a heat-weapon with liquid cupper or something like that…

The reference to a heat weapon with liquid copper sounds like a misquote of someone describing an anti tank weapon with a shaped charge warhead. (HEAT also stands for High Explosive AntiTank weapons).

Shaped charge warheads use a focussed explosive blast with a copper (or uranium) core that is melted by the blast and travels at very high velocity to cut through armour plating. “Heat” in the context may also be describing the obvious effects of an incendiary weapon.

If the weapon was fired from the check point (ground to ground) it must have been an anti-tank missile e.g. JAVELIN which uses a tandem shaped charge warhead. Recently purchased by UK forces I question whether JAVELIN warheads use a depleted uranium core like the prototype that DERA and the MOD made and tested in 1999 (refer MOD website). This would produce a far higher temperature (5000 degrees) blast than copper and may account for the characteristic severe burns on victims. “Carbonisation” was typical of uranium weapon victims on the highway of death in 1991.

Shaped charge weapons do not create shrapnel – they work by projecting a lance of burning molten metal, almost a plasma, into the target.

Similar effects would have been caused by the larger Hellfire or Maverick missiles though these are fired by planes or helicopters, not referred to in this report.

QUESTION: What weapon was used by US forces in this incident? Did it contain a Uranium warhead?

[INCIDENT 3] Geert understands me poorly when I say something, the line is not always clear. “We are momentarily without electricity”, he explains. “Large blocks in Baghdad are without electricity, last night the bombardment was very severe. Colette
(Geert’s collegue-doctor Dr. Collette Moulaert) saw from her hotel room, just behind the mosque in this neighbourhood, two enormous fireballs coming down. I think that these are containerbombs of about 7-8 tons each that cause enormous vibrations. “I am shivering of the cold”, Collette said, but this was the vibration caused by the bomb explosion.

Incident 3:
“Colette saw from her hotel room, just behind the mosque in this neighbourhood, two enormous fireballs coming down.”
The only weapons that match this description are the BLU-82 Daisy Cutter bombs. Developed in Vietnam for clearing jungle into runways they created immense pressure (1000 lbs / sq inch) over a large area – lethal from 300 to 900 metres.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-82.htm

They literally mash and burn any human beings under the blast area causing extensive internal injuries, severe burns but no shrapnel wounds from the high pressure blast. Rather like high-blast napalm in effect but the bombs are 10-20 times larger.

The two doctors providing these reports are in Baghdad. Dirk Adriaensens, coordinator of SOS Iraq, their contact in Belgium, is on [email protected] .

Dr Bert De Belder, coordinator of Medical Aid for the Third World, can be reached at [email protected]

Incident 4
– is from a separate report from BBC reporter Adam Mynot yesterday (5 April) described civilian casualties with severe burns near Nasiriyah. “The Phosphorus turned the inside of his house white hot”. This is the first reference I have heard to Phosphorus weapons in the current war.

A more likely alternative may have been a guided bomb with a uranium warhead e.g. GBU 31 or 32 (for increased penetration and incendiary effects). UK researchers located US patents for upgrading the 2000 lb BLU-109/B hard target warhead (used in the GBU-15, 24, 27 and 31 guided bombs) with a choice of tungsten or depleted uranium. See Appendix 2 of my summary “Hazards of Uranium weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq”, October 2002 at http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/u23.htm and extracts
at http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/pdfs/USpats.pdf

These mini (just under 1 ton) bunker busters were used extensively in the earlier Baghdad bombing. The explosions with intense fireballs at ground level and incandescent metal in their explosion plumes are highly suspected of using uranium warheads.

The existence and use of guided bombs and missiles with uranium warheads is vigorously denied by the UK MOD saying that the Pentagon have assured them that such weapons don’t exist. I don’t trust either statement. In addition to causing horrific burns on casualties near the fireball such weapons are likely to be causing hundreds, possibly up to 1500, tons of uranium oxide contamination in target regions of Iraq, especially in and around Baghdad.

It is really important that media reports question what kinds of weapons are being used by US (and UK) forces – especially when large numbers of casualties or fatalities are seen with unusual injuries e.g. the fire and blast effects described in the incidents above.

The civilian casualties cause most obvious outrage. But there are very few questions about, or reports of, the forms of mutilation and death inflicted on Iraqi troops. It is customary in times of war to demonise the enemy. But much of the Iraqi army are conscripts..

Injuries to everyone involved in war – civilians and troops of all sides – are very serious issues. After World War 2 there was sufficient horror for consensus about the Geneva Conventions. The US Military and arms industry have shown supreme contempt for international humanitarian law ever since WW2.

If this war shows one thing it is the need for the World to start to get control over the barbarity of the US military industrial context. Criticisms of Saddam Hussein’s record of atrocities fade into history as they are eclipsed by the industrialised killing that US Forces have spent billions of dollars perfecting.

A new War Crimes Tribunal will be needed in Iraq as soon as hostilities cease – to inspect the targets and casualties of US weapon systems throughout Iraq. This will of course require a dramatic awakening of the UK Government and Conservative Opposition from the “war-trance” spell cast on them by Pentagon propaganda.

There will be one mighty reckoning to follow soon for the US and UK Governments (if and) when independent international observers are allowed into Iraq.

Dai Williams Woking, Surrey
Dr Bert De Belder, coordinator of Medical Aid for the Third World, can be reached at [email protected]
01483-222017 07808-502785

http://www.irak.be/ned/missies/medicalMissionColetteGeert/weaponsUS.htm

It’s time for the World community to wake up and charge the US with war crimes.

Dirk Adriaensens.Dirk is coordinator , Executive committee BRussells Tribunal