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fallujah
Warnings as US and Russia Threaten to Deploy Depleted Uranium Weapons to Ukraine
"Look at Fallujah. Look at Yugoslavia. Long after the end of the Ukraine war, the use of depleted uranium will give Ukrainians cancer and birth defects for decades," said one journalist.
Jun 14, 2023
The Biden administration is expected to equip Ukrainian homeland defenders with armor-piercing depleted uranium munitions for their U.S.-supplied Abrams main battle tanks, The Wall Street Journalreported Tuesday, prompting Russian President Vladimir Putin to threaten to retaliate with DU rounds—which are linked to birth defects, miscarriages, and cancer.
Citing an unnamed senior Biden administration official, the Journal reported that "there appear to be no major obstacles to approving" the shipment of the highly controversial ammunition to Ukrainian forces as they launch a counteroffensive against Russian troops entrenched along a vast front in the eastern and southern regions of the country.
The new reporting comes four months after The Redacted's Dan Cohen reported the U.S. would send DU rounds to Ukraine.
In February, a top British defense official announced that the United Kingdom would supply Ukrainian forces with DU rounds, dismissing warnings from Moscow that the Russian government would regard the deployment of such weapons as an act of nuclear war.
\u201cThe US is planning to send depleted-uranium tank rounds to Ukraine\n\nThese are the extremely toxic weapons that led to a massive increase in cancer rates and birth defects in Iraq\n\nUkraine's economy relies heavily on agriculture. This could poison its land\nhttps://t.co/TJf4cqV3pf\u201d— Ben Norton (@Ben Norton) 1686671070
Reacting to news that the U.S. will likely supply Ukraine with DU munitions, Putin said Tuesday that "we have many such weapons, and if they use them, we will also reserve the right to use similar munitions," according to the state news agency TASS.
"There's nothing good about it, but, if need be, we can do it," he added. "We don't need to do it."
The Journal report prompted warnings from anti-war voices about the dangers of DU munitions.
"If you love Ukraine, if you care about Ukraine, depleted uranium is the last thing you would tell them to use," British journalist Richard Medhurst said on his video podcast Tuesday. "If you look at what the United States has done, everywhere they've used depleted uranium, it's like dropping a nuclear bomb."
\u201cLook at Fallujah\n\nLook at Yugoslavia\n\nLong after the end of the Ukraine war, the use of depleted uranium will give Ukrainians cancer and birth defects for decades.\u201d— Richard Medhurst (@Richard Medhurst) 1686707558
Medhurst added that in Fallujah, Iraq—where U.S. forces used DU rounds during two attempts to capture the city in 2004—"you have higher rates of birth defects and congenital heart disease... than you did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
DU rounds are highly effective at penetrating the armor of most modern tanks and armored fighting vehicles. The U.S. Abrams, British Challenger 2, and German Leopard 2 main battle tanks, along with U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicles that are being sent to Ukraine, can all fire DU munitions. The ammunition can also be fired from warplanes or field artillery.
However, exploding DU shells produce radioactive dust that contaminates soil, water, and air for many years after their use. U.S. Army training manuals caution that DU contamination "will make food and water unsafe for consumption" and require soldiers to wear protective clothing when in or near contaminated areas.
\u201cTheir depleted uranium vs. our depleted uranium\u201d— 38Parrots (@38Parrots) 1686732239
U.S. and allied forces used DU munitions during the 1991 and 2003-11 invasions of Iraq, and in Syria during the war against Islamic State militants. Miscarriages, birth defects, and cancers soared in Iraq after both wars.
According to one study, more than half of the babies born in Fallujah between 2007 and 2010 had birth defects. Among pregnant women in the study, over 45% experienced miscarriages in the two-year period following the battles for Fallujah. Geiger counter measurements of DU-contaminated sites in Iraqi cities have consistently shown radiation levels 1,000 to 1,900 times greater than normal.
The U.S.-led NATO coalition that waged the 1999 air war against Yugoslavia also used DU munitions, which experts believe are responsible for a surge in leukemia in the region, both among the local population and foreign troops deployed in the war zone.
Peace groups have long campaigned for a ban on DU munitions. Last September, the United Nations General Assembly approved an Indonesian draft resolution urging further research of the "health risks and environmental impact" of DU weapons and calling for a "cautionary approach" to their use.
The resolution was approved by 147 nations. The U.S., U.K., France, and Israel voted against the proposal.
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'Shameful': Critics Denounce US Warship Named 'Fallujah,' Site of Civilian Massacres in Iraq
"Some of the most heinous U.S. war crimes committed during the Iraq War took place in the city of Fallujah," said journalist Jeremy Scahill.
Dec 14, 2022
Peace advocates responded with disgust to the Navy's decision to name its new warship after the two battles of Fallujah, during which U.S. troops massacred Iraqi civilians.
"Fallujah was a giant American war crime in Iraq."
"The future America-class amphibious ship will be named the USS Fallujah, LHA-9," Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced Tuesday in a speech at Marine Barracks Washington, D.C. "The future USS Fallujah will commemorate the first and second battles of Fallujah, American-led offenses during the Iraq War."
Del Toro called it "an honor for me, and for our nation, to memorialize the Marines, the soldiers, and coalition forces that fought valiantly and those that sacrificed their lives during both battles of Fallujah."
U.S. troops slaughtered approximately 600 Iraqi civilians--including more than 300 women and children--along with 200 insurgents during the First Battle of Fallujah. Code-named Operation Vigilant Resolve, the battle was launched in April 2004 to avenge the deaths of four Blackwater contractors. Twenty-seven U.S. soldiers were killed during the retaliatory siege.
The Second Battle of Fallujah, known as Operation Phantom Fury, was fought from November to December 2004 to recapture the city from insurgent forces. In the process, U.S.-led occupation forces killed between 581 and 670 civilians across nine neighborhoods, according to Iraq Body Count.
"With over 100 coalition forces killed and 600 wounded, Operation Phantom Fury is considered to be the bloodiest engagement to the Iraq War and the fiercest serving combat involving U.S. Marines since the Vietnam War's battle of Hue City," said Del Toro. "This namesake deserves to be in the pantheon of iconic Marine Corps battles, and the LHA's unique capabilities will serve as a stark reminder to everyone around the world of the bravery, the courage, and commitment to freedom displayed by those who fought in those battles."
\u201cJaw. Floor. https://t.co/JqG8XMdeuL\u201d— Peter Maass (@Peter Maass) 1670986155
Critics called the Navy's commemoration of the battles of Fallujah "shameful."
\u201cThis is shameful. Fallujah was a giant American war crime in Iraq. Massively excessive force was used to punish an entire city, in two brutal waves, for the lynching of 4 mercenaries.\nhttps://t.co/nP6JzblvjT\u201d— Mark Gubrud (@Mark Gubrud) 1670974963
"Some of the most heinous U.S. war crimes committed during the Iraq War took place in the city of Fallujah," The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill, who reported from Iraq during the U.S. invasion, wrote Wednesday on social media.
In a 2007 appearance on the Bill Moyers show, Scahill described the siege of Fallujah as "one of the most brutal and sustained U.S. operations of the occupation," telling Moyers that the Pentagon's murderous response to the killing of Blackwater contractors set a dangerous precedent.
In 2016, journalist Hope Hodge Seck wrote about what she called "the whisper campaign for a USS Fallujah."
"At the time, it seemed unlikely to ever happen," she tweeted Tuesday. "But now it has."
Construction on the 45,000 metric-ton vessel, the first U.S. warship named after a post-9/11 battle, is set to begin this month at the Mississippi-based Ingalls Shipbuilding, which secured a $2.4 billion contract in October.
Civilians in Fallujah, meanwhile, continue to suffer from a sharp rise in birth defects that has occurred in the wake of the 2003 invasion.
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Escalating US Air Strikes Kill Hundreds of Civilians in Mosul, Iraq
May 01, 2016
USA Today revealed on April 19th that U.S. air forces have been operating under looser rules of engagement in Iraq and Syria since last fall. The war commander, Lt Gen McFarland, now orders air strikes that are expected to kill up to 10 civilians without prior approval from U.S. Central Command, and U.S. officials acknowledge that air strikes are killing more civilians under the new rules.
U.S. officials previously claimed that air strikes in Iraq and Syria had killed as few as 26 civilians. A senior Pentagon official who is briefed daily on the air war told USA Today that was unrealistic, since air strikes that have destroyed 6,000 buildings with over 40,000 bombs and missiles have inevitably killed much higher numbers of civilians.
As the U.S. escalates its air strikes on Mosul, the largest city occupied by Islamic State, reports of hundreds of civilians killed by air strikes reveal some of the human costs of the U.S. air war and the new rules of engagement.
Award-winning Iraqi environmental scientist and Mosul native Souad Al-Azzawi (Ph.D. Colorado School of Mines) has compiled a partial list of air strikes that have killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure from reports by Mosul Eye, Nineveh Reporters Network, Al Maalomah News Network, other Iraqi media and contacts in Mosul:
- Many government buildings have been destroyed. As U.S. officials told USA Today, attacks are often conducted at night to minimize civilian casualties, but they have killed security guards and civilians in neighboring buildings.
- Telephone exchanges have been systematically bombed and destroyed.
- Two large dairies were bombed, killing about 100 civilians and wounding 200 more.
- Multiple daytime air strikes on Mosul University on March 19th and 20th killed 92 civilians and wounded 135, mostly faculty, staff, families and students. Targets included the main administration building, classroom buildings, a women's dormitory and a faculty apartment building.
- 50 civilians were killed and 100 wounded by air strikes on 2 apartment buildings, Al Hadbaa and Al Khadraa.
- A mother and 4 children were killed in an air strike on a house in the Hay al Dhubat district of East Mosul on April 20th, next door to a house used by Islamic State that was undamaged.
- 22 civilians were killed in air strikes on houses in front of Mosul Medical College.
- 20 civilians were killed and 70 wounded by air strikes on the Sunni Waqif building and nearby houses and shops.
- U.S. air strikes on April 24th damaged the Rashidiya water treatment plant in West Mosul and the Yarmouk power station in East Mosul.
- The Central Bank of Mosul in Ghazi Street and several branches of Rafidain and Rasheed banks were bombed, with heavy civilian casualties, despite all cash reportedly being removed after the first bank was struck.
- Three workers were killed and 12 wounded in an air strike on the former Pepsi bottling plant.
- An air strike on a fuel depot in an industrial area ignited an inferno with 150 casualties on April 18th.
- Bombs have damaged a food warehouse, power stations and sub-stations in West Mosul, and flour mills, a pharmaceutical factory, auto repair shops and other workshops across Mosul.
- The Al Hurairah Bridge was destroyed by air strikes.
At the very least, U.S. air strikes have killed hundreds of civilians in Mosul and destroyed much of the civilian infrastructure that people depend on for their lives in already dire conditions. And yet by all accounts, this is only the beginning of the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to retake Mosul. One and one-half million civilians are trapped in the city, 30 times the UN's estimate of the number of civilians in Fallujah before the November 2004 assault that killed 4,000 to 6,000 people, mostly civilians. Meanwhile ISIL prevents civilians from evacuating the city, believing that their presence protects its forces from even heavier bombardment.
International humanitarian law strictly prohibits military attacks on civilians, civilian areas and civilian infrastructure. The presence of several thousand ISIL militants in a city of 1.5 million people does not justify indiscriminate bombing or attacks on civilian targets. As the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq warned U.S. officials in a Human Rights Report in 2007, "The presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian nature of an area." UNICEF protested the bombing of a water treatment plant in Syria last December as "a particularly alarming example" of how "the rules of war, including those meant to protect vital civilian infrastructure, continue to be broken on a daily basis."
The fundamental contradiction of the militarized "war on terror" has always been that U.S. aggression and other war crimes only reinforce the narratives of jihadis who see themselves as a bulwark against foreign aggression and neocolonialism in the Muslim world. Meanwhile U.S. wars and covert operations against secular enemies like Hussein, Gaddafi and Assad create new zones of chaos where jihadis can thrive.
President Obama has acknowledged publicly that there is therefore "no military solution" to jihadism. But successive U.S. administrations have proven unable to resist the lure of military escalation at each new stage of this crisis, unleashing wars that have killed about two million people, plunged a dozen countries into chaos and exploded Wahhabi jihadism from its original safe havens in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan to countries across the world.
If the U.S. and its Iraqi allies follow through with their threatened assault on Mosul, the resulting massacre will join Fallujah, Guantanamo and U.S. drone wars as a powerful catalyst for the next mutation of Wahhabi jihadism, which is likely to be more globalized and unified.
But although Al Qaeda and Islamic State have proven adept at manipulating U.S. leaders into ever-escalating cycles of violence, the jihadis cannot directly order American pilots to bomb civilians. Only our leaders can do that, making them morally and legally responsible for these crimes, just as Islamic State's leaders are responsible for theirs.
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