Refugees continue to report the use of white phosphorous weapons - of seeing dead bodies with no bullet holes in them, just scorched patches of skin. A leading campaign group has demanded an urgent inquiry into a report that U.S. troops indiscriminately used a controversial incendiary weapon during the battle for Fallujah. Photographic evidence gathered from the aftermath of the battle suggests that women and children were killed by horrific burns caused by the white phosphorus shells dropped by U.S. forces.
The Pentagon has always admitted it used phosphorus during last year's assault on the city, which U.S. commanders said was an insurgent stronghold. But they claimed they used the brightly burning shells "very sparingly" and only to illuminate combat areas. A top United Nations human rights official has called for an investigation of alleged abuses in Fallujah including disproportionate use of force and the targeting of civilians.
The U.S. has declared "mission accomplished" in Fallujah, with the U.S. military claiming to have killed over 1,000 people in the week long assault. "They are dying of starvation and a lack of water, especially the children," a Red Crescent spokeswoman said. The wars and atrocities the United States has perpetrated and the weapons it has developed are simply horrendous.
The United States has been an agent of death and destruction in many third world nations, almost always leaving them in far worse shape than it found them. So the United States is no paragon of virtue, but the funny thing is that most Americans don't realize it, or if they do, then they don't generally care much about it. They maintain a mental image of the United States as the righteous, the virtuous, spreading peace and democracy everywhere it goes, and they quickly forget the horrors it spreads.
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Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
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