White Phosphorus, a California Embed, and 'The Times'

By: Greg Mitchell It was good to see a New York Times editorial today taking a strong stand against our military's use of the horrific incendiary weapon, white phosphorus, in Iraq, especially since a prominent news story in the paper last week emphasized official doubts about the growing controversy. Meanwhile, Darrin Mortenson, the embedded reporter from California whose first-person account of witnessing its use against insurgents in Iraq contributed to the international outrage, tells me, "We didn't give white phosphorus a second thought out there."

It all began with a documentary by an Italian TV network earlier this autumn charging that the U.S. was using a napalm-like incendiary, white phosphorus, against insurgents and possibly civilians in Iraq. Witnesses in Fallujah testified, and film clips allegedly showed bodies that had been burned to the bone. While shamefully ignored in America, the allegations -- some of them unsubstantiated -- drew massive interest in Europe and much of the rest of the world.

White phosphorus, known to soldiers as "Willie Pete" all the way back to Vietnam and meant to be used only for illumination, is not banned by international treaties -- but its use against civilians is. Some journalists who covered the story noted the irony of the U.S. using "chemical weapons" in Saddam-free Iraq. The Pentagon
"categorically" denied using the weapon against insurgents, and claimed that technically they were not chemical but merely incendiary, if that.

Then the story for the U.S. got worse. Dozens of reporters and bloggers abroad found, then cited, a dispatch written by Darrin Mortenson for his newspaper, The North County (Calif.) Times, in April 2004. Embedded with Marines, he had covered the first, unsuccessful U.S. assault on Fallujah. In that article he offered a graphic eyewitness account of Marines firing Willie Pete at insurgents hiding in a palm grove and adjacent buildings as part of a "shake and bake" operation. He confirmed the account in a new interview with the BBC.

A few days later, the Pentagon backtracked and admitted our forces do use the weapon against people, but only enemy insurgents. A spokesman called the incendiary just another part of "our conventional weapons inventory."

Mortenson tells me that he never witnessed "Willie Pete" used against civilians in the attack he witnessed, but adds, "I assume it was used elsewhere against insurgents since they now say it was indeed a weapon in the arsenal."

Yet the Times article on Nov. 21 treated the rising concerns about the use of the weapon as mainly a "public relations" issue. It quoted at the outset the weapons expert, John Pike, claiming that the complaints have "discredited the American military without any basis in fact. ... The story most people around the world have is that the Americans are up to their old tricks -- committing atrocities and lying about it. And that's completely incorrect."

But the Times editorial today would have none of that, counting the ways "the conduct of the war in Iraq has damaged America's image and needlessly endangered the lives of those in the military.

"Now the use of a ghastly weapon called white phosphorus has raised questions about how careful the military has been in avoiding civilian casualties. It has also further tarnished America's credibility on international treaties and the rules of warfare. ...

"The United States restricted the use of incendiaries like white phosphorus after Vietnam, and in 1983, an international convention banned its use against civilians. In fact, one of the many crimes ascribed to Saddam Hussein was dropping white phosphorus on Kurdish rebels and civilians in 1991. ...

"The Pentagon says white phosphorus was never aimed at civilians, but there are lingering reports of civilian victims. The military can't say whether the reports are true and does not intend to investigate them, a decision we find difficult to comprehend. Pentagon spokesmen say the Army took 'extraordinary measures' to reduce civilian casualties, but they cannot say what those measures were.

"They also say that using white phosphorus against military targets is legal. That's true, but the 1983 convention bans its use against 'civilians or civilian objects,' which would make white phosphorus attacks in urban settings like Falluja highly inappropriate at best. The United States signed that convention, but the portion dealing with incendiary weapons has been awaiting ratification in the Senate.

"These are technicalities, in any case. Iraq, where winning over wary civilians is as critical as defeating armed insurgents, is no place to be using a weapon like this. More broadly, American demands for counterproliferation efforts and international arms control ring a bit hollow when the United States refuses to give up white phosphorus, not to mention cluster bombs and land mines.

"The United States should be leading the world, not dragging its feet, when it comes to this sort of issue -- because it's right and because all of us, including Americans, are safer in a world in which certain forms of conduct are regarded as too inhumane even for war. That is why torture should be banned in American prisons. And it is why the United States should stop using white phosphorus."

Or as Darrin Mortenson tells me, "It's a gut thing on whether a weapon is beyond the pale." Clearly white phosphorus does not pass the gut test.

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NEXT: Part II -- Darrin Mortenson, three-time embed.