EXCLUSIVE: US DEPARTMENT OF STATE FORCED TO CORRECT ITS OFFICIAL VERSION

After my last article BBC and Fallujah: War Crimes, Lies and Omertà, (November 09, 2005) the US Department of State changed its version. The following note was added the day after it was reported on The Cat's Blog (and published also by Global Research, Uruknet, US Labor Against the War, Global Echo and others) that a US military publication admitted the use of white phosphorous as a “versatile munition”:

[November 10, 2005 note: We have learned that some of the information we were provided in the above paragraph is incorrect. White phosphorous shells, which produce smoke, were used in Fallujah not for illumination but for screening purposes, i.e., obscuring troop movements and, according to an article, "The Fight for Fallujah," in the March-April 2005 issue of Field Artillery magazine, "as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes …." The article states that U.S. forces used white phosphorous rounds to flush out enemy fighters so that they could then be killed with high explosive rounds.]

However the correction of the State Department doesn't include interesting details from THE FIGHT FOR FALLUJAH (pdf) published on the Field Artillery magazine:

9. Munitions. The munitions we brought to this fight were 155-mm highexplosive (HE) M107 (short-range) and M795 (long-range) rounds, illumination and white phosphorous (WP, M110 and M825), with point-detonating (PD), delay, time and variable-time (VT) fuzes. (…) White Phosphorous. WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired “shake and bake” missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out. (…) We used improved WP for screening missions when HC smoke would have been more effective and saved our WP for lethal missions. (…)

To know about the “shake and bake” read my article BBC and Fallujah: War Crimes, Lies and Omertà