Monday, October 23, 2006

Israel admits using phosphorus bombs during war in Lebanon


Somewhat related, I read an incredibly biased and bad commentary about a vote for Democrats being a vote against America this election and looked up who could write such an opinion. I discovered that he was an ex-military sergeant who had been previously quoted as an expert on right wing news sites denoucing photographic evidence on dead bodies that the United States had used phosphorus weapons in Iraq. He assured the readers that the photos showed no such thing but simply corpses a few days or weeks old. He assured credulous conservative readers that black shriveled skin and black burn like wounds were not a sign of phosphorus. If I might draw your attention to these words in this story:
Dr. Hussein Hamud al-Shel, who works at Dar al-Amal hospital in Ba'albek, said that he had received three corpses "entirely shriveled with black-green skin," a phenomenon characteristic of phosphorus injuries....

In November 2004 the U.S. Army used phosphorus munitions during an offensive in Faluja, Iraq. Burned bodies of civilians hit by the phosphorus munitions were shown by the press, and an international outcry against the practice followed.

Initially the U.S. denied that it had used phosphorus bombs against humans, but then acknowledged that during the assault targets that were neither civilian nor population concentrations were hit with such munitions.

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