press releases
No Use of Chemical Weapons in Fallujah in 2004
Athens (November 9, 2005) - On November 8, an Italian television documentary falsely claimed that U.S. forces had used chemical weapons during anti-insurgent operations in Fallujah, Iraq in November 2004. U.S. forces participating in the Operation Iraqi Freedom coalition continue to use the full array of lawful, conventional weapons against legitimate targets. To suggest that U.S. forces use Napalm and white phosphorous as chemical weapons or as surrogates is to ignore the facts:
- The U.S. destroyed its last remaining stocks of Napalm in 2001. We do maintain an incendiary firebomb, the Mk 77 Mod 5. The Mk 77 firebomb is not Napalm. Firebombs are not outlawed or illegal.
- U.S. forces did not use Mk 77 firebombs during Operation Al Fajr. The only instance of Mk 77 use during Operation Iraqi Freedom occurred in March/April 2003 when U.S. Marines employed several bombs against legitimate military targets.
- White phosphorous is simply another conventional munition--it is not a chemical weapon. White phosphorus munitions are not outlawed or illegal. U.S. forces primarily use them as obscurants, i.e., smoke screens, or for target marking.
Suggestions that U.S. forces targeted civilians with these weapons are simply wrong.
- Coalition Forces have not targeted the Iraqi civilian population during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Forces go to extreme lengths to ensure that everything possible is done to avoid putting civilians and noncombatants in harms way during our operations.
- The loss of any innocent life is a tragedy, something Iraqi security forces and Coalition Forces painstakingly work to avoid every single day. Former regime elements, terrorists and insurgents have made a practice of deliberately targeting noncombatants; of using civilians as human shields; and of operating and conducting attacks against coalition forces from within areas inhabited by civilians.