Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre is a documentary film by Sigfrido Ranucci and Maurizio Torrealta which first aired on Italy's RAI state television network on November 8, 2005.
The film's primary themes are: White phosphorus (WP) is a chemical smoke-producing agent, reacting quickly and spontaneously with air and causing an instant bank of smoke.
When it was used for producing matches, inhalation of the vapors caused a condition known as phossy jaw, where the bones of workers dissolved in their faces.
The primary theme of the film is its assertion of a case for war crimes committed by the United States in its military offensive against Fallujah in Iraq.
The film documents the use of weapons based on white phosphorus and other substances similar to napalm, such as Mark 77 bomb, by American forces.
[2][3] In the 1990s, the U.S. government condemned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for allegedly using "white phosphorus chemical weapons" against Kurdish rebels and residents of Irbil and Dohuk.
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 [high explosives (HE)].
The filmmakers interview US ex-military support Marine and antiwar activist Jeff Englehart of Colorado who discusses the American use of white phosphorus, nicknamed "Whiskey Pete" (pre-NATO US phonetic alphabet for "WP" – white phosphorus) by U.S. servicemembers, in built-up areas, and describes the Fallujah offensive as "just a massive killing of Arabs".
[4] Following pressure from former Labour MP Alice Mahon, the British Ministry of Defence confirmed the use of Mark 77 firebombs by US forces during the initial invasion of Iraq.
Dahr Jamail, an unembedded reporter who collected the testimony of refugees from Fallujah, spoke to a doctor who had "treated people who had their skin melted".
[6] The film alleges that Iraqi civilians, including women and children, had died of burns caused by white phosphorus during the Fallujah offensive as part of its campaign.
The US military responded by stating that they gave civilians several days of advance warning of the assault and urged them to evacuate the city.
They levelled thousands of buildings, illegally denied access to the Iraqi Red Crescent and, according to the UN's special rapporteur, used 'hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population'.
Still less was it evidence that a massacre of civilians had taken place in Falluja.The media couldn't have made a bigger pig's ear of the white phosphorus story.
It claimed that the corpses in the pictures it ran "showed strange injuries, some burnt to the bone, others with skin hanging from their flesh ...
Further, the crushing injuries from the overpressure can create air embolism within blood vessels, concussions, multiple internal haemorrhages in the liver and spleen, collapsed lungs, rupture of the eardrums and displacement of the eyes from their sockets."
[9] Nadim al-Hadid, spokesperson of Falluja Hospital declared: "In 2004 the Americans tested all kinds of chemicals and explosive devices on us: thermobaric weapons, white phosphorus, depleted uranium... we have all been laboratory mice for them".