09 February 2018

General Jim Molan, Liberal senator

The Australian on July 19 published an edited extract of General Jim Molan's  Running the War in Iraq, Harper Collins AU, 2008.

According to Chris Doran in ON Line Opinion 4 August 2008, General Molan’s excerpt ... suggests that the attack on Fallujah, codenamed Operation Fury, was little more than a few surgical missile strikes which unfortunately and only occasionally resulted in civilian deaths.

Further, Doran writes, (General Molan)  omits

  • 'the fact that an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 civilians still remained in Fallujah when the attack began. Citizens had been instructed to evacuate the city, population 250,000, before bombing began in October 2004, but any and all men aged 15 to 45 were prohibited from leaving.
  • ...  the now irrefutable evidence that chemical weapons, specifically white phosphorous, were used under his command on Fallujah. Irrefutable because US Colonel Barry Venable admitted it to the UK’s Independent newspaper a year later.
  • that 'In a November 2005 editorial denouncing its use, the New York Times described white phosphorous: “Packed into an artillery shell, it explodes over a battlefield in a white glare that can illuminate an enemy's positions. It also rains balls of flaming chemicals, which cling to anything they touch and burn until their oxygen supply is cut off. They can burn for hours inside a human body.'


Is General Molan a fit person to sit in the Australian senate?

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