Horrifying US Secret
Weapon Unleashed In Baghdad
Exclusive By Bill Dash
c. 2003 All Rights Reserved
8-25-03
- A nightmarish US super weapon
reportedly was employed by American ground forces during
chaotic street fighting in Baghdad. The secret tank-mounted
weapon was witnessed in all its frightening power by Majid
al-Ghazali, a seasoned Iraqi infantryman who described the
device and its gruesome effects as unlike anything he had
ever encountered in his lengthy military service. The
disturbing revelation is yet another piece of cinematic
evidence brought back from postwar Iraq by intrepid
filmmaker Patrick Dillon.
-
- In the film, al-Ghazali, whose
english is less than fluent, describes the weapon as
reminiscent of a flame thrower, only immensely more
powerful. It is unclear what principle the weapon is based
on. Searching for a description, al-Ghazali said it appeared
to be shooting concentrated lightning bolts rather than just
ordinary flames. Drawing on his many years as a professional
engineer, al-Ghazali speculates that radiation of some kind
probably figures into the weapon's hideous capabilities.
Like all men in Saddam's Iraq, al-Ghazali was compelled to
serve in the Iraqi equivalent of the Army National Guard and
fought in three wars over the past thirty-odd years. Via
email, he told me he has seen virtually every type of
conventional weapon employed in battle, and is well
acquainted with their effects on people and machines, but
nothing in his extensive combat experience prepared him for
the shock of what he saw in Baghdad on April 12th.
-
- On that date, al-Ghazali and
his family sheltered in their house as a fierce street
battle erupted in his neighborhood. In the midst of the
fighting, he noticed that the Americans had called up an
oddly configured tank. Then to his amazement the tank
suddenly let loose a blinding stream of what seemed like
fire and lightning, engulfing a large passenger bus and
three automobiles. Within seconds the bus had become
semi-molten, sagging "like a wet rag" as he put
it. He said the bus rapidly melted under this withering
blast, shrinking until it was a twisted blob about the
dimensions of a VW bug. As if that were not bizarre enough,
al-Ghazali explicitly describes seeing numerous human bodies
shriveled to the size of newborn babies. By the time local
street fighting ended that day, he estimates between 500 and
600 soldiers and civilians had been cooked alive as a result
of the mysterious tank-mounted device.
-
- In a city littered everywhere
with burned-out civilian and military vehicles, US forces
were abnormally scrupulous about immediately detailing
bulldozers and shovel crews to the job of burying the grim
wreckage. Nevertheless, telltale remnants remained as Dillon
found when al-Ghazali later took him to the site. Dillon
said they easily uncovered large puddles of resolidified
metal and mounds of weird fibrous material that, al-Ghazali
explained, were all that remained of the vehicles' tires.
Dillon, who accumulated plenty of battlefield experience as
a medic in Viet-Nam, and has since covered a number of wars
from Somalia to Kosovo, told me that he has witnessed every
kind of conventional ordnance that can be used on humans and
vehicles. " I've seen a freaking smorgasbord of
destruction in my life," he said, "flame-throwers,
napalm, white phosphorous, thermite, you name it. I know of
nothing short of an H-bomb that conceivably might cause a
bus to instantly liquefy or that can flash broil a human
body down to the size of an infant. God pity humanity if
that thing is a preview of what's in store for the 21st
century."
-
- For Majid al-Ghazali, images
of the terrifying weapon and its victims haunt his every
day. In addition to his work as an engineer, he is also a
highly accomplished classical violinist, occupying the first
chair in the Baghdad Symphony. He is widely acknowledged as
one of the preeminent violinists in the Middle East. Besides
his family, one of his greatest joys is teaching at
Baghdad's premier music conservatory. Unfortunately, the
conservatory was utterly destroyed. Yet somehow, despite the
war's horrors and its seemingly endless privations, he
manages to maintain a remarkably hopeful outlook. He
recently informed me that the Baghdad Symphony continues to
exist and has been invited to perform in the United States
in December.
-
- Copyright ©2003 - Bill Dash
-
- See also associated article by
Bill Dash...
-
- Iraqi
Commander Swears He Saw US Evacuate Saddam
- Comment
-
- From Fred Gunn
-
- Hi Jeff,
-
- Found this article from Cox
News published on Thursday, August 15, 2002 and knew I had
to send you this link:
-
- http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/82658_micro15.shtml
-
- It was truly terrifying
reading the article on your newsite about Patrick Dillon's
far reaching journalism into the war in Iraq. There's a true
hero in my mind. The weapons described by Majid al-Ghazali
would seem to me to fit into the electromagnetic pulse
weapons category. And then, these weapons are mentioned in a
New York Post article the day before the Cox News article
appeared, and President Bush speaks of using these pulse
weapons as a means to "disable Saddam (Hussein)'s
entire command and control structure."
-
- Super surge protectors are
being designed that would possibly block the pulse of the
weapon. I put the two together in my mind's eye and I saw
the opening scene from the Terminator movie.
-
- It had better be a brave new
world, with governments beginning to wield these sorts of
weapons into our battlefields now. Who knows where next.
-
- The Cox News article goes on
to say China, Great Britain and France are also
experimenting with these arsenals. No mention of Russia,
though. Interesting.
-
- Peace please,
-
- Fred Gunn
- San Diego
-
-
- Super-Secret Microwave Weapons
May Be Used In Iraq
-
- By George Edmonson
- Cox News Service
- August 15, 2002
-
- WASHINGTON -- An army may
still travel on its stomach, but a vital point of attack
these days is the brain -- the electronic brain.
-
- With modern warfare so
dependent on computers and communications devices, a weapon
that renders them useless could be invaluable. And after
decades of research, U.S. scientists and engineers may be
close to fielding an effective technology known as
high-powered microwave weapons.
-
- At least, that is the latest
buzz. Recent articles have speculated microwave weapons
could be deployed if the United States invades Iraq. But
some experts -- including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
-- say considerable work remains.
-
- "It's been this elegant
promise for decades that never quite seems to happen,"
said John Alexander, author of "Future War: Non-Lethal
Weapons in Twenty-First Century Warfare" and a retired
Army colonel who directed non-lethal weapons development at
Los Alamos National Laboratory. "The check's always in
the mail."
-
- The concept behind
high-powered microwave weapons is simple. A burst of
electromagnetic energy is created and directed at an enemy's
electronics. The force burns them out much like a lightning
strike can destroy home appliances.
-
- Challenges, though, lie in a
number of areas, according to several experts.
-
- For example, delivering the
weapons would likely be done by cruise missiles or unmanned
aerial vehicles to help get close to the target. That
requires making the weapons not only high powered, but also
rugged and relatively small, which Air Force Col. Eileen
Walling labeled "extremely challenging and technically
difficult" in a paper she wrote in 2000 on the weapons.
-
- Alexander explained another
problem: unpredictability, even when everything goes right.
-
- "Electrical components
are really rather tricky," he said. "You can put
the same amount of energy into 10 identical targets and you
can destroy two of them, upset five of them and, in three of
them, nothing happens."
-
- High-powered microwave weapons
are one component of a broader category known as directed
energy weapons that includes lasers.
-
- "When people are talking
about high-powered microwave weapons, they're not talking
about a single device like the stealth bomber," said
John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, a Washington-area
policy organization seeking to reduce reliance on nuclear
weapons. "Rather, they're talking about a physical
principle and an effect which can be generated a number of
different ways for a number of different purposes."
-
- Most of the Defense
Department's work on high-powered microwave weapons takes
place at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M..
-
- "We are looking at
different sources and devices that can produce that
microwave energy and propel it," said Rich Garcia, a
spokesman for the project where nearly all of the work is
classified.
-
- Researchers also are exploring
ways to block incoming high-powered microwave weapons. That
will require something of a super surge protector, experts
point out, because the blasts are so intense and brief they
can escape detection.
-
- The former Soviet Union once
was deeply involved in exploring high-powered microwave
weapons, but it is now thought Russia is no longer pursuing
them. Other nations believed to be conducting research are
China, Great Britain and France.
-
- Earlier this month, the widely
respected magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology
printed an article stating that "an attack on Iraq is
expected to see the first use of high-power microwave
weapons..."
-
- The New York Post, citing
unnamed U.S. military officials, reported yesterday that a
preliminary Iraq battle plan "outlined for President
Bush last week calls for the most extensive use of
electronic and psychological warfare in history -- including
secret new electromagnetic pulse weapons to disable Saddam (Hussein)'s
entire command and control structure."
|
|