by Bill Dash
August-25-2003

from Rense Website

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.
 

Super-Secret Microwave Weapons May Be Used In Iraq
by George Edmonson
Cox News Service
August 15, 2002

from SeattlePi Website

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."

 

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