[Newsbot]

Title: The Secret Casualties of Iraq�s Abandoned Chemical Weapons
Category: History
Posted By: N_Fiddledog
Date: 2014-10-15 01:04:18
Canadian

[martin14]

But-but-but the lefties have been saying for years there weren't any CW in Iraq.

[Zipperfish]

Lefties? here's teh report from the Republican dominated Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence:

$1:

Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community’s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting. A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence.

And from the NYT article itself:

$1:

The United States had gone to war declaring it must destroy an active weapons of mass destruction program. Instead, American troops gradually found and ultimately suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West.

[andyt]

Funny, Bush et al said the same thing, since they didn't produce them. I would have thought that's the way to shut up those whiny lefties questioning the war.

But, was it really necessary to go to war over " long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West?"

Funny how Bush just knew there were chemical weapons in Iraq that Saddam was ready to use, but then didn't locate and safely destroy them, instead letting soldiers get harmed when they accidentally found some. Guess those weapons were known unknown knowns. (think I got that right).

[N_Fiddledog]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Lefties? here's teh report from the Republican dominated Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence:

$1:

Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community’s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting. A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence.

And from the NYT article itself:

$1:

The United States had gone to war declaring it must destroy an active weapons of mass destruction program. Instead, American troops gradually found and ultimately suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West.

And you'll like this...

Fox News agrees.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10 ... rt-claims/

The girl suggests the reason the shells were kept secret was because they came from a time when America was backing Iraq against Iran, and some of the tooling of the shells were done by American equipment.

[N_Fiddledog]

Here's the way Fox introduced the story.

$1:

American troops were exposed to chemical weapons multiple times in the years following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, while the Pentagon kept their discoveries of the expired or degraded weapons secret from investigators, fellow soldiers, and military doctors, according to a published report.

The New York Times reported late Tuesday that American troops reported finding approximately 5,000 chemical warheads, shells, or aviation bombs in the years following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. On at least six occasions, soldiers were wounded by those weapons, which had been manufactured before 1991. In all, the paper reported that 17 U.S. soldiers and seven Iraqi police officers were exposed to chemical agents during the war. The U.S. government said its number was slightly higher, but did not release a specific figure.

[N_Fiddledog]

Here's the telling from a right wing blog.

$1:

The details provided thus far indicate that these were certainly not a potential source for the mushroom cloud on the horizon or state of the art mobile biological weapons laboratories which were so frequently discussed in the run up to the war, but they are still WMDs by definition and a nasty piece of business. Manufactured during the 1980s, the weapons were apparently decaying and compromised, but still contained dangerous compounds which resulted in injuries to those investigating them.

The ISIS side of the question may not be as bad as it could have been from the sound of things. The weapons stored at Muthanna are apparently so old and degraded that even getting close to them may well prove more disastrous to any terrorists trying to use them than they would be to the intended targets. But the chemicals are still too dangerous to ignore and provide yet another reason to take ISIS more seriously.

Possibly more disturbing, though, is the fallout from the secrecy surrounding these discoveries. When injured veterans were returning home, might there have been more effective treatment made available if medical professionals knew that such exposure was a consideration? While it’s possible that VA doctors were provided with this information on a need to know basis in cases where soldiers were known to have been exposed, both the military and the VA owe us some answers on that. Once the immediate series of crisis scenarios calm down, I expect we’ll be seeing calls for some congressional hearings to shine more light on this situation.

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/15/p ... for-years/

I get the feeling everybody is on the same page on this one, right now.

[andyt]

Well, except Martin, it seems.

[andyt]

The dirtiest aspect is that the US supplied Iran with those chemicals. Bush 1 then urged the Kurds to rebel and then sat on his ass when Saddam used those weapons against the Kurds. Dirty. How the Kurds still trust the US is beyond me - i guess they don't have anybody else in their corner, such as it is.

[BeaverFever]

martin14 martin14:

But-but-but the lefties have been saying for years there weren't any CW in Iraq.

Somebody didn't read the article!

[Thanos]

New York Times has it pay-walled.

I'm putting this down as another WTF, in the long list of WTF's that've been compiled in Iraq since 2003, that these weapons haven't either been destroyed, secured, or buried in concrete over the last eleven years. Seriously, a trillion dollars spent and no one in the White House or Pentagon thought it might be a good idea to clean up the damn things once and for all?

And if they're that damn dangerous that the soldiers who did go near them got sick then why in the fuck, in a military that engages in bio/chem attack drills all the time, were some soldiers in the area with these shells and not wearing their proper protective gear? Had it not been distributed yet but some dickhead up the chain of command didn't care and ordered them to muck around with them anyway? Or did some other much more vile dickhead, in the middle of a trillion dollar expenditure, suddenly decide to play the austerity game and not make any arrangements to provide it at all? Jesus fuck, what a bloody disgrace.

[BRAH]