Big NYT Story: The Secret U.S. Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons

[Hissyspit]

@GregMitch: Giant NYT story now: U.S. troops stumbled upon chem weapons in Iraq & harmed--kept secret, ISIS may now possess. http://t.co/5sbX0fh38q/s/LvRx

@GregMitch: NYT: Congress not informed about troops hurt by chem weapons in Iraq. Ex-soldier says he felt like "guinea pig." http://t.co/5sbX0fh38q/s/wmCP

@GregMitch: NYT states that finding abandoned chem weapons does not justify Bush's WMD claims--but expect to hear opposite soon. http://t.co/5sbX0fh38q/s/wo-E

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html

The Secret U.S. Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons

BY C. J. CHIVERS

Published: October 14, 2014
The soldiers at the blast crater sensed something was wrong.

It was August 2008 near Taji, Iraq. They had just exploded a stack of old Iraqi artillery shells buried beside a murky lake. The blast, part of an effort to destroy munitions that could be used in makeshift bombs, uncovered more shells.

Two technicians assigned to dispose of munitions stepped into the hole. Lake water seeped in. One of them, Specialist Andrew T. Goldman, noticed a pungent odor, something, he said, he had never smelled before.

He lifted a shell. Oily paste oozed from a crack. “That doesn’t look like pond water,” said his team leader, Staff Sgt. Eric J. Duling.

The specialist swabbed the shell with chemical detection paper. It turned red — indicating sulfur mustard, the chemical warfare agent designed to burn a victim’s airway, skin and eyes.

All three men recall an awkward pause. Then Sergeant Duling gave an order: “Get the hell out.”

Five years after President George W. Bush sent troops into Iraq, these soldiers had entered an expansive but largely secret chapter of America’s long and bitter involvement in Iraq.

From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule.

- snip -

The American government withheld word about its discoveries even from troops it sent into harm’s way and from military doctors. The government’s secrecy, victims and participants said, prevented troops in some of the war’s most dangerous jobs from receiving proper medical care and official recognition of their wounds.

- snip -

The discoveries of these chemical weapons did not support the government’s invasion rationale.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush insisted that Mr. Hussein was hiding an active weapons of mass destruction program, in defiance of international will and at the world’s risk. United Nations inspectors said they could not find evidence for these claims.

Then, during the long occupation, American troops began encountering old chemical munitions in hidden caches and roadside bombs. Typically 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets, they were remnants of an arms program Iraq had rushed into production in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

All had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area, according to those who collected the majority of them.

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[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[AngryAmish]

2. I read it. Everyone should.

Tl, dr version. Saddam had a lot of chemical weapons, left over from Iran v Iraq. The West gave him the weapons.

After war we found weapons and did not tell anyone. People got sick because of it.

Oh, the leftovers are controlled by ISIS now.

[karynnj]

6. Everyone should - though it is sickening

The American troops were betrayed by the US military. (That this happened under Bush does not excuse the career military.)

[Samantha]

8. A very long time ago (a couple of decades) I was sitting on the metro reading The Washington Post

I happened upon an article that reported the United States had given Saddam germ warfare to use in his war on Iran. At some point, he (Saddam) started losing the war, and the United States did not want to see that happen. So they gave him to use in that fight the bubonic plague. I cannot remember the other agents listed, but that particular one so startled me so much that I almost broke down and cried right on that train. I was still in my naive days then, and I could not believe my own government would supply the bubonic plague to be used in a war scenario. I have no words to describe the deep shame I felt.

Sam

[KoKo]

3. From this Report...Further Snip:

Look at the Countries Involved:

These shells, which the American military calls M110s, had been developed decades ago in the United States. Roughly two feet long and weighing more than 90 pounds, each is an aerodynamic steel vessel with a burster tube in its center.

The United States has long manufactured M110s, filling them with smoke compounds, white phosphorous or, in earlier years, mustard agent. American ordnance documents explicitly describe the purpose of an M110 filled with blister agent: “to produce a toxic effect on personnel and to contaminate habitable areas.”

The United States also exported the shells and the technology behind them. When Iraq went arms shopping in the 1980s, it found manufacturers in Italy and Spain willing to deal their copies. By 1988, these two countries alone had sold Iraq 85,000 empty M110-type shells, according to confidential United Nations documents. Iraq also obtained shells from Belgium.

By 2006, the American military had found dozens of these blister-agent shells in Iraq, and had reports of others circulating on black markets, several techs said. Tests determined that many still contained mustard agent, some at a purity level of 84 percent, officials said.

Had these results been publicly disclosed, they would have shown that American assertions about Iraq’s chemical weapons posing no militarily significant threat were not true, and that these dangerous chemical weapons had Western roots.

Public disclosure might also have helped spur the military’s medical system to convert its memorandums into action, and to ready itself for wounds its troops were bound to suffer.

[kelly1mm]

4. Wait, so Sadam really DID have chemical weapons? I thought that was suposed to be made up

just to get us into Iraq again.

Am I confused? (probably - LOL) But does this validate at least the claim by the Bush administration about there being chemical weapons in Iraq?

[PAProgressive28]

5. I'm confused too

Apparently, from what I can gather, these aren't THE wmds. But there's also a report that there will be another report showing these ARE the wmds.

[Hissyspit]

11. These are not the WMD.

[karynnj]

7. No the claim was for a then current active program - and nuclear was implied

These were old 1980s vintage chemicals in corroded shells. For the most part, they could not have been used as weapons of war.

What they do reopen is that the US initially ignored ALL the ammo dumps, many of which were known. Remember 2004, when this came out in fall because an embedded (I think MN) reporter reported the story. Kerry, obviously horrified, spoke of how that ammo was being used in the IEDs that were killing and maiming "our kids".

This is, in some ways, worse. The US military betrayed its own soldiers - ignoring their medical needs and not doing what needed to be done to make others more aware of the danger.

[JHB]

16. Link to reports on this incident:

CNN

Nine days after the fall of Baghdad, on April 18, 2003, a news crew from Minneapolis station KSTP-TV, traveling with troops from the 101st Airborne Division, entered the bunkers at Al-Qaqaa, south of Baghdad. At one of the bunkers, the troops broke a seal to get inside, where they found barrels filled with powdered explosives, according to reporter Dean Staley.

Based on a review of the KSTP videotape, former weapons inspector David Kay said late Thursday that the seal is consistent with those used by the International Atomic Energy Agency and that the explosives in the barrel were the type of high-grade explosives missing from the complex.

"That's either HMX or RDX," Kay said, referring to the types of explosives. "I don't know of anything else in Al-Qaqaa that was in that form."
***
The explosives -- considered powerful enough to demolish buildings or detonate nuclear warheads -- were reported missing from the Al-Qaqaa depot in a letter this month from the interim Iraqi government to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/28/iraq.explosives/


Al Qa Qaa timeline (with references)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/28/66016/-Al-Qa-Qaa-timeline-with-references

[karynnj]

19. Thanks -

It was late and I was too lazy to look for the links.

[SeattleVet]

9. No, we mostly knew about these old ones

After all, Reagan had the receipts for them.

[Hissyspit]

10. No. Read. The. Article.

[Strelnikov_]

13. Seconded n/t

[markpkessinger]

17. Yes, youre confused

These were NOT the weapons Bush was claiming were part of a WMD program. The Bush administration was claiming that in the period just after 9-11, that Saddam had an ongoing, active WMD program. As the article points out, the chemical munitions U.S. soldiers found were all part of an abandoned chemical weapons program Saddam had carried out -- with collusion from the West -- in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war. These weapons had all been manufactured prior to 1991. The Bush administration KNEW THEY WERE THERE, but chose to deny their existence, even after soldiers were being injured from handline and disposing of these old stores unawares.-

[underpants]

30. No- from the article

The discoveries of these chemical weapons did not support the government’s invasion rationale.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush insisted that Mr. Hussein was hiding an active weapons of mass destruction program, in defiance of international will and at the world’s risk. United Nations inspectors said they could not find evidence for these claims.

Then, during the long occupation, American troops began encountering old chemical munitions in hidden caches and roadside bombs. Typically 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets, they were remnants of an arms program Iraq had rushed into production in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

All had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area, according to those who collected the majority of them.

In case after case, participants said, analysis of these warheads and shells reaffirmed intelligence failures. First, the American government did not find what it had been looking for at the war’s outset, then it failed to prepare its troops and medical corps for the aged weapons it did find.

[jwirr]

34. Yes, we gave them to Iraq when poppy bush was ruling in rayguns name. They were old and probably

unusable by the time W claimed they were his reason for going into war with Iraq. Occasionally our troops would find some buried somewhere and unearth them at their own risk. That is what was happening to the troops in the NYT article.

Believe me if they had been workable when found W would have held them up and yelled - we found them. Since their condition was not usable in the sense of mass destruction it was kept secret. They also kept it secret because we gave them to Saddam to use and he killed the Kurds with them. Can't hardly have the world (especially the Kurds) know that we armed our present enemy with WMDs while we are trying to kill him.

[ReRe]

15. K&R

Yes, it was a long article. And from the beginning, that picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand in Iraq back in the '80s kept flashing past my mind's eye.

Everyone needs to click on the link and read the entire article. The little mini-videos of the injured soldiers really added to the story. Everyone suffers from betrayal at one point or another as they go through life, but there is probably no betrayal comparable to that felt by soldiers who learn on the battlefield that their superiors fail to care for their wounds and tell them that it didn't happen, i.e., that what happened is top secret and not to tell anyone about the incident. Oh, and there's probably about a hundred other instances of betrayal they will be dealt before their duty is up.

I do find the timing of the release of this article by the Times a little suspect. I wonder how many other articles they have on hold to release at opportune times. Like right now, with the new James Risen book that just came out. If anyone missed it, James Risen was the single guest of Amy Goodman yesterday at http://www.DemocracyNow.org

Thanks for the link, Hissyspit!

[Iamthetruth]

18. So what they are saying is, Bush was right

Sadam had weapons of mass destruction?

[Johonny]

20. If you read the article you will find that Bush was indeed wrong

and various reports of these older weapons were out ages ago. This reporter appears to have just tallied all the old chemical dumped weapons with the worry ISIS may stumble upon a cash. If Bush really found an active weapons program that included nuclear then he would obviously have told us. It was the point of the whole war. Instead they found older weapons that were not particularly useful. It is all in the article. It takes 5 minutes to read. It is interesting but not as a defense of the war in Iraq.

[Iamthetruth]

21. Then why are they reporting

That ISIS now controls the factory where these were produced? By the way, 5,000 weapons is a shit load and I would call that credible. Why was this kept secret?

[Johonny]

22. If you read the article you will find that Bush was indeed wrong

or keep watching Fox. It is up to you. The original poster couldn't make it easier to find the article!

[Iamthetruth]

25. And you can keep making spinning

The fact is, SAdam had over 5,000 chemical warheads, that is pretty serious to me.

[Hissyspit]

27. BULLSHIT

Of course it was serious. We knew about this crap at the time. It's the leftover shit we paid for to kill Iranians.

It's not from an ongoing WMD program. It's not what Colin Powell lied about. It's not the supposed nuclear program.

It's not the fucking shit that Bush/Cheney said we were going to war about. It says so right in the motherfucking article!

They lied!!!!

Stop this shit right now.

[Iamthetruth]

36. Well unlike you

I don't care for either side of politics I can say I see all sides. Sadam had WMD's something many on here said he did not have. Also, you need to control your temper, it's not good for you.

[Hissyspit]

38. No.

[Gormy Cuss]

39. Saddam Hussein did not have WMDs.

If you believe that he did, you made a wrong turn.

[Iamthetruth]

40. So having 5,000 chemical shells

Does not count, okay, just wondering. I get confused between new math and old math, silly me.

[pinboy3niner]

44. All aged, some empty, many rusty, corroded, leaking

NONE of these were from WMD programs that Bush claimed Saddam had restarted.

Bush was wrong.

[Hissyspit]

46. No, it doesn't.

This has been explained to you. Multiple times. It was explained at the time. It's been common knowledge for a decade+. This is NOT what the UN inspectors were looking for. It's not. Period.

Quit being dishonest.

[Hissyspit]

33. Youarenotthetruth, please read this article

and then apologize for accusing others of spinning:

http://www.vox.com/2014/10/15/6981493/iraq-wmd-saddam-chemical-weapons-new-york-times

[Iamthetruth]

37. I did read the article

And I also consider the source. It makes no sense why the pentagon would hide this, there is much more to this story.

[Hissyspit]

41. No there's not.

There's only you arguing that Bush was right on one of the websites that proved beyond a doubt that he wasn't beyond a shadow of a doubt. Which is bullshit. Why would you be doing that?

[Iamthetruth]

47. Because

I want to know why the pentagon tried to hide this.

[underpants]

45. Let's look at it another way - why wouldn't we have heard about it?

Aside from the Pentagon wanting to diminish Vet claims in the future, why wouldn't this have been trumped up by the Bush White House? The press would clearly carry their water on anything. If they could have just shown a giant pile of these warheads that would been enough. All the follow up expert comments on how outdated and useless they were would have never reached the general public. The initial story gets cemented and that's it.

So why not a photo op? Were they scared people would say "that's it?". Were they scared of the links to them (Cheney specifically) and the Germans and every other nations mentioned?

Seriously why wouldn't they have played this up? We know that they found staggering new ways to screw up, maybe this was just another one.

[JHB]

23. They control the site that was a CW factory before 1991...

After over. 20 years of disuse, decay, and possible damage from earlier fighting, "toxic waste site" is probably a much more accurate description. But it makes for less scare'em headlines.

[Hugabear]

24. Saddam did not have an active WMD program.

These are chemical weapons that were provided by the US and Europe during the 1980s, and were not in very good condition.

Saddam did NOT have an active chemical weapons program. There is still absolutely no evidence that he was producing chemical weapons, or that he had an active nuclear weapons program.

[underpants]

35. That was one long article

I read 90% of it. Repeatedly everyone said that these were not of any military importance unless you were dumb enough to put your guys in bad situations around them

[Hissyspit]

26. NO. READ THE GODDAMNED ARTICLE.

It's in the fucking article!

This is NOT the WMD!

Christalmighty!

[underpants]

28. This explains the conversation I just heard at lunch

Last edited Wed Oct 15, 2014, 01:39 PM - Edit history (1)

Old cogger I work with was saying something about this and that this proves that there were WMD. I knew it was BS but I wasn't sure how. Now I know.

Trust me the radio waves and Fox and then CNN will be flooded with this. Instant rewriting of history.

[Hissyspit]

29. It's insane.

There seems to be no way to stop the bullshit.

I mean, it says it RIGHT THERE IN THE ARTICLE.

[underpants]

32. He and others already got this packaged and spun

It will be legend and lore by this evening.

[Hissyspit]

42. Check out this crap:

On Wed Oct 15, 2014, 04:49 PM you sent an alert on the following post:

Well unlike you
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5670795

REASON FOR ALERT

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

YOUR COMMENTS

Troll. Saddam had WMD? Really? Seriously?

JURY RESULTS

A randomly-selected Jury of DU members completed their review of this alert at Wed Oct 15, 2014, 05:03 PM, and voted 3-4 to LEAVE IT ALONE.

Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: I don't see where this post is rude, hurtful, disruptive, etc. The poster is FOS, so prove him wrong.
Juror #2 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #4 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Agree with the alert, that little gem of bullshit gets hidden.
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Poster is expressing an opinion. Not remotely a hide. Saddam gassed thousands of Kurds. I think that qualifies as WMD.
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #7 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Agree with alerter on everything except that the post itself is hideable. Doesn't meet the standard. That said, this dude is probably trollin' like a boss.

Thank you.

[underpants]

31. No - from the article

The discoveries of these chemical weapons did not support the government’s invasion rationale.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush insisted that Mr. Hussein was hiding an active weapons of mass destruction program, in defiance of international will and at the world’s risk. United Nations inspectors said they could not find evidence for these claims.

Then, during the long occupation, American troops began encountering old chemical munitions in hidden caches and roadside bombs. Typically 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets, they were remnants of an arms program Iraq had rushed into production in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

All had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area, according to those who collected the majority of them.

In case after case, participants said, analysis of these warheads and shells reaffirmed intelligence failures. First, the American government did not find what it had been looking for at the war’s outset, then it failed to prepare its troops and medical corps for the aged weapons it did find.

[woo me with science]

43. K&R