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Pentagon Reportedly Hushed Up Chemical Weapons Finds In Iraq
mr_mischief writes "Multiple sources report that the US found remnants of WMD programs, namely chemical weapons, in Iraq after all. Many US soldiers were injured by them, in fact. The Times reports: "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. In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act."
According to the Times, the reports were embarrassing for the Pentagon because, in five of the six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been "designed in the US, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies".
Where were they found? Next to the plants set up by Western companies that filled them in Iraq, of course. Who has control of those plants now? Why, ISIS of course. Don't worry, though, the people who thought it was better we didn't know about these things are assuring us that all those weapons were hurriedly destroyed.
My work here is dung.
They were left over munitions from the Iraq v. Iran war of the 80's. It wasn't new munitions being made since Desert Storm '91. That too would have embarrassed the administration.
I heard frequently during the war itself that we HAD found chemical weapons, mostly from pro-war proponents. I gather that it was talked about all the time on Fox News and right-wing talk radio.
And the reply, even at the time, was that these were weapons from the first Gulf War, mostly inoperable or unreliable due to age, and likely forgotten about. They weren't part of an ongoing production effort, which is what we'd been told. There was widespread support for the war, at the beginning, based on that, which faded as we realized that the danger had been badly overstated.
So I'm trying to figure out what's new here. I had the impression that this was well known. Is it that it wasn't more widely, discussed because the Pentagon wanted it not to be?
These are not the WMDs were were told were in Iraq. While Saddam's history with chemical weapons was well known at the time, they were NOT what people were concerned about. This stuff was not what was used as the excuse to go to war and invade.
They were not part of the sales pitch.
Also, these finds were well reported when they happened. They aren't a surprise. They're hardly news.
This sounds like a bad attempt at rewriting history. Someone is hoping that we all have short memories.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The reason for war was WMDs like nuclear and biological weapons. The world already knew Iraq had chemical ones.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
This comes up about once a year. Iraq had chemical weapons and everyone knew about it BUT this was during the Iran/Iraq war. They were largely destroyed before the second gulf war. What we're cleaning up NOW is still remnants from way back then. What Bush said was that we had to go to war due to imminent threat of actual weapons being used. That was not the case at the time -- when Bush was justifying invasion -- nor is it the case now. We're finding debris and remnants that are hazardous, sure, but no longer weaponized. And they have not been weaponized since well before Bush referenced them as "weapons".
Here's a recent reference:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/conservatives-continue-get-iraqi-wmd-story-wrong
And here's one from a nearly identical situation in 2011:
http://www.wired.com/2011/11/iraq-wmd-seal-target-geronimo/
And here's a fantastic timeline that CNN put together back in 2010:
http://cns.miis.edu/stories/100304_iraq_cw_legacy.htm
Umm. Yes he did. See 9/12/02 speech at the UN, and 2003 state of the union.
The problem is that chemical weapons are treated as if they were nuclear weapons in terms of diplomatic maneuverings and consequences... or at least were considered as such. In other words, if a country decides to openly use chemical weapons on American soldiers, it is considered "justified" to go ahead and use nuclear weapons in retaliation.
Yes, this is screwed up and seems silly, but it was the chemical weapons that the Bush administration was talking about elsenwhen, not the nuclear or biological weapons.
Iraq also had a nuclear bomb program in the 1980's, but that one got bombed out of existence by Israel when Iraq tried to build a breeder reactor. There certainly wasn't anybody who was serious about finding nuclear weapons in Iraq in the early 2000's decade. The question at hand was with regards to how large and widespread their chemical weapons inventory might be.
From someone that was there. Can you please fucking stop with we shouldn't have gone, is over. Now that I have developed autoimmune disease, which is hereditary, when no fucking one in my family out of 200 people has it. I cannot claim I was exposed to anything, well because it didn't happen. I know good fucking well almost everyone in Baghdad in 2003 was exposed to blood agents in the water. The water tested positive multiple times, but do you here about it anywhere?
Not sure where you get your definition of WMD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
To help you out:
As defined by 18 USC Â2332 (a), a Weapon of Mass Destruction is:
(a) any destructive device as defined in section 921 of the title;
(B) any weapon that is designed or intended to cause death or serious bodily injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals, or their precursors;
(C) any weapon involving a biological agent, toxin, or vector (as those terms are defined in section 178 of this title); or
(D) any weapon that is designed to release radiation or radioactivity at a level dangerous to human life;