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."

Comments

So confused

[Anonymous Coward]

So there were chemical weapons in Iraq? Hold up peeps that wasn't the story 8 years ago.

Re:So confused

[Obscene_CNN]

The chemical weapons were widely dispersed around Iraq by Saddam Husein's Regime. The cover story about there not being any was created to to try and prevent terrorist scouring all of the hidden weapons caches in Iraq for chemical weapons before the US troops had time to find and destroy them. Sadly, after the administration changed it was politically advantageous to perpetuate the cover story and discontinue chem weapons search efforts.

Re:So confused

[Anonymous Coward]

you're revising history. it was also for chemical weapons, and yes everybody knew they had them.

Re:So confused

[lgw]

That's a myth. It cost a lot, since you have to pay a civilian quite a bit to go into a hostile area to do engineering (and engineers made quite a premium in the area even in peacetime), but e.g. Haliburton earnings were unimpressive (I bought the stock, hoping the conspiracy theorists were on to something, but it seems they were merely on something).

Re:So confused

[TapeCutter]

It was common knowledge that Saddam had chemical weapons as far back as the 80's. Bush and co were pushing a bogus "mushroom" line and worse still they knew they were doing it (although I think Powell may have been set up as a fall guy), that slide show at the UN made a lot of people (including me) angry, but to be fair Saddam was pretending he had them so maybe they did believe it, who's to say what a politician actually believes? - What Bush and co actually believed at the time we will never really know, but we are left with two unflattering explanations, either they were incompetent ideologues or despicable warmongers.

No WMD's...Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuf said. There were WMD's. Now will we hear a retraction from Mainstream Media? Probably not.

Re:No WMD's...Really?

[RailGunner]

So Bush was right all along.

<NelsonMuntz>HA, HA!</NelsonMuntz>

Re:No WMD's...Really?

[demachina]

Its no secret Iraq had chemical weapons. They used them liberally against Iranian human wave attacks during the Iran Iraq war.

The reason they were hushed up is because they were provided by western countries. You do know the U.S. and Europe backed Saddam in the Iran Iraq war and most probably encouraged the use of chemical weapons against Iranian teenagers right? Iran had a huge population advantage, Iraqi Shias weren't that keen on fighting Iranian Shia, so Iraq needed technology to level the field and the West helped with that edge.

The West was really happy about a lengthy, bloody stalemate in that war bleeding both countries white.

Re:No WMD's...Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Bush said that Saddam was actively making WMDs. Bush never said we needed to go to war in Iraq because there are chemical weapons leftover from the 80s. If this legitimizes the war in Iraq then we better get busy making bombs and soldiers. http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/cbwprolif

Absolute BS

[snobody]

That's the first thing out of my mouth when I heard this story on TV this morning. I can't imagine Bush and Darth Cheney not shouting it from the rooftops if it had been found as they say. Even if they had to cover up Western involvement, those CW shells would have been trotted out before a full court press so the Bush admin could have their "I told you so!" moment.

Re:Absolute BS

[gurps_npc]

The reason Bush and Cheney did not shout it out was that Republicans made them and sold them to bad guys. All of those weapons, while not reported by the news during the 2nd war, were reported after the first Iraq war.

Bush and Cheney specifically said that they were looking for facilities to make new weapons. Specifically nuclear weapons and biological weapons, with maybe some new chemical weapons. But that was not a big deal, because we knew they had saved some chemical weapons. That was a known thing, and not new.

After the first Iraq war, we destroyed massive stockpiles of chemical weapons but we knew we could not have gotten them all. We had however destroyed the factories.

They specific claims made by Bush and Cheney were for factories capable of making weapons, and the main fear was bio and nuke, not more chemicals.

The factories are the most important thing, and this new information does not indicate that Iraq had kept or created any new factories at all. It is entirely about old stockpiles of chemical, not biological nor nuclear weapons that were never destroyed during the first war. Some of them were used in the second war. Others apparently may have survived to be used by ISIS.

But no one has made a credible claim for new factories that successfully made chemical weapons after the first Iraq war, let alone ever making biological or nuclear weapons

Re:Designed in US, Built in EU, Filled in Iraq

[OzPeter]

That wasn't missing in the summary as submitted, but editors will edit.

[Checks url to make sure I'm on the same site as you]

Well that would be a first. Editing that is. Fucking things up is par for the course.

Was this ever anything but a slogan for sheep ?

[Crashmarik]

Saddam based his entire foreign policy on having his enemies believe he had them. He had used them on both internal and external enemies in the past, it really should come as no surprise to anyone that they were there.

The only people I can see taking this as a great revelation are those that went around shouting "Bush Lied People Died", while they went around having tourettes fits if you mentioned anything good about the man. I doubt even they believed it, but just found it a convenient way to shut down reasoned argument. You could point out that President Clinton bombed Iraq first to stop the WMD program there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... and it would sail over their heads.

The most mind boggling thing is apparently both sides are singularly polarized on the current president who has been implementing the exact same policies as his predecessor. Albeit, a Republican president might have permanently stationed troops in Iraq and prevented ISIS.

Re:Designed in US, Built in EU, Filled in Iraq

[TubeSteak]

It's not clear if the contents of those weapons is still usable or whether ISIS has the technology to deploy them.

From the NY Times

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.

They're still effective as IEDs and those require no special technology to set up and detonate.

Re:Designed in US, Built in EU, Filled in Iraq

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush did more to stop a real war on women than this administration, yet they still attack the right using the phoney "war on women" label to smear their opponents. It's disgusting.

Timeline!

[khasim]

The summary also seems to have left off the critically important TIMELINE.

The "weapons" that were "found" were manufactured and abandoned in the FIRST Gulf War. Back when Bush SENIOR was the President of the USofA.

So the troops in the SECOND Gulf War (Bush Junior) were being exposed to hazardous chemicals that were 10+ years old. THAT is what is/was being covered up. Our troops were working in/around hazardous waste disposal sites WITHOUT proper equipment or training or supervision or follow-up.

There are not any "WMD" being "found" in Iraq now. It's hazardous WASTE.

ISIS (stupid name) does not have "chemical weapons" from that. They have chemical waste that is a health hazard. No GA, GB, GD, VX, or anything like that.

Re: Designed in US, Built in EU, Filled in Iraq

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe that, I have some very valuable mining rights on a near earth orbit asteroid that you will surely be interested in purchasing.

Re:Designed in US, Built in EU, Filled in Iraq

[riverat1]

In Afghanistan the Taliban are very hard on women but on the other hand in Iraq under Saddam Hussein the women were some of the most liberated in the Middle East, but much less so now under the current government.

Re:WMDs? Chemical weapons? Wait, what?

[fyngyrz]

And this is why you shouldn't get your definitions from lawmakers. Just engage your common sense for a moment.

By that definition, injecting someone with a radioactive isotope that will eventually kill them, and only them, no wait, not even kill, just "is dangerous" to them and only them, is a "weapon of mass destruction".

Which is bloody ridiculous. Where's the "mass" in that? You can kill multiple people with a stick of dynamite and that isn't a weapon of mass destruction, so wth?

It makes about as much sense as the authority to regulate interstate commerce being interpreted as the authority to regulate intrastate commerce. Who came up with that again? Oh yeah... same people... congress. Our pet collection of fumbling idiots.

Think about it for long enough to make two or three brain cells stand up. MASS DESTRUCTION. What does that mean? What should it mean? Whatever a sensible answer is, it is not what you quoted, that's for sure. However, that definition is sufficient to allow them to drop the legal world on your head if you even begin to think about doing any number of things they'd prefer you didn't do. And *that* is why it is what it is. Obviously. Not because it actually defines mass destruction. Because it doesn't, in fact it's utterly useless in such a pursuit. It's intellectually insulting, in fact. Not that such a problem ever stopped congress from making bad law, of course.