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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."
That wasn't missing in the summary as submitted, but editors will edit.
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Well that would be a first. Editing that is. Fucking things up is par for the course.
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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.
@de_machina
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
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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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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.