Now that the shameful – and, until now, highly secret – truths about Iraq’s real weapons of mass destruction have been exposed in a sweeping and stunning multimedia report in today’s New York Times (see: “The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons,” by C.J. Chivers and 15 other NYT reporters, researchers and producers), the ironic realities that are just now coming to light, more than 11 years after the U.S. last invaded Iraq, will make the public shudder with disgust.
Here are a few bullet points covering just some of the basic truths that you’ll learn after reading today's powerful NY Times story:
• Virtually all of these weapons of mass destruction were from stockpiles established by the Hussein regime during its war with Iran in the 1980s.
• Many (if not most) of these shells were U.S.-made. And, almost all of them were manufactured in western countries.
• Approximately 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs – many of them rusted through and leaking – loaded with Sarin and Mustard Gas, were discovered by U.S. forces between 2004 and 2011.
• Gag orders were placed upon all U.S. soldiers that dealt with these weapons, and those involved in the aftermath of their discovery, during this eight-year period.
• More than 17 U.S. soldiers were injured as a result of their handling of these weapons, with the true extent of their improperly-treated injuries still unknown, as symptoms still develop within this select group of soldiers, to this day.
• Due to poor monitoring of their disposal, the fact remains that ISIS now has control over at least hundreds of these Sarin and Mustard Gas shells as you read this.
And, that’s barely scratching the surface of this profoundly troubling report.
It's a truly stunning exposé...
(UPDATE: Incisive analysis on today's Times' story from Jim White, over at Marcy Wheeler's joint, excerpted farther down, herein. Breaking news link provided below by White in this excerpt: ISIS is now using chemical weapons in its attacks on Kurds.)
(It’s an exceptionally lengthy piece, so I’ve provided roughly three more brief paragraphs than normal to the initial excerpt.)
The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s
Abandoned Chemical Weapons
C.J. Chivers
New York Times
November 14, 2014
…Five years after President George W. Bush sent troops into Iraq… …[U.S.] 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.
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.
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.
The New York Times found 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers who were exposed to nerve or mustard agents after 2003. American officials said that the actual tally of exposed troops was slightly higher, but that the government’s official count was classified.
The secrecy fit a pattern. Since the outset of the war, the scale of the United States’ encounters with chemical weapons in Iraq was neither publicly shared nor widely circulated within the military. These encounters carry worrisome implications now that the Islamic State, a Qaeda splinter group, controls much of the territory where the weapons were found.
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…
Additional documents (provided in conjunction with an extensive multimedia presentation, throughout this lengthy story):
• Medical Records of U.S. Casualties of Iraq’s Chemical Weapons
American troops gradually found and ultimately suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned chemical weapons programs, built in close collaboration with the West. Portions of records have been redacted by The New York Times to protect privacy...
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U.S. Intelligence Documents on Chemical Weapons Found in Iraq
American troops secretly reported finding more than 4,990 chemical munitions, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials and to heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act...
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Iraq’s Disclosure of Chemical Weapons Findings to U.N.
Iraq’s confidential declarations to the United Nations in 1996 about its chemical weapons findings and the confidential reports from supplier nations...
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Duelfer Report on Chemical Weapons in Iraq
A 2004 report by the Iraq Survey Group and presented by Charles A. Duelfer, an adviser to the director of central intelligence and a former United Nations’ inspection official, acknowledged that chemical weapons were turning up in Iraq, and predicted that troops would find more...
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Army Report Says Only 500 Munitions Found in Iraq
The Pentagon information for a September 2006 Senate committee report about the chemical munitions its units had found that summer. As the committee worked, the discovery of chemical weapons accelerated. The Senate report ultimately played down dangers, including the risk of exposure to sulfur-mustard agent as pure as 84 percent...
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Senate Committee Report Understated The Scale Of Chemical Weapons Recovered in Iraq
The Pentagon information for a September 2006 Senate committee report about the chemical munitions its units had found that summer. As the committee worked, the discovery of chemical weapons accelerated. The Senate report ultimately played down dangers, including the risk of exposure to sulfur-mustard agent as pure as 84 percent...
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American Firms’ Supplying Iraq’s Chemical Weapons Production
Analysis by Jonathan Tucker, who researched Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs, detailing delivery of American-made precursors for Iraq’s sulfur mustard agent...
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United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission Report on Iraq
The group was created in 1999 to replace the United Nations Special Commission, which was established to verify Iraq’s compliance with dismantling its weapons of mass destruction programs and stockpiles. Iraq continued to refuse access to inspectors at this time....
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U.S. Army Regulations For Treating Chemical Warfare Casualties
The reports, issued in 2004, set forth specific treatment and long-term follow-up steps, none of which the military followed in most cases when service members were exposed to chemical agents in Iraq...
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U.S. Navy Technical Manual on Chemical Munitions
This document covers all modern American chemical munitions, including the mustard-filled M110. The United States is destroying its chemical M110 shells in accordance with the Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty. European-made M110 variants were part of Saddam Hussein’s chemical arsenal and wounded American and Iraqi troops from 2006 to 2010...
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Iran Spars with the U.S. and Britain Over the Countries’ Handling of Chemical Weapons
In 2010, Iran complained that the two countries did not comply with the Chemical Weapons Convention when they secretly destroyed at least 5,000 pieces of old Iraqi chemical ordnance after invading the country in 2003. After the complaint, the British government disclosed some information about its activities. The United States did not...
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Iraq’s Plan To Entomb Remnant Chemical Weapons In Bunker Complex
In 2012, Iraq presented a plan to seal components of its former chemical weapons program in damaged bunkers at Al Muthanna State Establishment. Islamic State militants gained access to the bunker earlier this year, before Iraq completed its plan...
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UPDATE: 10/15/14 11:30AM (EDT)...
Saddam’s WMD: Technology Made In USA,
Delivered by Rumsfeld
Jim White
Emptywheel.net
Published October 15, 2014
In a blockbuster story published last night by the New York Times, C.J. Shivers lays out chapter and verse on the despicable way the US military covered up the discovery of chemical weapons in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Even worse is the cover-up of injuries sustained by US troops from those weapons, their denial of treatment and denial of recognition or their injuries sustained on the battlefront.
Why was this covered up, you might ask? After all, if George W. Bush would joke at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner about looking under White House furniture for Saddam’s WMD’s, why didn’t the US blast out the news of the WMD’s that had supposedly prompted the US invasion?
The answer is simple. The chemical weapons that were found did not date to the time frame when the US was accusing Saddam of “illegally” producing them. Instead, they were old chemical weapons that dated from the time Saddam was our friend. They come from the time when the US sent Donald Rumsfeld to shake Saddam’s hand and to grease the skids for Iraq to get chemical weapons to use in their war against Iran…
…
…But here is the real kicker:
Participants in the chemical weapons discoveries said the United States suppressed knowledge of finds for multiple reasons, including that the government bristled at further acknowledgment it had been wrong. “They needed something to say that after Sept. 11 Saddam used chemical rounds,” Mr. Lampier said. “And all of this was from the pre-1991 era.”
Others pointed to another embarrassment. In five of six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies.
White then directs readers to
this breaking story…
Disturbing new photos of ethnic Kurds killed by Islamic State fighters are stoking fears the terrorist army may be using chemical weapons seized from Saddam Hussein’s old arsenals, according to a Middle East watchdog.
The pictures, obtained by the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA), show the bodies of Syrian Kurds who appear to have been gassed by ISIS in the besieged Kobani region this July. That fighting came just one month after Islamic State forces surged through the once-notorious Muthanna compound in Iraq, the massive base where Hussein began producing chemical weapons in the 1980s, which he used to kill thousands of Kurds in Halabja in northern Iraq in 1988.
Jonathan Spyer, editor of the MERIA Journal, told FoxNews.com that experts believe the Kurds were slaughtered in July with what “appears to be a case of mustard gas or some kind of blistering agent.”
“It is fairly concerning that, if the pictures are genuine -- and I have no reason to believe they are not -- then this [use of chemical weapons] is looking clearer and clearer,” Spyer said…
(END OF UPDATE)
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