WMD found in Iraq after all, Bush was right: Pentagon 'hid' chemical weapons?

WMD found in Iraq after all, Bush was right: Pentagon 'hid' chemical weapons?

Examiner | Bruce Baker, Top News Examiner

Published October 15, 2014 12:31PM EDT



It's been 11 years since George W. Bush ordered an American invasion of Iraq after the 911 World Trade Center attacks. Then, President Bush was convinced Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, had an active chemical weapons program. However, no weapons of mass destruction were found, as reported by the Administration at the time. Nonetheless, a shocking report out Tuesday by the New York Times says that WMD were found in Iraq after all, but the Pentagon did its best to hide the truth.

Watch video above of Huff Post Live talking about how weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq

Sources, namely former and retired U.S. and Iraq veterans, shared appalling stories of U.S. troops coming across dangerous abandoned chemical munitions during a span of time from 2004 to 2011. One such incident took place in 2008 with a team of military technicians charged with disposing of artillery left behind in the toils of war.

They told of handling shells that oozed of some pungent liquid that smelled acrid. "That doesn't look like pond water," said his team leader, Staff Sgt. Eric J. Duling. And after swabbing the discharge, the color indicated the presence of the agent mustard, a potent chemical weapon outlawed from past a war, that burns the skin, eyes, and airway of anyone exposed.

The sergeant gave the order: "Get the hell out." He knew the dangers of the WMD, and from that point on, an alleged government cover up ensued as officials tried desperately to keep the finding of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq from getting out to the public. The Times weighed in.

'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."

Recently, through the Freedom of Information Act, the truth finally came out: There were chemical weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, but not from an active Iraqi program at the time Bush ordered the famous, “Shock and Awe” invasion. All told, some 5,000 or more WMDs were located by military techs even when Pentagon officials say they were inert and posed no harm to humans.

"I felt more like a guinea pig than a wounded soldier," said a former Army sergeant who suffered mustard burns in 2007. This same veteran was denied medical treatment for "exposure to WMDs" and despite requests from his commander to be evacuated from theater, higher-ups denied requests.

Years later, soldiers in mass began reporting harmful effects from nerve and mustard gas agents. However, bureaucratic red tape is complicating their care. Some facilities are saying the ill effects reported by veterans are not related to the discovery of outlawed chemical weapons, based on the Geneva Convention Protocol, as ICRC explains.

"The use of chemical weapons is prohibited in international armed conflicts in a series of treaties, including the Hague Declaration concerning Asphyxiating Gases, the Geneva Gas Protocol, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Statute of the International Criminal Court.[1] At present, only 13 States are not party to either the Geneva Gas Protocol or the Chemical Weapons Convention.[2] Of these, at least three have made statements to the effect that the use of chemical weapons is unlawful, or have indicated that they do not possess or use them or that they are committed to their elimination.[3] The prohibition is also contained in a number of other instruments."

So, why did the government allegedly conceal the fact weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq? After all, it was President George W. Bush's premise for invading the country in 2003 and targeting Saddam Hussein and Al-Quaeda for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001?

The NY Times suggests that the Bush Administration would have a hard time explaining why officials sent soldiers into harms-way after leading them to believe the WMDs were harmless. A second reason is that the outing of the information could possibly fuel attempts by ISIS to locate the remaining unearthed chemical weapons – and use them. Finally, and, arguably, the most damaging reason why the U.S. government didn't disclose the finding of chemical weapons was that most, if not all of them were allegedly manufactured in European and American companies before 1991.

Just last year, reporters visited a pair of abandoned bunkers that were contaminated by dangerous munitions left behind during the long occupation in Iraq. What they found was nothing short of alarming.

"Two contaminated bunkers — one containing cyanide precursors and old sarin rockets — loomed behind. The area where Marines had found mustard shells in 2008 was out of sight, shielded by scrub and shimmering heat. The Iraqi troops who stood at that entrance are no longer there. The compound, never entombed, is now controlled by the Islamic State," according to Times .


http://www.twcc.com/articles/2014/10/15/w/wmd-found-in-iraq-after-all-bush-was-right-pentagon-hid-chemical-weapons

Strange all this is surfacing again at this particular time.  Hmmmm.
Thanks
LIT

lonelyintexas wrote:Strange all this is surfacing again at this particular time.  Hmmmm.
Thanks
LIT

sure does don't it! plus, all this ebola carp, kinda makes me wonder just what is coming down the pike next?

"There were chemical weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, but not from an active Iraqi program at the time Bush ordered the famous, “Shock and Awe” invasion." 

The "Shock and Awe" term was used in Desert Storm which was during Bush 41's term of presidency. I was not aware it was used during the later taking down of Saddam. 
This article is strange indeed, IMO. Wonder what the " rest of the story" will be??

these are the same chemical weapons now found in syria!

Bama Diva wrote:"There were chemical weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, but not from an active Iraqi program at the time Bush ordered the famous, “Shock and Awe” invasion." 

The "Shock and Awe" term was used in Desert Storm which was during Bush 41's term of presidency. I was not aware it was used during the later taking down of Saddam. 
This article is strange indeed, IMO. Wonder what the " rest of the story" will be??

The U.S. and its allies launched a massive aerial assault against Iraq on Friday. At 12:15 p.m. EST, anti-aircraft fire could be seen rising in the skies above Baghdad. Within an hour, tremendous explosions began rocking the Iraqi capital, as the Pentagon announced "A-Day" was underway.
The campaign was intended to instill "shock and awe" among Iraq's leaders, and it was directed at hundreds of targets in Iraq, officials said. Plumes of fire could be seen rising above targets in Baghdad at 1:05 p.m. EST. CNN Correspondent Wolf Blitzer reported that in his 30 years of experience, he had never seen anything on the scale of Friday's attack on the Iraqi capital.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/fyi/news/03/22/iraq.war/


this was 2003

rather long article from new york times !

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html?_r=1

The soldiers at the blast crater sensed something was wrong.

From 2004 to 2011, American and Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and at times were wounded by, chemical weapons that were hidden or abandoned years earlier.

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.

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.

“I felt more like a guinea pig than a wounded soldier,” said a former Army sergeant who suffered mustard burns in 2007 and was denied hospital treatment and medical evacuation to the United States despite requests from his commander.

Congress, too, was only partly informed, while troops and officers were instructed to be silent or give deceptive accounts of what they had found. “ 'Nothing of significance’ is what I was ordered to say,” said Jarrod Lampier, a recently retired Army major who was present for the largest chemical weapons discovery of the war: more than 2,400 nerve-agent rockets unearthed in 2006 at a former Republican Guard compound.

Jarrod L. Taylor, a former Army sergeant on hand for the destruction of mustard shells that burned two soldiers in his infantry company, joked of “wounds that never happened” from “that stuff that didn’t exist.” The public, he said, was misled for a decade. “I love it when I hear, ‘Oh there weren’t any chemical weapons in Iraq,’ ” he said. “There were plenty.”

this has video also!

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html?_r=1

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Kirkuk
Iran
Tikrit
Baghdad
Locations where chemical munitions were found
Kuwait
Areas under full
control of the Islamic State

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Kirkuk
Locations where chemical munitions were found
Tikrit
Areas under full
control of the Islamic State as of September
Balad
Baquba
Camp Taji
Amara
Sources: Wikileaks and reporting by the New York Times (chemical munition locations); Institute for the Study of War (Islamic State area of control)
Nasiriya
Kuwait

shell.

152mm Binary Sarin Round

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648mm
25.5 inches
Prototype photographed by United Nations inspectors

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648mm
25.5 inches
Prototype photographed
by United Nations inspectors

The chemical precursors are kept in two separate canisters, which break after launch. The precursors then mix together, forming liquid sarin.

duck2000 wrote:

The U.S. and its allies launched a massive aerial assault against Iraq on Friday. At 12:15 p.m. EST, anti-aircraft fire could be seen rising in the skies above Baghdad. Within an hour, tremendous explosions began rocking the Iraqi capital, as the Pentagon announced "A-Day" was underway.
The campaign was intended to instill "shock and awe" among Iraq's leaders, and it was directed at hundreds of targets in Iraq, officials said. Plumes of fire could be seen rising above targets in Baghdad at 1:05 p.m. EST. CNN Correspondent Wolf Blitzer reported that in his 30 years of experience, he had never seen anything on the scale of Friday's attack on the Iraqi capital.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/fyi/news/03/22/iraq.war/


this was 2003

Thank you for the clarification duck.