Pentagon caught lying about Iraq
C. J. Chivers | 15.10.2014 07:12
U.S. troops DID find chemical weapons in Iraq - but the Pentagon kept it secret: Discovery of 5,000 warheads and shells from Saddam Hussein's abandoned weapons program 'hushed up' after soldiers were injured
A The New York Times expose revealed cache of weapons were found between 2004 and 2011. Most of them were mustard agents in 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets.
Had been developed by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s but abandoned
At least 17 American military personnel were injured
Pentagon chose not to release the information to the public
The weapons did not meet George W. Bush's rationale that Hussein had a program of 'mass destruction'
Aboout 5,000 chemical weapons were recovered or destroyed in Iraq following the 9/11 invasion but the Pentagon chose to keep the findings a secret, it has emerged.
A major investigation by The New York Times has revealed that U.S. forces happened across hidden caches of warheads, shells and aviation bombs between 2004 and 2011 that had been sitting dormant since the early 1980s.
The dangerous weapons - most of them mustard agents in 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets - were developed by Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, with hundreds of tons of chemicals created at any one time.
Between 2004 and 2011, according to the Times, soldiers found thousands of rusty chemical munitions throughout Iraq, most of them buried.
Documenting chemical weapons added hours of extra work.
Chemical warfare specialists had to be called in, and waiting for them to arrive put coalition in precarious positions.
It also stopped them from destructing other explosives that were killing people every week.
'I could wait all day for tech escort to show up and make a chem round disappear, or I could just make it disappear myself,' one told The Times.
The mustard shells could be put in with other explosives that needed to be destructed and then detonated.
However, handling chemical weapons lead to many injuries, which were not taken seriously by military doctors at the time.
At least 17 American military personnel and seven Iraqi police were sickened by poisons - usually sarin and mustard gases - since 2003.
Many of the shells would leak liquid during transportation, exposing the soldiers to the potentially-lethal fumes.
Symptoms would range from disorientation and nausea to blindness and huge, seething blisters.
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'.
'I love it when I hear, ‘'Oh there weren't any chemical weapons in Iraq'',’ he said.
'There were plenty.'
The New York Times published the expose on Tuesday night.
The report was written by C. J. CHIVERS.
Had been developed by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s but abandoned
At least 17 American military personnel were injured
Pentagon chose not to release the information to the public
The weapons did not meet George W. Bush's rationale that Hussein had a program of 'mass destruction'
Aboout 5,000 chemical weapons were recovered or destroyed in Iraq following the 9/11 invasion but the Pentagon chose to keep the findings a secret, it has emerged.
A major investigation by The New York Times has revealed that U.S. forces happened across hidden caches of warheads, shells and aviation bombs between 2004 and 2011 that had been sitting dormant since the early 1980s.
The dangerous weapons - most of them mustard agents in 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets - were developed by Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, with hundreds of tons of chemicals created at any one time.
Between 2004 and 2011, according to the Times, soldiers found thousands of rusty chemical munitions throughout Iraq, most of them buried.
Documenting chemical weapons added hours of extra work.
Chemical warfare specialists had to be called in, and waiting for them to arrive put coalition in precarious positions.
It also stopped them from destructing other explosives that were killing people every week.
'I could wait all day for tech escort to show up and make a chem round disappear, or I could just make it disappear myself,' one told The Times.
The mustard shells could be put in with other explosives that needed to be destructed and then detonated.
However, handling chemical weapons lead to many injuries, which were not taken seriously by military doctors at the time.
At least 17 American military personnel and seven Iraqi police were sickened by poisons - usually sarin and mustard gases - since 2003.
Many of the shells would leak liquid during transportation, exposing the soldiers to the potentially-lethal fumes.
Symptoms would range from disorientation and nausea to blindness and huge, seething blisters.
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'.
'I love it when I hear, ‘'Oh there weren't any chemical weapons in Iraq'',’ he said.
'There were plenty.'
The New York Times published the expose on Tuesday night.
The report was written by C. J. CHIVERS.
C. J. Chivers
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This article doesn't give the full picture - read the original
15.10.2014 08:09
Read the full story, which includes the following:
"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....
"The United States government says the abandoned weapons no longer pose a threat. But nearly a decade of wartime experience showed that old Iraqi chemical munitions often remained dangerous when repurposed for local attacks in makeshift bombs, as insurgents did starting by 2004.
"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.
"Nonproliferation officials said the Pentagon’s handling of many of the recovered warheads and shells appeared to violate the Convention on Chemical Weapons. According to this convention, chemical weapons must be secured, reported and destroyed in an exacting and time-consuming fashion...."
new yorker
Homepage:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html?_r=0
Other lies
15.10.2014 08:59
Around 21% of Iraq’s international chemical weapon equipment was French. 75,000 shells and rockets designed for chemical weapon use also came from Italy. About 100 tons of mustard gas also came from Brazil. Austria also provided heat exchangers, tanks, condensers, and columns for the Iraqi chemical weapons infrastructure. Singapore gave 4,515 tons of precursors for VX, sarin, tabun, and mustard gasses to Iraq. The Dutch gave 4,261 tons of precursors for sarin, tabun, mustard, and tear gasses to Iraq. Egypt gave 2,400 tons of tabun and sarin precursors to Iraq and 28,500 tons of weapons designed for carrying chemical munitions. India gave 2,343 tons of precursors to VX, tabun, Sarin, and mustard gasses. Luxembourg gave Iraq 650 tons of mustard gas precursors. Spain gave Iraq 57,500 munitions designed for carrying chemical weapons. In addition, they provided reactors, condensers, columns and tanks for Iraq’s chemical warfare program, 4.4% of the international sales. China provided 45,000 munitions designed for chemical warfare.
Although around 40% of this was used in the war against Iran a substantial proportion remained at the time of the first Gulf War and was recovered by the US XVIII Airborne Corps who transported it via Saudi Arabia to Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky around October 4th 1995.
The second Iraqi nuclear weapon programme was headed by Muhammad Hafeez Qureshi after Iraq paid Pakistan nearly $200 million dollars to share their technology after the failure of their first research project. Based at the AL Budhar centre where they the scientists decided to develop an 'implosion' over the 'gun' type fission device citing economy in the use of fissile material. The pile went critical in June 1983 and the first weapon was ready for use in 1989. Iraq built a total of four weapons by the time of the US invasion with a yield of around 1Mt although none were missile capable.
These four weapons were discovered on the 14th of April 2004 under the command of Taha Yasin Ramadan al-Jizrawi at the Nasiriyah Army base in the eastern province. They were transported by the 3rd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment to RAF Akrotiri and from there to Diego Garcia where they remain to this day.
Silent
No longer at Diego Garcia
15.10.2014 12:24
Panetta stated the weapons were of "a basic design" that has required the US Air Force to develop a series of containers that envelop the complete bomb for long term storage.
In 2012 the then President of Iraq Jalal Talabani demanded the US either return the weapons or pay compensation of $500 million to Iraq if the US continues to keep them. His demand of return was not considered serious by most commentators and was simply a way to obtain more funding for the Iraqi army.
anon