The soldiers at the blast crater sensed something was wrong.
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.
More at the NY Times
The NYT article makes it clear that the WMD’s found does NOT confirm that WMD’s were found (?).
In other words, they could not pass up an opportunity to bash the Pentagon and run the risk of vindicating the WMD motivation for war in Iraq, so they have to state that these weren’t the WMD’s they were looking for.
The WMD’s were there. The lies that Bush lied are confirmed.
Now, why was the Pentagon covering this up and how will those injured be taken care of?
Why is this making news rounds, now? I saw one NYTimes link late last night; another one this morning. And now a Daily Beast article. It’s like this is new news and not old news.
@Wordsmith:
Agreed but have a read:
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/352462.php
The NY Slimes does it again.
Yeah, I just saw that and was going to report it back here. Lol. I get why it’s news now.
Idiots.
@Wordsmith:
Because they were guilty of spreading the lies that there wasn’t any WMD in Iraq. This is not news to those of us who were there or people like yourself and Mata who actually researched the issue and came to the same conclusion. The lefties will still blow this off. Remember assertions made here by the lefties that only a few of these shells were found? Dead wrong as usual.
Gore was supposed to be an 8 year extension of the wonderful Clinton era. Bush was characterized as a Texas rube, an idiot… stupid. By any measure, a Gore Presidency should have been a cake walk. Then Gore showed up.
So, Bush won. It was close (due to the Democrats in Florida disallowing overseas votes from the military), but Bush won. The left went absolutely nuts (even for THEM) and has been on a vengeance trip ever since.
After 9/11, there was a brief period of the group hug, but that did not last long. As soon as the campaign season opened up, Bush was also in season, as well as our military efforts. After the war in Iraq began, despite the number of Democrats who supported it (hypocrisy is not something someone like Kerry or Hillary will shy away from), the lies about why we were in Iraq reached new levels. Most likely the most imaginative was the argument that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11; well, no one ever said they DID. But, presenting the fact that we were fighting Iraq despite them not participating in the 9/11 attacks struck a cord with ignorant liberals, too lazy to ask a few pertinent questions, like “who ever said we would make war on Iraq for attacking us on 9/11?”. The answer is no one. No one but the left.
So, now even the WMD’s have been found… well, they had already been found, but now the finding is officially exposed. The NYT goes out of its way to make sure this is not a Bush vindication, saying “yeah, but we weren’t looking for THESE.” No doubt, many will believe this because believing the truth is too painful, too much of a life-changing event to bear.
Bush fought to keep WMD’s out of the hands of terrorists. Obama squandered the victory and handed the WMD’s directly to the terrorists. Vote Liberal, vote often!
@Bill: The NY Slimes is in CYA mode. I’m surprised they had the integrity to report it. There weren’t supposed to be ANY WMD in Iraq- old or new. ZERO. There is also strong evidence that the newer stuff made it out of the country or was destroyed before we went in. Bottom line is the “Bush lied and people died” leftist shitbags were 100% wrong with regards to the Iraq WMD issue. Of course they don’t have the integrity to admit they were wrong.
@Bill:
If you read the comments in the Slimes’ article, that is exactly what the braindead lefties are saying. Some of the liars went so far as to claim that they “knew” that these WMD would be found. Further proof that those on the left have zero integrity and can’t be reasoned with. They are a true lost cause and a waste of time to even listen to.
@another+vet: Where is Greg, Rich, and the other trolls? There had been an article that showed the missiles that would carry these war heads were found in Turkey on a scrap metal pile.
@Randy: They would find a way to spin it just like the NYT so why even care?
It was old ordnance left over from the days of the Iraq/Iran war, not viable chemical weapons. The Iraq/Iran war lasted from 1980 to 1988. Mustard gas has a shelf life of a few years at the most. The form of nerve gas Iraq produced was far quicker to degrade. In 1991 an evaluation was made by the CIA concerning the shelf life of Iraq’s various remaining chemical weapons. It was estimated then that their mustard gas stockpiles would likely remain usable only for several more years, while their stockpiles of nerve gas would degrade within a matter of months. What you’re left with after that point is potentially dangerous junk, which still must be handled carefully but is pretty much useless as a weapon.
The fact that caches of this abandoned material turned up years later is not evidence that the Bush administration’s WMD claims were accurate. No matter how many times it’s cited as evidence for that, the fact remains that no usable WMD stockpiles were ever found. The Bush administration may have talked themselves into believing their own story by compiling and accepting unreliable intelligence , but the story they told turned out to be totally inaccurate.
That doesn’t discount the possibility that ISIS has chemical weapons. There’s no question whatsoever that Syria had large stockpiles of greater sophistication than Iraq’s. Some may have been hidden before Bashar al-Assad agreed that they be inventoried and systematically destroyed. If so, the outcome of that failure to comply isn’t likely to be what he had hoped for.
Greggie, ever the lemming.
What I posted is accurate information. I’m afraid your information about the behavior of lemmings is less reliable.
If credible evidence turns up that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq produced and stockpiled significant quantities of binary nerve agents, I will certainly rethink my position.
@Greg: Well, Greg, it seems there were. Over 5000 rounds of it. Sorry.
Old news to those of us who were there and saw the ammo bunkers filled with organophosphate “pesticides”, surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers.
NY slimes is writing this leftist agitprop only because of the evidence that ISIS is using chemical weapons against their enemies, and the question being asked is WHERE the mustard and nerve agents are coming from. They are merely blowing smoke to avoid admitting the truth.
What is so difficult to grasp about the fact that the NYT article refers to old ordinance?
There’s nothing at all difficult about this, nor about understanding the limited shelf life of mustard gas, or of the sort of nerve agents that Saddam Hussein’s regime produced.
The problem is that there’s something you want to believe that the evidence simply doesn’t support.
@Randy: Sir Didn’t you assure us there was only one flag raising on Iwo? Did you retract that?
@Greg: Then why are we still destroying nerve and mustard gas at Pueblo Army Depot if it is not a threat? DS
@rich wheeler: Actually Rich, I was not there for the flag raising I was there to see the WMD.
@Greg: What is so difficult to believe that it was not old ordinance?
@Randy, #18:
Nobody said old explosive and chemical ordnance isn’t still potentially dangerous. Century-old unexploded artillery shells buried in European fields and forests remain dangerous, even though militarily useless. Tons are still recovered and disposed of yearly. Even long forgotten American Civil War ordnance can be deadly. A Virginia man was actually killed in 2008 when a Civil War cannonball detonated. Iron fragments of the cannonball were later found embedded in the front porch of a house 1/4 mile from the explosion. It’s not the sort of stuff you call Waste Management to come haul away.
@Greg: Why was it then that only a small number of ordinance was reported as found and this was identified as old ordinance? What the NYT is reporting on is ordinance outside of what was originally found and is still being found; shells mislabeled so as to not be identified as WMD but conventional rounds. The official reports were a few hundred old ordinance. This is 5000 of them. This is different. This is what we went in for.
Come on Greg, face the reality that a few knew (they having been there and seen it), many suspected and now the NYT has confirmed, yet in such as way as to keep the thin, weak lie alive that there were none that could have been delivered to an enemy; that there actually was, in fact, WMD’s in Iraq that Hussein could have used or transferred to terrorists, there were no “lies” to base the war on and, most importantly to current events, it turns out we really SHOULD have been there all along, to enforce the UN mandates and should have stayed to secure these weapons.
@Bill:In addition to exposing the revisionist history that there was no WMD in Iraq as a total fraud and lie, there are a few other key points that can be taken away from this. First, notice in the documents that were released, a number of them were whited out. In addition, they were classified S/NOFRN which stands for- “Secret, Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals”. There is information contained in those documents which is still deemed non-releasable for National Security reasons. It is a good bet that it could be information (perhaps newer material) that could prove useful to ISIS and other interested parties especially given the large swath of Iraq that is currently under control by ISIS compliments of the current regime’s bungling.
The second thing this release does is to call into question previous reports. Robert Kay in his report claimed that there was no WMD in Iraq and that his ISG did a thorough job looking for it. Those of us who were there knew this to be bullshit and these documents confirm it. His team missed 5,000. It now calls into question the rest of his report and raises serious doubts. For instance, he claimed that the buried trailers discovered which were identified by the CIA as mobile biological weapons labs were buried water purification units (WTF?). That fits in with the narrative that Iraq was WMD free but it doesn’t fit in now because Iraq wasn’t WMD free. Ditto for Saddam not restarting his WMD program. The later Deufler report is also now questionable because they “missed” finding almost 5,000 WMD as well.
What needs to happen now is that the leftist revisionist history of the last 10 years needs to be corrected.
You’re using uncovered caches of degraded chemical weapons left over from a war over a decade before as evidence that Iraq possessed some current ability to attack America with Weapons of Mass Destruction as of 2002. The contents of what had essentially become a toxic landfill are being misrepresented as readily available military weapons.
That is the historical revision people are attempting to make. They’re trying to revise history to justify the 2002 invasion and occupation of Iraq, which, as predicted, led to a power vacuum and the potential regional disaster that’s unfolding today. Failure to grasp the nature of the original error is extraordinarily dangerous. It could easily lead to a quick repetition, possibly with far worse consequences for the United States.
The setup for disaster is easy enough to see. Everybody is keeping their distance and demonstrating reluctance to commit. We can’t even trust our regional partners, who stand the most to lose if ISIS is successful. Turkey, for example, has recently been bombing the Kurds.
@Greg: I’m not one of those that suspected al Qaeda of having an artillery piece capable of reaching the United States from Iraq. The threat was one of those shells would be used as an IED in a populated area. So, the viability of the round as an artillery round is immaterial. What is material to the argument is that they existed as opposed to the left wing argument that Bush lied about their existence.
Absolutely true and inarguable. It was predicted a power vacuum would result… when our troops were withdrawn. Which Obama did and which created the dangerous power vacuum. And the disaster.
@Greg: You really are a DS Greg. Saddam buried all of the WMD that he didn’t move to Syria. He flew his planes to Iran, too. Get back on your meds!
@another+vet: Saddam didn’t have water purification units. He could not even purify water for his cities let alone have a portable system.
@Randy, #26:
Right. Saddam Hussein buried or moved his most formidable weapons out of Iraq as part of his clever plan to resist a massive invasion by foreign powers that had announced their specific intention to get rid of him personally, once and for all. That makes perfect sense.
(BTW, the most recent U.S. war with Iraq actually commenced in 2003, not 2002. Pardon the typo.)
@Greg: Typos are not your major problem, Greg. Desperately clinging to what the left wing propaganda has indoctrinated you to believe is.
The WMD’s were there. They are still there and now ISIS has access to some of them. The very thing that Bush feared and fought to prevent has been enabled by Obama wanting a talking point for a campaign.
@another+vet: A.V. and Randy I will never question what you guys say you saw and I thank you for your dedicated service to our country.
My question to you both. Did the admin. know the history of the struggle and distrust between Sunnis Shiites and Kurds? Did they realize this problem could not be solved by military action–did they care?
The govt. under Sadham, that once disenfranchised the Shiites, more recently under Maliki has done so to the Sunnis, paving the way to the rise of Isil. WTF
@Greg: 11
So, you’d be willing to let them explode one of these mustard gas shells in your presence, without a gas mask?
is there a more exact definitin of ‘several more years’?
Give us the exact quote of the Bush admin and tell us again how it’s ‘wrong’. We all know that the newer weapons that were stockpiled for immediate use were taken out of the country just when the war started. We all know that ‘thousands of weapons are now in the hands of ISIS, so tell us one more time, how was the Bush Admin wrong?.
@Greg: 13.
Nope, she’s exactly correct.
@Rich Wheeler:
You will note, of course, that this way was paved by Barack Obama. He has now caught the tiger by the tail, but has no clue what to do with it.
@Redteam, #32:
I think it was pointed out here previously that periodic suicidal lemming stampedes over the cliffs is an urban legend that can be traced back to fabricated scenes from a 1958 Walt Disney documentary.
@Redteam, #31:
As evidenced by a propaganda image consisting of a satellite photo of a truck convoy leaving an Iraqi supply depot, creatively captioned with an assertion that they were all headed for Syria? Maybe they were all on their way to drive over cliffs into the sea.
Here’s a far more likely theory: They were rapidly moving war materials from centralized depots which were likely to become bombing targets to the locations where they were to be used to repel an impending invasion.
@Greg:
Nope, didn’t you just say the “lemmings stampede” is only a legend?
*baddump bump*
As I understand it, the lemmings all hold paws and go over the edge together, whistling “When You Wish Upon a Star.”
@Redteam: Believe W went in to please daddy and his neo-con henchmen Cheney and Rumsfeld. He knew more about Rangers infielders batting averages than history of Shiite-Sunni-Kurd struggle. Like BHO he was over his head in the job.
Believe Billy was only Outstanding Prez. since FDR. Look out, he’ll be back for at least 4 more in 2016.
@Greg:
First it’s a legend, then it’s a fact. Once a lib, always a lib. Can’t remember their version of the story for 5 minutes.