The Secret U.S. Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons

[eddie]

What an eye opening article!! Tells of badly American troops were cared for after being exposed to different kind of weapons from sarin and mustard gas agents! Most of the troops that were exposed from ammunition disposal units.

The way they were treated by medical personnel stationed in Iraq at the time, will definitely tick you off!

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...pons.html?_r=0

[ETR3(SS)]

What a load of BS! But I can't say I'm surprised by their treatment, it's like Vietnam and Agent Orange all over again. Wait 30 years and the feds will fess up to and try to make up for it.

[ikalugin]

30 year rule is actually awesome, you have no idea what kinds of treasure troves were opening pre Ukranian crisis for a cold war researcher.

[Schroeder]

Funny, it was announced today that IS actually got their hands on chemical weapons from Saddam's arsenal because the Iraqi forces were "unable to fight them back"....if you ever wanted to see a completely worthless army you don't have to search no more. Look at Iraq.

[ikalugin]

Ukranian army was pretty bad to begin with, but it got better.

What Iraq army needs now is an ongoing reform, learning on their mistakes, concentrating loyal and combat capable soldiers into cohesive units, selecting competend commanders and so on.

[eddie]

Originally Posted by ETR3(SS)

What a load of BS! But I can't say I'm surprised by their treatment, it's like Vietnam and Agent Orange all over again. Wait 30 years and the feds will fess up to and try to make up for it.

I couldn't agree more!

[vienna]

A really better question than the Iraqi Army's inability to "defend" the chemical stashes is why didn't the US military forces destroy or dispose of the stashes when they had jurisdiction over the areas during the occupation? Isn't it good common sense to get rid of something that could possibly be used against Allied forces if it happened to fall into the 'wrong hands'? Considering that the Bush Administration was in power during the greater part of this period and could/should have done something to correct the situation, common sense may have been to much to ask of Dubbya, Dick and their cohorts. It is particularly galling that these chemical weapons were from stashes either provided by or sanctioned by the Regan/GHWBush administrations back when Saddam was one of our "Good Friends"...


<O>

[August]

Good luck getting a Democrat congress to approve money for WMD destruction that they were denying even existed and the Democrat administration that followed continued to ignore the problem for another 6 years. Perhaps "common sense" was lacking on both sides?

[Catfish]

This is really terrible, they deserve the best treatment and get .. this ?
30 years, eh ?

Why don't you take 100 years like in England, only then you can be sure that everybody's dead and no one will have any recourse claims

All about laws of war eh?

[vienna]

Originally Posted by August

Good luck getting a Democrat congress to approve money for WMD destruction that they were denying even existed and the Democrat administration that followed continued to ignore the problem for another 6 years. Perhaps "common sense" was lacking on both sides?

Regardless of who you want to blame, the fact is there were no WMDs in Iraq as asserted by the administration at the time of the instigation of the Iraq War. What was found was the remnants of aging, pre-war stockpiles, most of which were there courtesy of the US. There was, is, and unless some wildly improbable discovery occurs, will never be a ‘smoking gun’. Some good questions: Why was the then administration so furtively trying to dispose of those remnants, operating in the shadows rather than acting in the open?; If the notion of the existence of WMDs was so vital to a justification for the war, why didn’t the administration even try to use their existence as proof?; Why did they deem it necessary to have the disposal activities classified as a secret if there were no ulterior motives?; and, as a question of personal interest, Why didn’t they have one of the contractors like Halliburton or Backwater do the work instead of putting troops in a hazardous situation? This is only a political party matter if you choose to make it so…

The situation the US finds itself in regarding Iraq, ISIL, and the various others is neither a Democrat nor a GOP issue. It is a long series of machinations fueled by self-interest (political, big business, personal), deceit, mismanagement, ineptitude, malfeasance, and indifference. Let’s look at what we have in Iraq:

1. The ascension of Saddam was if not orchestrated by, it was most certainly welcomed and abetted by certain factions in the intelligence and private sector business contingents. GHW Bush, as a member of, and later, leader of the CIA, had a significant hand in the positioning of Saddam as the leader of the Iraqi government. It should be noted certain others, such as Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, and a few others who would later turn up in the Regan, GHWB, and GWB administrations were active participants in the creation of the Saddam regime;

2. Saddam was armed by and bolstered by US administrations who used the idea of Saddam as a destabilizing factor in the disputes in which the US was engaged in with Iran and Syria. This led to the supplying of arms and expertise to Iraq, including chemical and biological weapons, some given outright to Iraq, some where the technical knowledge to develop such weapons was provided. This armament was used by the Iraqis in their war with Iran and in the attempts by Saddam to either subjugate or annihilate internal political, social, or tribal opposition. The US administrations in power at the time chose to look the other way and not act because of self-interest;

3. Iraq found out the US administration in power had been making deals with Iran as part of the Iran-Contra scandal. The administration also had declined to fight a lower court ruling overturning the seizure of hundreds of millions of Iranian assets in the US put in place by the previous administration following the taking of hostages at the American embassy in Tehran. The seizure was made as a financial sanction against the Islamic government, to cripple Iranian efforts to arm themselves by buying weapons and to provide a sort of escrow account against future claims by the hostages and their families. The matter could have been fought through to higher courts, tying up the assets for many years, but the administration chose not to, thereby providing Iran a very large pool of cash and denying the hostages their day in court and possible financial redress;

4. Following the disclosures of the US administration’s ‘backstabbing’ regarding Iran-Contra, Iraqi fighter aircraft attacked a US naval vessel, the USS Stark, firing Exocet missiles, severely damaging the Stark, killing 37 crewmembers, and wounding many others. The administration in power did little more than register a ‘strong protest’;

5. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, it was done with weapons and training provided by the US over the previous years. The US essentially catered the Iraqi military adventures. The US administrations in power at the time had to send in American troops and equipment to defend the Kuwaitis, the Saudis (who were next on Saddam’s list), and lest we forget, US oil company interests;

6. Instead of following through with a complete removal of the Saddam regime, the administration in power chose to enact a sort of standoff, leaving Saddam in power, his remaining military infrastructure in place (including those chemical/biological weapons), and merely impose a ‘no-fly zone’ as means of curtailing further Iraqi adventurism. The exact reasoning for this failure to complete the mission was and is not known. This standoff would remain as an awkward legacy for succeeding US administrations;

7. The situation regarding Iraq remained as a sort of ‘whack-a-mole’ game: every time Iraq would poke its military head up, the US would whack back down by air strikes. Not a very attractive or complete solution, but it did keep a bit of ‘stability’ in the region;

8. In the meantime, in Afghanistan, the Mujahedeen, trained, equipped and backed by the same US administrations and entities as had backed Saddam had transmogrified into the Taliban, and by extension, al Qaeda. Al Qaeda then went on to commit the atrocities of 9/11. A fully justifiable war was enacted and fought against those who had perpetrated the 9/11 attacks;

9. The administration in power got a burr in its saddle about Iraq and was desperate to find or devise a reason for a second front war. Failing to find any link between Saddam, Iraq, and the 9/11 attacks, the administration suddenly developed moral outrage concerning the possession of chemical/biological weapons by Iraq and the potential, or if you believed the administration, the certainty the Iraqis were going to sell or give those weapons to terrorists. A mighty media campaign was mounted with much bellowing of the perception Iraq was manufacturing massive amounts of chemical/biological weapons in remote, clandestine, and, sometimes mobile facilities. Charts, diagrams, and surveillance photos were trotted out showing the ‘evidence’ of the nefarious activities of Saddam and his minions. (This kind of reminds me of “Alice’s Restaurant” where Officer Obie shows up in court with his “8X10 color, glossy photos with a paragraph on the back of each one explain what each one was”.);

10. War was declared and the US swept into Iraq and swept Saddam out of power. It seemed to be a great victory except for a few nagging problems. Once the US troops entered Bagdad and the other Iraqi cities, no one seemed to know what to do next. There were many photos and films of US troops idling away the time in Saddam’s former residences while waiting for someone in Washington, DC to decide what to do next. The administration’s anticipated outpouring of gratitude by the ‘liberated’ Iraq citizenry failed to materialize. Instead, former Iraqi loyalists formed into insurgent groups and began attacking their ‘liberators’. Then there was the problem of the WMDs: the very rationale for the instigation of the war, the reported mass stockpiles, the clandestine facilities, and, even the mobile units just did not exist. To be certain, there were gas shells, but these were aging, ill-maintained remnants of the weapons either supplied by previous US administrations or the result of manufacturing done under US auspices. They looked high and low but found nothing. The proof was more that little or no active MWD manufacturing had occurred;

11. Much worse was the fact there was no endgame, no exit strategy for this war. It is not surprising: US troops were sent in ill-equipped and/or armed and little thought was given by the administration to their needs. It was rather disconcerting to see troops having to resort to ‘hillbilly armor’ to survive because armored vehicles adequate to the task were not being made available because the administration was trying to run a war ‘on the cheap’. It was even more distressing to hear of military families and other generous civilians having to spend their own money and effort to obtain and send to the troops such items as flak jackets and other protective gear, items that should have been provided for, and supplied by the administration before it sent those Americans in harm’s way;

12. Tens of thousands of troops died or were wounded and maimed physically and psychologically as a result of the war in Iraq. The given reason for the war did not exist. Whether this was the result of outright deception or gross malfeasance by the administration is left to history to ascertain. What is certain is that those troops deserved far better than what they got and ended up with; the people of the US deserved better than they got and ended up with; and the seeds of all the problems we have now with ISIL and other problems were sown by a needless war started by mindless idiots, bordering, if not extending into, the criminal…

I was one of those people who believed what the administration put forth; I believed those pictures and charts showing the ‘WMDs’, I supported the war. I was happy when Bagdad fell. But, then, I realized something was wrong. It became obvious there was no real, thorough plan behind the operation. No one seemed to be really in charge, it was an ‘improvisational’ war. And it was becoming obvious there was no ultimate plan or goal to end the war. Visions of Vietnam began to rise; memories of the USSR getting bogged down in Afghanistan and having to slink away in defeat. As the war progressed, the insurgency in Iraq led to a conclusion this would not be a ‘won war’. The US really could not afford, neither in troops, material, or financially to remain ‘forever’ in Iraq. It was obvious that, the minute we left, the outcome for Iraq was civil war, or invasion and occupation by Iran, or the installation of another Islamic state such as had occurred in Iran, or worse, another Afghanistan-like breeding ground for terrorism. This was obvious to most intelligent, or knowledgeable persons, but not to the administration. They still had visions of a WW2, Paris-like liberation scenario. They installed a government roundly despised and distrusted by all factions in Iraq; this did not matter to the administration in DC as long as the new Iraq government was amenable to the administration’s self-interests. Besides, once the administration was out of office, it was the next guy’s problem, much like all the other ‘little problems’ they left behind…

I am neither a Republican nor Democrat, much as I am not religious. This is because I have seen that stupidity, ineptitude, malfeasance, and any number of other failings are not defined by such things as party or faith. If such failings were so easy to define by specific categories, they would have been weeded out long ago much like a virus or illness. Unfortunately, like the common cold, there seems to be no cure…

There are times when I meet a person who has served in Iraq and I thank them for their service, I almost feel compelled to also apologize to them, to let them know I am sorry they had to go through their ordeal because people like me were taken in by the machinations of a deceitful, duplicitous, ignoble, and ungrateful administration…


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[vienna]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

Be fair, when Iraq was gassing the now noble and heroic kurds you could say that a hell of a lot of these wmds came courtesy of American assistance, but I think it is a stretch to say "most" of them did.

Damn good post though

Thanks, Tribesman...

When I said "most", I thought it would be understood that, directly or indirectly, the pre-'Iraqi Freedom' stockpiles of WMDs were the result of US either directly supplying completed weapons, the components for the weapons, or technical knowledge and/or support for the manufacture of the weapons. Not every WMD used against the Kurds was stamped "Made in USA", but the US was highly complicit and directly or indirectly responsible for Iraq having such weapons. It is known that the US, via third parties and intermediaries, also saw to it Saddam got what he wanted/needed as long as he played ball with the then US interests. It is not a stretch to say, without US backing and support, Saddam would probably not have gained power, and, if he had, he would not have been able to sustain his reign...


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[Platapus]

Dunno why people are surprised. The US has never treated its vets well. We always prefer our heroes dead. You can honour them cheaply and be done with it.

[Armistead]

It's sickening when you see the likes of Bush, Cheney, etc., claiming to be such lovers of the military, then say F them when politics get involved. It's always the political image that comes first.

Wait until IS drives a dirty bomb with such weapons into downtown Baghdad..

[August]

Originally Posted by vienna

Regardless of who you want to blame

I couldn't really be bothered to read your wot but if you'll check back you'll note that I was blaming both sides. You however seem determined to give the present administration a pass for ignoring the problem for the last six years. Bias much?

[Cybermat47]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Dunno why people are surprised. The US has never treated its vets well. We always prefer our heroes dead.

Not always.


Some people working for US colleges prefer them brain damaged, so they can easily manipulate them into giving the Colleges money