Posted on 10/30/2014 9:32:14 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
The Pentagon will offer medical examinations and long-term health monitoring to servicemembers and veterans exposed to chemical warfare agents in Iraq as part of a review of how the military handled encounters with chemical munitions during the American occupation, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
An Oct. 15 Times story found that while the United States had gone to war looking for an active weapons of mass destruction program, troops instead quietly found and suffered from the remnants of the long abandoned arsenal.
Since that article, which detailed instances of exposure that the military kept secret in some cases for nearly a decade, more veterans and servicemembers have come forward, the Times reported. To date, neither the Pentagon nor any of the services have released a full list of chemical weapons recoveries and exposures.
The Times found that the military did not follow its own guidelines in the initial care of many patients, and did not establish a means for tracking their health, as guidelines also required.
In response, two senior Army doctors said in interviews this week that new medical examinations for troops and veterans who were exposed to chemical munitions would begin in early 2015. The Navy too has announced it will ramp up care.
Maj. Gen. Gary Cheek, deputy commanding general for Army operations, said the accounts of poor medical care and follow-up were disturbing. I am not going to try to excuse it, he said.
But he defended the classification of chemical-weapons incidents, telling the Times that the military did not want to provide information to insurgents that Iraqs old chemical munitions could be effective.
Rear Adm. John Kirby, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagels spokesman, suggested that position is under review. The secretary obviously remains committed to preserving operational security but also recognizes the value in making available as much information as possible to veterans preparing or continuing to file VA claims, he said.
The new accounts increase to at least 25 the number of U.S. troops exposed to chemical agents.
The latest accounts mostly fit a familiar pattern, the Times wrote. They include two Army bomb disposal technicians who picked up a mustard shell at a roadside bombing in 2004; two Navy disposal technicians who handled mustard shells in 2006 and 2007; and members of an Army infantry platoon who said they were denied decontamination and swift medical evaluation after inhaling mustard vapors in 2008, when soldiers were destroying a buried chemical-munitions stockpile.
The accounts of still other troops and veterans suggest there were more instances of exposure, and that there could be a larger number of exposed veterans than the services have acknowledged or perhaps even know about, according to the report.
Jonathan Martin, a former Marine who was exposed to mustard agent and whose exposure was confirmed by the Marine Corps, told the Times that when he tried to tell the Department of Veterans Affairs about his exposure he had been doubted. It would be nice, he said, to get some recognition that this actually happened.
Active Duty/Retiree ping.
bttt
Isn’t that an admission that there were chemical weapons there but, we concealed that fact, for operational and security reasons?
Simply. Yes.
Wonder if this has anything to do with the looney Dr Meryl Nass who went on a rampage trying to [falsely] charge a bioweapons researcher back in the Amerithrax investigations after 9/11... she was big into Gulf War Syndrome and the far left.
Pretty much.
They were concealed for political reasons. No one is really sure why.
The photo is of impact fuses. Doesn’t tell us much.
“Bush Lied”
sarc
Karl Rove
Not revealing the presence of WMDs was intentional or it was accidental.
It was with good reasons or it was with spurious reasons.
I vote for intentional and spurious.
My understanding is that Saddam did not color-code his munitions. Hence, the Incident at Kamisayah in ‘91 and no doubt others (smaller ones) in later years involving detonation of individual projectiles as opposed to massive storage facilities.
There was a deliberate decision to coverup the WMDs. This wasn’t for operational reasons. The Iraqi’s knew what they had, the troops knew what they had, our enemy knew what was there. Only the public didn’t know for sure.
To deny medical care for troops exposed to these weapons for political reasons was and is criminal.
“Clearly, there were no weapons of mass destruction.” or “We know now there was no WMD.” “There is indisputable evidence of global warming.” Anytime a Democrat speaks with certainty, you should hold the opposite opinion. Furthermore, you should know that they’re lying and that they know they’re lying.
> as part of a review of how the military handled encounters with chemical munitions during the American occupation...
Not Iraqi Freedom, “American occupation”. The source of this is Stars and Stripes.
The media is trying to spin this as “Bush lied, there were no weapons program, but there were old shells from the 80s that used European made US designed shells, and that is the cover up”
I think the leftist blackmail is that there were no current visible program backed by rogue states, but “old” shells from a previous program that is spun out to be German backed with US design.
However project Sarindar was a Russian assistance of Saddam in erasing all traces of Russian production by sending the stuff to Syria...
This jumping on veterans is about a cover up in order to hide another cover up.
I will probably see this on ABC, NBC, and CBS nightly news tonight. Probably read it on the front page of the NY Times tomorrow too. I am going to flip it over to CNN and see if they have the story on right now.
For those who think I am serious. I am not.
Good catch, I’m so used to reading libeal cap I barely notice it anymore!
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