NY Times reveals secrets of WMD cover-up in Iraq

Fox News ^ | 15 Oct 14 | Fox

[xzins]

The New York Times...details U.S. forces in Iraq finding thousands of chemical weapons during the Iraq war. "From 2004 to 2011...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

[mj1234]

Not only are there stockpiles- but quite a few
of these “stockpiles” are NEW-

Where were these built?-

Supposedly in Europe and Communist countries-
POSSIBLY HELP from American Companies!

The U.N. - which was taxed to find these - 10’s of
THOUSANDS ! weapons- never found ANYTHING of
significance -

Here is my guess: If Bush had said here is the report
of the Thousands of weapons found- Along with
dozens of attacks on OUR soldiers- the Demonrats
would have complained that the EVIL republican
corporations supplied them!!

lose -lose- lose for Bush- so just say nothing-
(which he does all the time!- because he is
NOT a conservative-and cannot articulate a
conservative viewpoint)

[xzins]

It is impossible for the media to shut up a determined president. They can certainly argue against him, call him names, run outrageous exposes....but they cannot prevent him from standing before a microphone and repeatedly telling the truth to get a particular story out.

My personal opinion, now that I know the liberalism of Karl Rove to be a certain thing, is that this was a Rove decision, and that Rove and the other establishment types wanted this new homosexual culture, the peon-ization of America, and the demise of this current US Constitution.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

Bush probably didn’t say anything out of some stupidly misguided notion that he had to keep this quiet for “national security reasons” or some other reason “for the good of the country.” Its the reason he got his ass handed to him in the publicity wars with the Dems. He tried to “take the high road” and they sucker punched him and knifed him in the back and he ended up with toxic level approval ratings because of it. Bush had some good qualities but his refusal to fight the Dems destroyed him.

[No One Special]

People should actually read the NYTimes article all the way through. The problen is our troops were exposed and injured and this was covered up. It is not clear why it was covered-up nor is Bush or any top admin officials blamed.

Also in 2009 Iraq took the responsibility for decommisioning old ordinannce and some of them were also injured by chemical weapons.

Also a big area with old chem weapons is now controlled by ISIS.

[Norm Lenhart]

Which is exactly why some of us fight so relentlessly for ONLY electing people of principle and why so many more fight so strongly to shut us up.

this is a totally binary issue.

[Paine in the Neck]

Why is NYT telling us this? Why is NYT telling us this now?

Well, the use of WMD by ISIS is soon to be uncoverupable. It is going to be another major screwup of the left's conception of what should have been done in Iraq.

Hillary was SoS and a major foreign policy 'brain' during most of the period.

Hillary needs this to be brought out now so that there's 1. enough time to spin it ["Hillary voted for invasion"] and 2. so that it will be 'old news' by 2016.

[Norm Lenhart]

And so Ebola can provide cover for it’s exposition.

“We told you all this months ago but the Ebola thing must have had your attention. See? We are non biased!”

[Maceman]

An inconvenient truth is that even President Bill Clinton said that there were WMDs in Iraq, and actually bombed Baghdad to destroy them because they were a threat to the U.S.

As I have often posted here on FR:

On December 16, 1998, on the eve of the scheduled House vote on his impeachment, Bill Clinton launched a surprise bombing attack on Baghdad.

As justification for this exploit, he cited the urgent threat that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction posed to America, and the need for immediate action.

Almost immediately, the House Democrats held a caucus and emerged calling for a delay in the impeachment proceedings. House minority leader Dick Gephardt made a statement: "We obviously should pass a resolution by saying that we stand behind the troops. I would hope that we do not take up impeachment until the hostilities have completely ended."

Conveniently, a delay so near the end of the House term would have caused the vote to be taken up in the next session – when the newly elected House membership would be seated with more Democratic representation, thereby improving Clinton’s chances of dodging impeachment.

The Republicans did, in fact, agree to delay the hearings, but only for a day or two. Amazingly, Clinton ended the bombing raid after only 70 hours -- once it became clear that in spite of the brief delay, the vote would still be held in the current session.

Once the bombing stopped, Clinton touted the effectiveness and importance of the mission. As reported by ABC News : “We have inflicted significant damage on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programs, on the command structures that direct and protect that capability, and on his military and security infrastructure,” he said. Defense secretary William Cohen echoed the point: “We estimate that Saddam's missile program has been set back by at least a year.”.

[agere_contra]

Some Americans knifed America in the back by refusing to vote for Romney.

Those traitors allowed Obama a second term. Worse: they did it out of ‘principle’ - so there’s every reason to believe they’ll do it again and again, election after election, until the county is completely destroyed.

That’s a clear case of black and white, right and wrong. It’s a binary issue all right.

[MattinNJ]

Wait. What?

[Madam Theophilus]

I wonder if a lot of it has to do with what Bush Sr. did to support Iraq during the Iraq/Iran War (giving weapons illegally?); as well as the protection of the office of the President by continuing to suppress the truth regarding the Oklahoma bombing as well as the first attack on the World Trade Center in NYC.

Should I take off my foil hat now?

[Norm Lenhart]

Spare me the excuses. the very people you promoted, RINOs are the people that caused all this.

[shuck and yall]

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com PRINT October 15, 2014 11:15 PM NYT: There Were Thousands of Old WMDs in Iraq By Patrick Brennan After the U.S. invaded Iraq, American soldiers found, and in some cases were wounded by, thousands of chemical-weapons munitions and the U.S. government has been loath to talk about it, the New York Times’ C. J. Chivers reports tonight. Soldiers repeatedly uncovered caches of expired or degraded chemical weapons in the country and even had to deal with the munitions being incorporated by insurgents, perhaps unwittingly, into improvised explosive devices. It isn’t quite news that there are non-negligible numbers of chemical weapons left in Iraq, but Chivers’s story suggests they are much more numerous and more widely dispersed than had been disclosed. And disturbingly, as soldiers were exposed to hazardous, if maybe not deadly, weapons, almost none of these events were made known to the public. This seems to have been partly because the military didn’t have the resources to deal with the weapons, especially after it became clear that Saddam hadn’t had an active program or new munitions. High-level investigations, such as the 2004 Iraq Study Group, kept the discoveries quiet, even as the Pentagon was finding out some of the defunct chemical weapons could still be dangerous. The U.S. military could have been accused of not adequately complying with international law in dealing with the munitions now under its control (though the Pentagon says, given the circumstances, it followed the rules). Moreover, many of the weapons were developed or bought by Iraq with U.S. help, when Saddam Hussein was fighting Iran in the 1980s. The existence of these weapons doesn’t affect the debate over the war’s justification either way: They’re not evidence that Saddam Hussein was, as proponents of the war contended, in the process of resuming chemical-weapons production or starting other WMD programs. But on the other hand, as the existence of thousands of hidden or mislabeled chemical-weapons munitions reported in Chivers’s article could suggest, Saddam was clearly not complying with United Nations requirements about exposing and dismantling his chemical-weapons stores. The largest concentration of acknowledged chemical weapons, which the Iraqi government has been responsible for monitoring and dismantling after the U.S. withdrawal, is at the Al-Muthana chemical-weapons complex, northwest of Baghdad. That facility was in the news this summer: The Islamic State took control of it and all its contents in July. These old chemical weapons aren’t likely to be very useful militarily, but that doesn’t mean they cannot be dangerous, destructive, or terrifying, as the Pentagon seems to know. Here are the soldiers explaining a cover-up in their own words: “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.” The good news is that the Pentagon is now being forced into action, and will make sure that affected soldiers are getting the attention they need: Prompted by the Times reporting, the Army acknowledged that it had not provided the medical care and long-term tracking required by its chemical exposure treatment guidelines. It said it would identify all troops and veterans who had been exposed and update and follow their cases. “We’re at the point of wanting to make this right,” Col. Bill Rice, director of Occupational and Environmental Medicine of the Army Public Health Command said last Friday. “We can’t change the past, but we can make sure they are pointed in the right direction from this point forward.” Chivers’s whole piece, which includes a number of multimedia features on the soldiers affected, is here.

[xzins]

can you repost with the formatting or give the link? Thanks.

[CommieCutter]

The gut reaction is to say “Bush was right.” This actually makes me question President Bush who obviously had this information suppressed. It led directly to the demise of the republican party at just the time that we needed one more supreme court justice to change this nation.

Yeah..he allowed himself to be a punching bag and indirectly helped bring this current idiot into power by doing so.

[unread]

"Why would Bush want to cover it up and have his reputation sullied that he “lied about WMD’s”? This makes no sense."

Why doesn't someone ask George Bush that very thing..?

Are we THAT afraid of our politicians..?

Well...never mind....I really don't care anymore...

[wita]

I am quite sure there are many of us who personally know Iraq War veterans who one minute were on a mission, and their next conscious thought was when they woke up in a hospital in Germany wondering how they got there and why.

The army claimed to not know the reason either, and their symptoms and disabilities continue to this day. They are held together as an individual by heavy doses of drugs and mental doctoring.

[No One Special]

Here’s a link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/390338/nyt-there-were-thousands-old-wmds-iraq-patrick-brennan

[petitfour]

Maybe the issue is that we could not destroy the weapons. Better to not say they still exist than to tell terrorists that they are available for use at some point in time.

[wita]

finally!!!!!!!!!!

the real B I N G O!!!!!!!!!!!