Posted on 11/07/2014 8:02:03 AM PST by SeekAndFind
A bombshell New York Times investigation revealed in mid-October that hundreds of American soldiers were exposed to chemical weapons while serving in Iraq. Worse than that, the experiences of these soldiers was covered up by Defense officials during the Bush and Obama eras. Today, the Pentagon is finally acknowledging that American servicemen and women did suffer exposure to chemical agents while serving in Iraq.
“American troops were exposed to chemical weapons multiple times in the years following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, while the Pentagon kept their discoveries of the expired or degraded weapons secret from investigators, fellow soldiers, and military doctors, according to a published report,” The Times reported in October.
The New York Times reported late Tuesday that American troops reported finding approximately 5,000 chemical warheads, shells, or aviation bombs in the years following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. On at least six occasions, soldiers were wounded by those weapons, which had been manufactured before 1991. In all, the paper reported that 17 U.S. soldiers and seven Iraqi police officers were exposed to chemical agents during the war. The U.S. government said its number was slightly higher, but did not release a specific figure.
This stellar reporting finally generated some acknowledgment from the Pentagon. On Friday, the Department of Defense conceded that, since 2003, more than 600 American soldiers have been exposed to chemical warfare agents in Iraq.
“Having not acted for years on that data, the Pentagon says it will now expand outreach to veterans,” The Times reported. “One first step, officials said, includes a toll-free national telephone hotline [1-800-497-6261] for service members and veterans to report potential exposures and seek medical evaluation or care.”
This report suggests that Defense Sec. Chuck Hagel’s “prodding” of officials to reexamine post-deployment debriefing reports yielded a trove of information about the soldiers who believed they had been exposed to chemical weapons in Iraq.
Unsurprisingly, those veterans who did suffer the effects of exposure are not impressed by the Pentagon’s belated honesty.
“It’s too little, too late,” said one veteran who was exposed while destroying Saddam Hussein-era chemical artillery shells in 2008. “No one ever believed me. They were like, ‘Oh, that never happened.’”
Another soldier told The Times on the condition of anonymity that he was issued a “gag order” which legally forbade him from discussing the chemical artillery he uncovered in Iraq.
Beyond the tragedy of soldiers being exposed to chemical weapons in Iraq is the absolute insult of allowing these service personnel to return home to a country where many though believed they were making their experiences up. Some, like The Daily Beast’s Eli Like, have alleged in their reporting that the decision to not acknowledge soldiers’ exposures to pre-1991 chemical weapons was a political determination made inside the Bush White House.
Some of Lake’s sources suggest that the Bush administration was simply not interested in re-litigating the WMD issue by 2006. According to The Daily Beast, some in the administration found the reappearance of WMD so vindicating that they wanted the former president to deliver a press conference next to recovered chemical warheads while wearing a protective suit. That theatrical idea was nixed not only because of the threat to Bush’s safety, but because the White House had apparently determined that the WMD argument had already been lost.
There are too many outstanding questions about this incident to not demand a thorough investigation. Upon the conclusion of an independent inquiry, a formal apology is due to these soldiers who suffered horrible injuries which their country could not acknowledge.
Our own gov’t proves again to be our worst enemy.
Maybe we sold them the weapons. Wouldn’t be convenient for them to be used against us would it? Seems to happen quite frequently now.
This isn’t possible. The TV told us over and over and over that “BUSH LIED!!!”.
We have 3 sons who served 5 tours in Iraq from 2003-2008.
It seems like it would be helpful for the DoD to provide more details as to the dates and locations for the potential exposure, instead of just having an 800 # for people to call, if they think they were exposed.
uNPOSSIBLE. Back when I worked at a newspaper, one of my editors told me specifically that there were no WMDs in Iraq and that the guys I had talked to (in private life, not ‘professionally) that were there and had handled them were a bunch of liars looking for attention.
So this story doesn’t even exist.
This an obvious lie since the media and the LIB/DIMs have said there were no chemical weapons there. This is insanity writ large. There were no chemical weapons in Iraq.
Remember... we have Karl Rove to thank for this, too.
All hot air as no specifics on the agents that the troops were exposed to.
“Remember... we have Karl Rove to thank for this, too.”
Just what I was thinking. Sounds like Karl Rove has his fingerprints all over this.
Why should anyone serve when they are going to get treated that way???
I have a few lib friends who stoutly refused to believe that Saddam EVER!!! had any WMDs. I told them about the murders of the Kurds by Hussein's chemical weapons, and they looked me in the face and said it was all a CIA/gov. lie.
Now some of them want to move the goalposts and say Bush lied because he said we'd find ongoing WMD systems. We found labs and other places scrubbed clean ahead of our military advance as could be predicted by the lag time between announcing the invasion and the actual invasion. Moved to Syria or destroyed.
I think many libs simply can't wrap their heads around the fact that Bush was right. Degraded or not, there were thousands of WMDs in Iraq that weren't destroyed.
The same editor that told me that ALSO told me, in the same conversation no less, that the degraded WMDs he said that didn’t exist to begin with, were no danger to anyone.
When I asked him if he’d put his kids in a room with them he called me a right wing nut job that wants children dead.
But ‘we’ are the crazy ones. And the media, from local to national, are FILLED top to bottom with these people. If people had any idea how bad it really is, they would not spend one nanosecond of their lives consuming MSM information. Because not one iota of it that sees print or video isn’t twisted beyond recognition.
If the media tells you water is wet, stick your head in the bucket and check.
You are talking about a government that sent the USS Ronald Reagan and its crew through the exhaust plum of three melting out nuclear reactors. At the time all the Japanese could do was vent as the cores were melting out of their RPV’s. The Reagan spent a few hours in the plum and the lawsuit involving hundreds of sailors continues.
Plum = plume
Like all the libs who supported Clinton when he passed the Saddam removal act in 1998 (by any means necessary) and all the libs who declared Hussein had WMDs pre-war, but then he didn't have them when we invaded Iraq, this announcement by the Slimes will soon be a non-event in liberal land.
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