Pentagon withheld information about decades-old chemical weapons during Iraq War, report claims

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.

Pentagon withheld information about decades-old chemical weapons during Iraq War, report claims

Everytime some one brought up that WMD was not found in Iraq, I would have to tell them they were wrong, I saw it with my own eyes, but was never told to keep quiet about it. And as the article states, they were older rounds. Maybe not as deadly as when new, but still deadly even in a degraded state.

I also wonder how many unidentifiable chemical munitions were detonated in the unexploded ordinance pits, thus exposing people to low amounts of chemical agents.

The Times also reports that as the U.S. stay in Iraq dragged on, doctors became less aware of how to treat wounds sustained by chemical weapons. Military officials reportedly attributed the soldiers' wounds to conventional weapons or other factors to prevent acknowledging the discovery of pre-1991 chemical weapons. In one case, a wounded soldier who suffered burns and blisters due to mustard gas was presented with a Purple Heart by former Secretary of the Army Peter Geren. Weeks later, he was told that he had been denied the medal because the Army had determined that his wounds had not been suffered in enemy action.

a reply to: TDawgRex

looks like your story and mine on all the service men and women being forced to keep this secret tie together.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

of course when it comes time to look for heads to roll you know they'll just turn it back on us Vet's and say, we should known better than to believe our leaders esp when they give you that big toothy smile while they say,

Naw, that odd smell in the air is nothing more than the result of eating a bad Falafel

I think you should leave your thread open bud...
yes we use a lot of the same sources but your thread is about how the Pentagon withheld information on the WMD's themselves...
mine is about the secret victims of... close yeah but still apples and oranges .

ETA...
Yeah you beat me by one whole minute... but only cause I still type with two fingers!
okay so sometime I use the tip of my nose too...

Gulf war syndrome, comes to mind, and all the service people who had to fight to get treatment for their various "unknown" maladies….
very, very sad.
tetra

a reply to: TDawgRex

I saw this story this morning and have mentioned this in a few other threads reply over the years. I will try to hunt down my posts later when I get home and am not on my phone.

I never came across any caches, but I found a couple IEDs that the insurgents had used mustard rounds instead of HE rounds. Most likely they didn't realize they had them.

Or we would find blown up fragments. Sometimes they would accidentally use illumination rounds and you would just get a pretty show instead of being blown up.

I think I heard of one team who ended up with mustard burns on their hands.

Anyway, they weren't very common, but they were definitely there.

The WMD was secret because the weapons were built in the US for the Iraq/Iran war.

I guess, the Democrats will need to change their talking points about the no WMD . Bush 43 knew there were WMD in Iraq because his father sold/gave them to Saddam.

a reply to: buddah6

If it was secret, than it was the worst kept secret ever. I remember reading stories back in the eighties about Rumsfeld negotiating weapons deals for the Reagan Administration with Saddam and it was brought up back then. A lot of people in Congress weren't that happy about it.

a reply to: TDawgRex

I can say when it came to us grunts, we didn't know what a chemical weapon looked like.

to me that's just another propane tank looking thing...

in other words we may have been there looking for WMD's but we were never told what they were supposed to look like?

a reply to: HardCorps

I held three MOS's. Cav Scout (Light), NBC (w/Recon identifier), and the last half was PSYOP. So any time my Command suspected anything chemical related, they'd send me out there to scope it out. I stayed pretty busy in 04-05 and the year flew by.

And I became very familiar with a country that I really wanted no part of after being there in the first Gulf War. I absolutely hate deserts! I'm not fond of the American desert, why did they keep sending me to other countries deserts?

a reply to: TDawgRex
I'm fairly sure that GB 41, when he was CIA chief, knew or maybe arranged WMD to be given to Saddam. It was the CIA's main goal to contain Iran after the Shaw was deposed in the late 1970's. God only knows what the full extent of the types of weapons that were given to Iraq. We now know it was at least chemical WMD by what we found. It may have included biologics as well...who knows?

My unit was activated during 12-90 to 5-91 for Desert Shield/Storm and I share your love of sandy places.

Here's my most recent one. lost patience by the time I got to last June.

originally posted by: watchitburn
Of course there were chemical weapons there. I've been telling people that since we started finding IEDs using Mustard rounds. There weren't many, but they were most definitely there.

But this is an awkward turn of events, maybe we'll get some kind of half assed explanation this time.

originally posted by: HardCorps
a reply to: TDawgRex

looks like your story and mine on all the service men and women being forced to keep this secret tie together.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Please add further comments to the ongoing discussion in the above linked thread.
Thanks

**Thread Closed**