Saddam's WMDS

[unregistered]

 

[Sean]

How exactly was Bush lied about?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Bush hid them there to make Democrats look stupid.

 

[about_average]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/us-troops-were-injured-by-old-wmds-in-iraq.html

It's well known that Saddam Hussein produced chemical weapons in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, and by 2003 the shells and rockets were so old and damaged that they could not be used as designed. The Times report makes it abundantly clear that these were not the WMDs the Bush administration was referring to in the lead up to the war. This is the tenth paragraph:

The United States had gone to war declaring it must destroy an active weapons of mass destruction program. Instead, American troops gradually found and ultimately suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West.

A few paragraphs down, Chivers makes the point even more explicitly:

The discoveries of these chemical weapons did not support the government’s invasion rationale.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush insisted that Mr. Hussein was hiding an active weapons of mass destruction program, in defiance of international will and at the world’s risk. United Nations inspectors said they could not find evidence for these claims.

Of course, if the US had never given WMD to Iraq....

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The only thin they want to see is an ACME Atom Bomb.


Nothing else matters. Old news. Nothing to see here...

 

[Ishmael]

The only thin they want to see is an ACME Atom Bomb.


Nothing else matters. Old news. Nothing to see here...

Precisely the case. What is incredibly callous is denying the vets benefits and treatment so the political meme can be perpetuated.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Precisely the case. What is incredibly callous is denying the vets benefits and treatment so the political meme can be perpetuated.

Ishmael

Who cares?

They were the stupid and the desperate...

 

[about_average]

What is incredibly callous is denying the vets benefits and treatment

Cite?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Cite?

I found this without much effort:

The New York Times found 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers who were exposed to nerve or mustard agents after 2003. American officials said that the actual tally of exposed troops was slightly higher, but that the government’s official count was classified.

The secrecy fit a pattern. Since the outset of the war, the scale of the United States’ encounters with chemical weapons in Iraq was neither publicly shared nor widely circulated within the military. These encounters carry worrisome implications now that the Islamic State, a Qaeda splinter group, controls much of the territory where the weapons were found.

The American government withheld word about its discoveries even from troops it sent into harm’s way and from military doctors. The government’s secrecy, victims and participants said, prevented troops in some of the war’s most dangerous jobs from receiving proper medical care and official recognition of their wounds.

“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.”

Rear Adm. John Kirby, spokesman for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, declined to address specific incidents detailed in the Times investigation, or to discuss the medical care and denial of medals for troops who were exposed. But he said that the military’s health care system and awards practices were under review, and that Mr. Hagel expected the services to address any shortcomings.

“The secretary believes all service members deserve the best medical and administrative support possible,” he said. “He is, of course, concerned by any indication or allegation they have not received such support. His expectation is that leaders at all levels will strive to correct errors made, when and where they are made.”

 

[cjh]

Participants in the chemical weapons discoveries said the United States suppressed knowledge of finds for multiple reasons, including that the government bristled at further acknowledgment it had been wrong. “They needed something to say that after Sept. 11 Saddam used chemical rounds,” Mr. Lampier said. “And all of this was from the pre-1991 era.”

Others pointed to another embarrassment. In five of six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies.

Vette, do you read the stuff you post?

 

[cjh]

I found this without much effort:

That's fucked.

 

[Ishmael]

Vette, do you read the stuff you post?

In five of six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies.

How is that relevant? The whole "appears to have been designed" clause is specious in the extreme. Was the ogive slightly different than Russian designs? And so what? It's a technical specification available from open sources.

None of that information alters the fact that the shells were filled with chemical agents and that was a local decision.

Ishmael

 

[about_average]

I found this without much effort:

Well, yeah, that's fucked up.
On the other hand, at least the US has been consistent since, at least, WWII.
SS John Harvey

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

You do realize that I found that in the original posted article just above.

Right?

The headline kind of gives it away. This isn't about "finding the WMDs" because these are exactly the kind that causes the Left to go, so what? they were old! we knew he had them. It is about the lengths that government went to hide information from the public and possibly some of the veterans themselves. And no, before Queer and cracker show up, I have no intention of blaming the President.

 

[about_average]

You do realize that I found that in the original posted article just above.

While the outcome is the same, "denying the vets benefits and treatment" is not the same as keeping something secret and as a result people not getting treatment or benefits.
It sounds more like they were "denied treatment" because the doctors didn't know what they were dealing with. Not because the doctors were part of a conspiracy.
The same reason so many soldiers died in Bari in WWII.

 

[about_average]

How is that relevant? The whole "appears to have been designed" clause is specious in the extreme.

Relevant because the US gave WMD to Iraq then used "They have WMD!" as a reason to send the troops there who were exposed to the remains of them.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Well, yeah, the doctors were outside of the conspiracy, which wasn't so much a conspiracy as a mindset based in keeping on the good side of the civilian leaders in order to 'promote' career advancement.



As Machiavelli reminds us, a conspiracy is hard to maintain because it consists of malcontents each of who by disclosure has the ability to become contented.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

How do we make the jump, in your mind, from designed to gave?

Do you have some additional information that you wish to share?

 

[about_average]

How do we make the jump, in your mind, from designed to gave?

Jump? The US has known since 1983, when Iraq was getting beaten by Iran.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Jump? The US has known since 1983, when Iraq was getting beaten by Iran.

How is knowing they had WMDs become we gave them WMDs?

 

[about_average]

How is knowing they had WMDs become we gave them WMDs?

The US has known since the 80's the US provided Iraq with WMD.

 

[Ishmael]

The US has known since the 80's the US provided Iraq with WMD.

FFS do you have NO knowledge of history related to this subject?

First of all the knowledge of Mustard agent and it's production is well known and ancient history. No nation had to provide Iraq the materials or the production technology. With regards to nerve agents, we did provide Iraq with the precursors necessary to manufacture those agents. But you'd best understand that nerve agents are nothing more than insecticides on steroids and what we provided was stated to have been to used to produce insecticide. As Iraq is an agricultural nation the requests for those precursors was not unreasonable. Further, tests done on the chemical agents used against the Kurds and the Iranians showed evidence of the inclusion of a mycotoxin and that inclusion is signature of the Russian designed chemical weapons.

Regarding the biological agents, specifically Anthrax, that agent was supplied to Iraq as a result of a UN treaty that we are signatory to that states that any member state that constructs a research laboratory to specifications is allowed to have those agents for purposes of "research."

So the whole "we gave them the shit" and ending it at that doesn't come close to telling the whole story.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The US has known since the 80's the US provided Iraq with WMD.

We gave them Mustard Gas.

"Everyone knows this."

I do not know this. When, where, why and how did we provide Saddam with Mustard Gas?

 

[KingOrfeo]

From Salon:

Wednesday, Oct 15, 2014 09:25 AM EDT

No, Bush was not right about Iraq: How conservatives misread new Times bombshell

The right says a new NY Times report on chemical weapons in Iraq vindicates Bush. Even Team Bush disagrees!

Simon Maloy

The New York Times published an amazing story last night on the U.S. and Iraqi troops who discovered and were wounded by old and inoperable chemical weapons over the course of the Iraq war. In some cases, shoddy disposal tactics resulted in soldiers suffering injuries after being exposed to active chemical agents still inside the corroding munitions. The Pentagon withheld information about the weapons from soldiers on the front line, kept military doctors in the dark, and generally did everything it could to “suppress knowledge” about the injuries to U.S. personnel. It’s a remarkable piece of journalism.

But for many conservatives, the real news broken by the Times is that BUSH WAS RIGHT ABOUT IRAQ.

Benjy Sarlin ✔ @BenjySarlin

Can't we all just agree it's a good thing that George W. Bush kept us safe from these weapons getting into the hands of Islamic extremists

Brad Dayspring @BDayspring
Follow
.@BenjySarlin Can we also agree that those who mocked any statement that there were WMD's in Iraq in '03 & '04 were/are wrong?


11:52 PM - 14 Oct 2014

Dan Gainor @dangainor
Follow
Media said #Iraq didn't HAVE WMD. Ooopsie: The Secret U.S. Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons http://nyti.ms/1r6MXad


11:30 PM - 14 Oct 2014



The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons

The Pentagon kept silent as munitions left over from Saddam Hussein’s war with Iran found new targets from 2004 to 2011: American and Iraqi troops.
The New York Times @nytimes

It’s incredible that I have to write this sentence in October 2014, but here it goes. No, George W. Bush was not right about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Now, I know what you’re going say. “But look! The Times says they found WMDs in Iraq! The liberal media was wrong! Bush was right!” No, Bush was still very wrong. Very, very wrong.

Before we get into the actual reasons for why this doesn’t vindicate Bush, let’s think about this logically for moment. If the presence of these weapons proved Bush correct, then it stands to reason that the Bush administration would have come out at some point and said “hey, look at these weapons, we got it right.” But they never did that. They knew the weapons were there, and they had many years to wave them around as proof positive that they didn’t get many thousands of people killed based on false information, so why didn’t they do it?

The reason is very simple, and the Times report conservatives are claiming vindicates Bush actually explains very clearly why it does no such thing: “The United States had gone to war declaring it must destroy an active weapons of mass destruction program. Instead, American troops gradually found and ultimately suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West.” Many of the weapons, according to the Times, “appeared to have been designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies.”

The discovery of old, degraded chemical munitions in Iraq is not news. The Bush administration went to war expecting to find older weapons, along with a thriving new chemical weapons program (that didn’t exist). Ten years ago, the final report of the weapons inspectors sent to find Saddam Hussein’s WMDs (commonly known as the Duelfer Report) was released, and it noted that “a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered” in the country, but that Iraq had not produced any new weapons.

Back in the summer of 2006, Rick Santorum was on his way to losing his Senate seat and needed a “game changer” to save his political career. So he threw together a press conference to triumphantly announce: “We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons.” He was talking about “500 chemical munitions shells that had been buried near the Iranian border, and then long forgotten, by Iraqi troops during their eight-year war with Iran, which ended in 1988,” according to the Washington Post.

Everyone laughed at him, not just for how transparently desperate the stunt was, but also because Bush administration said Santorum was wrong. I’ll repeat that, so there’s no confusion – Bush administration officials said that the presence of ancient chemical weapons in Iraq did not vindicate George W. Bush’s case for war:

But defense officials said Thursday that the weapons were not considered likely to be dangerous because of their age, which they determined to be pre-1991.

Pentagon officials told NBC News that the munitions are the same kind of ordnance the U.S. military has been gathering in Iraq for the past several years, and “not the WMD we were looking for when we went in this time.”

There you have it. If the word of the Bush administration isn’t enough to convince you that Bush was not right about chemical weapons in Iraq, then I’m not sure what will. And the Times report, far from vindicating George W. Bush, is actually just further proof of the gross political manipulation that lay at the heart of the disastrous conflict he started.

 

[Balladeer08]

First, we always knew Saddam had chemical weapons, he'd used them on the Kurds.

Second, the discoveries of old chemical weapons happened in '03 to '06 according to the article.

This was while Dubya was in office.

So he lied about himself? This is the Democrats fault how?

I don't see how the facts coming out now supports your conclusions.

And I was never that much concerned about the WMDs. Saddam was an evil person, his children were monsters, their deaths made the world a better place.

But I think that could have been accomplished without resort to entire armies.