Washington concealed US troops exposure to chemical weapons in Iraq - intel docs - RT News - 1 views
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American soldiers discovered more than 4,990 chemical munitions in Iraq, according to Iraqi and US officials and previously classified intelligence documents, which may now be in the hands of Islamic State militants. For much of the duration of the Iraq War, which saw US soldiers open a military invasion against the Ba’athist country in March 2003 amid tremendous international outcry, US forces "repeatedly encountered, and on six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons” leftover from the Iraq-Iran War, reported the New York Times.
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The hefty eight-part report, largely based on interviews and highly redacted intelligence documents, said “17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers…were exposed to nerve or mustard agents” between 2004 and 2011. The article detailed the harrowing chemical encounters of several servicemen, including Sergeant Duling, who in August 2008 unwittingly led his unit into a munitions pit outside Baghdad. “This is mustard agent,” he said, after carrying out an examination of the contents of the rusting artillery. “We’ve all been exposed.” At first blush, it may seem inconceivable that the United States, which had argued for an invasion of Iraq on the grounds that it was harboring weapons of mass destruction (an accusation that the UN weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq prior to the American invasion/occupation had proven to be incorrect), would want to keep the discovery of WMDs in Iraq under wraps.
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One reason for the hush-up, the report suggests, is that the United States was largely responsible for Iraq having chemical weapons in the first place. “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,” it said. Many of the casings were M110s, which the United States military had developed decades ago to disperse white phosphorous or mustard gas.
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