The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons

Many felt this way, and arent branded "Liars". I havent seen any Lefties calling out John Kerry as a liar.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp


i dont see anyone on the left tagging Hillary as a liar

John Edwards?

Joe Lieberman?

http://www.rightwingnews.com/quotes...ed-about-wmd-so-did-these-people-version-3-0/

Seems like very selective, revisionist history to me. At the end of the day though, it now appears Bush was correct. WMD's were present. Unfortunately it looks like ISIS is using them and in the process proving wrong the spin of "too degraded to count".

 

That mustard could be drained into more modern munitions and would be as deadly as ever.

 

Sure looks that way.

http://nypost.com/2014/10/14/isis-reportedly-used-chemical-weapons-on-kurds/

Too degraded to count as WMD's.........

 

Rumsfeld 'helped Iraq get chemical weapons'
By WILLIAM LOWTHER, UK Daily Mail
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld helped Saddam Hussein build up his arsenal of deadly chemical and biological weapons, it was revealed last night.

As an envoy from President Reagan 19 years ago, he had a secret meeting with the Iraqi dictator and arranged enormous military assistance for his war with Iran. The CIA had already warned that Iraq was using chemical weapons almost daily. But Mr Rumsfeld, at the time a successful executive in the pharmaceutical industry, still made it possible for Saddam to buy supplies from American firms. They included viruses such as anthrax and bubonic plague, according to the Washington Post.

The extraordinary details have come to light because thousands of State Department documents dealing with the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war have just been declassified and released under the Freedom of Information Act.

At the very least, it is highly embarrassing for 70-year-old Mr Rumsfeld, who is the most powerful and vocal of all the hawks surrounding President Bush.
He bitterly condemns Saddam as a ruthless and brutal monster and frequently backs up his words by citing the use of the very weapons which it now appears he helped to supply.

The question is: Why has he never said anything about his role in the negotiations? 'Donald Rumsfeld has some explaining to do,' a senior Pentagon official said last night, while Congressional sources said that a Senate Committee was considering opening hearings to investigate exactly what happened.
The documents could hardly have been released at a worse time for Mr Rumsfeld, who is building up troops in the Gulf in preparation for a war with Iraq that is generally expected to start in about a month.

They will also embarrass Tony Blair as he attempts to build international support for military action.
And they will cause a headache for the Foreign Office, because the news will be seen by Islamic countries as a prime example of American hypocrisy over the issue.

For years Middle Eastern countries have accused the US of double-talk over Iraq. They are bitterly critical that the American government helped arm Saddam during the 1980s in a war against Iran, which at that time Washington regarded as its biggest enemy in the region.

America's critics are now disgusted by the way the administration has performed a somersault, and now expects them to agree that Saddam's regime should be treated as a pariah. This will make it even harder to persuade neighbouring states to offer Western troops bases and landing strips vital for such an onslaught.
But one thing was clear last night - President Bush will not let the embarrassment prevent him from forging ahead with his plans to attack Baghdad, and if that does happen Mr Blair will have no choice but to join him in the attack.

It was in late 1983 that Ronald Reagan made Mr Rumsfeld his envoy as the Iranians gained the upper hand in their war with Iraq.
Terrified that the Iranian Islamic revolution would spread through the Gulf and into Saudi Arabia - threatening US oil supplies - Mr Reagan sent Mr Rumsfeld to prop up Saddam and


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...lped-Iraq-chemical-weapons.html#ixzz3GDzJQqIy

 

The purity of the agent inside the * munitions depends on many factors,
including the manufacturing process,potential additives, and environmental
storage.While agents degrade over time,chemical warfare agents remain hazardous
and potentially lethal.
It was reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire
and use chemical weapons.One such guy was the recently deemed head of al Qaeda
in Iraq Al-Zarqawi who managed to take over Fallujah.Then had his body blown
apart by Bush's skill at ousting such bad guys.Same thing happened to
Uday and Qusay while Pappy Hussein { Saddam } went thru the ordeal of a proper
trial and then had his head snapped at the gallows.

 

The fact there were abandoned old chem weapons found in Iraq is not news. They are not why we invaded Iraq. They are not WMDs. To be a WMD, it has to be functional and capable of mass destruction.

 

You don't think those warheads could have been attached to a rocket munition and fired into a civilian area? Or, the chemical compounds inside drained out into newer warheads?

Read the article. Our soldiers were wounded -just- moving the stuff, let alone them being fired off. Some of them were just damaged from explosions of conventional warheads. Imagine if they had fired off correctly? Just because the outside of the shell is corroded doesn't mean they cannot inflict grave harm. There are still munitions from WWII treated very carefully because they can still be deadly.

 

Iraq was not urgent threat justifying invasion and occupation.

You'll have to ask them how they were mislead.

But they did not have the benefit of the intel Bush had in March 2003 of the UN inspectors having made hundreds of unannounced, unfettered spot checks all over Iraq for the supposed WMD and not finding it.

 

No.

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.

Then, during the long occupation, American troops began encountering old chemical munitions in hidden caches and roadside bombs. Typically 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets, they were remnants of an arms program Iraq had rushed into production in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

All had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area, according to those who collected the majority of them.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...t/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html

The fact that they still may have contained dangerous compounds when being destroyed doesn't mean they were still effective warheads for dispersing the agents in use. It's possible some might have. Other might have been more dangerous to the firer than the target. There's a reason we generally don't use 20+ year old ammunition that's been abandoned.

 

What????????

Everybody knew it. Nobody withheld anything. Bush's detractors could not/will not be swayed, even though they were told over and over and over again.

Now it's funny to watch them backtrack. Yesterday's mantra: There were no WMD. Today's mantra: Well, we gave them the WMD.

How fun is this?

 

Not disagreeing with the final sentence, but the rest I do disagree with. If a pair of warheads were still functional, they could cause mass loss of life. That's the end all, be all, and some of those warheads were not just buried, they were stored in shipping crates, etc.

Sorry, I disagree. He still had WMD's, and wasn't actively destroying them. Saddam was dissembling, and burying the weapons, not destroying them.

 

GEORGE BUSH WAS DEAD ON. I do believe all you truth distorting dems. Owe pres. Bush a big fat i am sorry. Seems like as usual you dems are again the ones who lie. SHAME ON YOU.

 

No, it doesn't.

But you would know that if you read your own link!

 

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.

Then, during the long occupation, American troops began encountering old chemical munitions in hidden caches and roadside bombs. Typically 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets, they were remnants of an arms program Iraq had rushed into production in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

All had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area, according to those who collected the majority of them.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...t/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html

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Funny that Bush was "dead on," and yet he didn't try to claim this old, abandoned unusable shells were WMD justifying the war.

If they had found WMD in Iraq that justified their costly war, you bet your ass they would have trumpeted the news.

 

No they did not these were buried there years earlier. Years not months. According to Bush we were in sever danger and attack could happen at any moment. Try again to justify a war that should have never happened.

 

They found plenty, but noone wanted to count them. People on the left here as things were posted were quick to jump to the "too degraded" to count defense.

Ask the Kurds in Kobani how that assesment worked out.

 

We didn't go to war with Iraq because of Weapons, Moldy and in Disrepair.

 

Ask those Kobani Kurds how "Moldy and in Disrepair" worked out last month.

 

Come on now, you can do it, it wont kill you. Just say it. I AM SORRY PRESIDENT BUSH. You were correct all along.

 

Excuse me if I wait for something more believable than the likes of "Brietbart" or the "NY Post". There is no confirmation that chemical weapons were used or if they were, they were from Iraq and not Syria.

I will say this, if indeed there were chemical weapons found in 2005-06 that were indeed as dangerous as you claim they are, they the US's failure to destroy those weapons when they found them borders on the criminal. It's mind boggling to me they would find weapons as dangerous you claim and just leave them there.

 

CBS and the NY times a little more palletable?

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/american-soldiers-exposed-to-chemical-weapons-during-iraq-war/
.

Mind boggling to me as well. I can only guess that they didnt find them all.

 

The bulk of those old abandoned chemical weapons were found in 2004-06.

Bush in '06:

Now, look, I didn’t — part of the reason we went into Iraq was — the main reason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn’t,

Now, the one man in the world with the most to gain by proving his costly war in Iraq was in fact not based on a "mistake" is George Bush.

And yet he stated they did not have WMD, and has never retracted that account.

Rove said the same thing:

In his new memoir “Courage and Consequence,” Republican strategist Karl Rove admits that no Weapons of Mass Destruction were found in Iraq, and his failure to not push back harder against then-president George W. Bush’s insistence to invade Iraq was “one of the worst mistakes he made” during the Bush Administration.

http://www.therightperspective.org/2010/03/03/rove-admits-no-wmd-found-in-iraq/

Those guys, who had everything to gain if there were indeed WMD in Iraq, both admit there wasn't, notwithstanding the old abandoned shells found in Iraq.

Hard to imagine, but they seem to have a lot more integrity than a lot of conservatives around here.

 

WMD are WMD. Deadly weapons used to kill en mass like Saddam used against the
Kurds doesn't change the relevance.Unless one is an Obama or democrat toadie.
Which explains why at the time or the discovery of those 500 munitions mostly
projectile and barrels of chemical weapons Only Sean Hannity at Fox covered.
There was a virtual " blackout " by the Media about it.Like - Fast & Furious - and
what the Lapdog media is attempting to do with the IRS Scandal and Benghazi
and also the fact that the Berghdal Report has been completed and no one in the
media is demanding EXCEPT Fox for it to be released to the public.
This is now Official.That the Mainstream media is working in COLLUSION with
the democrat party to block and blackout ANY news that poorly relates to the Democrats.
Explain why under Bush's entire 2 terms the words " Casuality Count " were constantly
mentioned.As soon as Obama took over in Our WH those 2 words Failed to ever appear
again.
Explain how that works.

 

Saddam had mustard gas.

Mustard gas is WMD. Always has been.

GW Bush did not lie and you look dumb claiming he did.

 

The found the vast bulk of them '04-'06.
In late 2005 and early 2006, soldiers collected more than 440 Borak 122-millimeter chemical rockets near Amara, in southeastern Iraq. And in the first nine months of 2006, the American military recovered roughly 700 chemical warheads and shells, according to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

...

Even as the Senate committee worked [in the Summer of 2006], the American Army made its largest chemical weapons find of the war: more than 2,400 Borak rockets.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...t/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html

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Oh, so according to you he was lying when he admitted there was no WMD found in Iraq.

Got it.

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20 year old abandoned, unusable weapons are not WMD. Ask Bush.