The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons

I didn't say you did I DID. Surely you are not supporting her for President are you?

Your fantasy claiming the Bush administration said Saddam WAS an imminent threat, had he been an imminent threat we wouldn't have waiting to invade nor would any congressional approval have been needed.

He was in gross violation which we knew at the time and was proved after he was removed from office.

Why did his airspace need to be controlled and inspectors roaming the country if he had no WMD and posed no threat?

Approval was granted in previous resolutions and I could care less about what the UN approved or did Saddam had the UN in his back pocket.

You>> Saddam had already been punished for that.

And now you have to deny your own words in your attempt to be snarky.

In fact it had not since Clinton had failed to deal with Saddam as he should have, Bush inherited the mess he created and dealt with it.

 

"The Iraqi government and military collapsed within three weeks of the beginning of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq on 20 March."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein#Invasion_of_Iraq_in_2003

The war with Iraq, the removal of Saddam and his government and the surrender of the military, lasted about 3 weeks and had very few coalition casualties.

It was when al Qaeda and other terrorist groups began sending fighters to Iraq moving the front of their war against us there. That was a strategic mistake on their part as they had maintained the advantage in Afghanistan and gave that up moving their main efforts to Iraq. Those casualties were just shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq.

And spare me your bromides and platitudes, they do not substitute for rebuttal of the facts.

 

One of his biggest mistakes was not removing Saddam and forcing the military to surrender in the field.

Try to make some sense next time after you have read the article.

I could care less, stick to the topic because you are looking quite silly base on the reports in the article.

 

When you can refutes WHAT WE FOUND let me know.

 

Again yes or no, the WMD threat Saddam posed began and ended with the WMD UNSCOM had cataloged and could not fine?

Are you still denying the cache's of precursor chemicals and new chemical weapons shells we found hidden in underground camouflaged bunkers? I pointed this out to you months ago.

 

You been completely refuted long ago.

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What "WMD threat"? Iraq had no WMD.

No, I'm waiting for you to back up your claim that they found "brand new" WMD.

And after about 10 posts you're still dancing and I'm still waiting.

 

No kidding. What a joke. What is also ridiculous about this argument is that buried shells such as this were part of Saddam's dismantlement program.

The argument the Bush admin gave the world in order to justify going into Iraq was that Saddam had an active WMD program that was an imminent threat to the Continental US.

Clearly a bunch of old chemical shells from days gone buy that were buried do not help Bush's case.

 

What does Hillary have to do with the Bush administration making up lies to go to war ?

LOL So if Saddam was not an imminent threat then why did we go to war ?

You have presented no proof of this.

Why are you asking me ?

ROFL The previous resolution did not allow for the US to unilaterally to invade Iraq. Do you not know the difference between the UN and the UNSC ?

Do you have any evidence for your made up fantasy that Saddam had the UNSC in his back pocket ?

Punishing Saddam for invasion of Kuwait is not saying that Iraq 2 was punishment. duh ?

Deny what words... Mr. made up accusations .

Look at you squirm ! The fact that Clinton did not go to war with Iraq has zero to do with the fact that the Bush administration distorted the truth, embellished the facts, presented lies as fact, and ignored evidence that disproved his claims in order to go to war.

 

Your inherent claim that contribution to the deficit of the action in Iraq was limited to 3 weeks is abject nonsense and no amount of squirming and disingenuous denial and name calling will change that fact.

 

Even Bush has the integrity not to try to argue this abadnoned junk were WMD.

 

Exactly. Nor did Powell stand up in front of the world an claim "Saddam has some old buried chemical shells" and that is why we are invading.

Can you say.... Laughed out of the Room ?

 

Who are you talking about? Iraqis? ISIS? US demolition guys?

Problem is when you blow that stuff up it gets all over, including potentially the guys who blow it up. Didn't you read the article?

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Prove your claim that "more is being found by ISIS" I call bull(*)(*)(*)(*). It's more likely to kill the people handling it than anyone else. And it's certainly not a weapon of mass destruction.

Funny, conservatives spent the last 8 years claiming Bush was telling the truth, but now claim he's been lying.

 

I believe invading Iraq was a major geopolitical error, since removal of Saddam allowed radical Islam another frontier to stage their war on the west.

But we did have chemical warheads.

They may have been buried, but he did have them. Just because charlatans like to claim these aren't WMD's doesn't mean they aren't deadly and couldn't have killed or wounded thousands of civilians.

 

Bluesguy wrote: “Read the above and read the OP and are you denying that we found his hidden cache's of precursor chemicals, deadly in their own right, along with the new chemical artillery shells, all proscribed, all undeclared, all hidden from inspectors. … Here's another for you.” http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/...r=0#more-55552

Here you mean that list of headers from 2005? Where’s the context to substantiate them? You didn’t require that I suppose. Nor, as your response to Iriemon’s reply proved, it matters not that Bush, as well as others in his administration, have clearly acknowledged that there were no WMDs found, well after the date of your “new” evidence. That is, not anything that constituted “a grave and gathering danger.” You say, read the OP and that subsequent blog you posted but neither of them support your contention. You want to place great weight on the existence of these old munitions, that they were still dangerous & Saddam, who was repeatedly violating UN resolutions, was suppose to have destroyed them long ago. While these said stockpiles were certainly part of the rationale, the administration deliberately left out how useless & antiquated these weapons were. According to Hans Blix, after some 700 inspections, his teams found only “a stash of nuclear documents, some Vulcan boosters, and several empty warheads for chemical weapons.”

As already stated many times, in no way did Saddam pose the kind of threat to the U.S. & the world that the Bush administration insisted he was & would soon become. I mean, they went on about a bunch of stuff that they just made up. No? I see, so their rhetoric about the threat of Iraqi drones dispersing say, anthrax over Long Island or something to that effect proved true? The aluminum tubes, yellowcake & the mobile weapons labs, all verified? The reconstituted chemical & biological weapons programs, the anthrax strain of Iraqi origin, all true? How about the tale from the Iraqi defectors provided by Chalabi? Remember, the one or two who said that terrorists were being trained on how to hijack a commercial airliner? No fabricated connection between al-Qaeda & Saddam? This is interesting, this former Deputy Press Secretary Scott McClellan in May of 2008:

McClellan’s comments served to corroborate earlier accounts, such as the Downing Street memo, Karen Kwiatkowski & leaked notes from a meeting between Bush & Tony Blair. So besides the considerable literature stating that there were no WMDs, it was also widely reported that the administration fabricated their case for war. Perhaps you’d consider whether the two premises conflict or support one another? Finally, there’s the matter of precedence. During the ramp up to invade Afghanistan you may recall Donald Rumsfeld’s appearance on the Meet The Press, with Tim Russert. Rather than a typical Q&A, the both of them went on about Osama Bin Laden’s mountain fortress, an elaborate military type compound carved deep into the mountainside. Their evidence? A drawing, a cartoon picture that had run in a British paper earlier that week. When U.S. troops got there, no fortress existed. Caves & abandoned mining shafts, that’s it!

Back to McClellan, when he states that the opposition only served to distort the truth all the more, it would seem he was referring to Democrats & front side leftists in the corporate media. Indeed, the Senate appropriations subcommittee hearings that aired on c-span, headed by Democrats, was the same shpiel, a drum-pounding parade for war. What he may have been saying more so is how, rather than demand & promise accountability, the Democrats later whined about being misled, which is complete BS! When citizens know they’re being lied to, members of Congress should definitely know. There was no excuse for completely ignoring the level of insight from Mohamed ElBaradei, Hans Blix & Scott Ritter. There were also comments made by Colin Powell & Condi Rice prior to 9/11, stating clearly that Saddam posed no threat whatsoever.

As for ISIS, I agree with what’s already been said. If, at least with respect to the abandoned facility mentioned in the OP, these munitions truly posed a grave threat, why weren’t they secured & destroyed during the occupation? Beyond this, it’s important to consider whether the U.S. should be creating &/or supporting such rogues in the 1st place. Obviously, the following isn’t as widely reported:

What’s important here, I think, is how easily the superpower is able to topple the heads of small, weak states. And that they can do so w/o much of the public even suspecting. On Qasim’s wikipedia page, though it focuses more on why, it corroborates the UPI article by saying the coup to overthrow him was supported by the U.S. & Great Britain. Saddam was a U.S. propped thug. Pretending that America has Iraq’s best interest at heart is a sick joke. The only difference between colonization now and what was before, is that up until WWII or so, it was acknowledged and acceptable behavior, though waning. But now that it’s no longer acceptable, it’s just denied instead. I’ve forgotten who, but someone already noted that part of the rationale for invading was Saddam’s reputation as a brutal dictator. But Bush left out the part that the U.S. & the west aided & abetted his amassing of such weapons and that he often acted at their behest!

 

Nope still a fact but do refute the fact we found hidden cache's of the precursor chemicals and new chemical artillery shells, proscribed and hidden from inspectors.

See OP and then prove Saddam would never again produce WMD and rearm himself.

Brand new chemical weapons shells, are you denying it? It has been cited to you in the past and remains refuted.

And of course lots of other findings

The Atlantic:

“In August 2004, for instance, American forces surreptitiously purchased what they believed to be containers of liquid sulfur mustard, a toxic “blister agent” used as a chemical weapon since World War I. The troops tested the liquid, and “reported two positive results for blister.” The chemical was then “triple-sealed and transported to a secure site” outside their base…

In the summer of 2008, according to one WikiLeaked report, American troops found at least 10 rounds that tested positive for chemical agents. “These rounds were most likely left over from the [Saddam]-era regime.”

Fox News (May 2004):

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent (search) recently exploded near a U.S. military convoy, the U.S. military said Monday.

Bush administration officials told Fox News that mustard gas (search) was also recently discovered.

Two people were treated for “minor exposure” after the sarin incident but no serious injuries were reported. Soldiers transporting the shell for inspection suffered symptoms consistent with low-level chemical exposure, which is what led to the discovery, a U.S. official told Fox News.

“The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt (search), the chief military spokesman in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad. “The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy.”

United Nations (January 2003):

United Nations weapons inspectors returned to the Ukhaider Ammunition Storage Area today to conduct further analysis of the twelfth chemical warhead found at the site earlier in the week.

“The team took additional samples from the warhead and resealed the warhead and the storage building,” said Hiro Ueki, spokesman for the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Baghdad.

Poland also found WMDs in Iraq.

Polish troops recently discovered more than a dozen warheads containing mustard or sarin gas in Iraq, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a radio interview released Thursday.

Rumsfeld said Polish Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski told him about the find when they met earlier this week at a NATO summit in Istanbul.

“He pointed out that his troops in Iraq had recently come across — I’ve forgotten the number, but something like 16 or 17 — warheads that contained sarin and mustard gas,” Rumsfeld told Newradio 600 KOGO of San Diego, California, in an interview aired Wednesday.

Charles Duelfer, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, also testified before Congress on his findings.

There were also efforts to retain the intellectual capital of nuclear scientists by forbidding their departure from Iraq and keeping them employed in government areas. However, over time there was decay in the team.

Despite this decay, Saddam did not abandon his nuclear ambitions. He made clear his view that nuclear weapons were the right of any country that could build them.

He was very attentive to the growing Iranian threat—especially its potential nuclear component, and stated that he would do whatever it took to offset the Iranian threat, clearly implying matching Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.

Here’s what Duelfer said about the chemical and biological chapters of his report:

Once inspections began in 1991, Iraq chose to yield most of its weapons and bulk agent as well as the large facilities that were widely known to exist. As in the other WMD areas, Saddam sought to sustain the requisite knowledge base to restart the program eventually and, to the extent it did not threaten the Iraqi efforts to get out from sanctions, to sustain the inherent capability to produce such weapons as circumstances permitted in the future.

Duelfer also addressed the Oil-For-Food program:

Over time, and with the infusion of funding and resources following acceptance of the Oil for Food program, Iraq effectively shortened the time that would be required to reestablish CW production capacity.

By 2003, Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agent in a period of months and nerve agent in less than a year or two.

He continued:

Iraq decided to retain the main BW production facility, but under guise of using it to produce single cell protein for animal feed. These decisions were taken with Saddam’s explicit approval.

Preservation of Iraq’s biological weapons capabilities was simpler than any other WMD area because of the nature of the material.

What is clear is that Saddam retained his notions of the use of force and had experience that demonstrated the utility of WMD. He was making progress in eroding sanctions and, had it not been for the events of 9-11-2001, things would have taken a different course for the Regime. Most senior members of the Regime and scientists assumed that the programs would begin in earnest when sanctions ended—and sanctions were eroding.

Duelfer also highlighted the threat of such knowledge being given to terrorists, which Saddam openly supported.

A risk that has emerged since my previous status report to Congress is the connection of former regime CW experts with anti-coalition forces. ISG uncovered evidence of such links and undertook a sizeable effort to track down and prevent any lash-up between foreign terrorists or anti-coalition forces and either existing CW stocks or experts able to produce such weapons indigenously. I believe we got ahead of this problem through a series of raids throughout the spring and summer. I am convinced we successfully contained a problem before it matured into a major threat. Nevertheless, it points to the problem that the dangerous expertise developed by the previous regime could be transferred to other hands. Certainly there are anti-coalition and terrorist elements seeking such capabilities.

Duelfer also testified before Congress seven months earlier. Here’s some highlights of his statements:

Iraq did have facilities suitable for the production of biological and chemical agents needed for weapons. It had plans to improve and expand and even build new facilities.
With respect to chemical production, Iraq was working up to March 2003 to construct new facilities for the production of chemicals. There were plans under the direction of a leading nuclear scientist/WMD program manager to construct plants capable of making a variety of chemicals and producing a year’s supply of any chemical in a month. This was a crash program.
Most of the chemicals specified in this program were conventional commercial chemicals, but a few are considered “dual use.” One we are examining, commonly called DCC (N,N-Dicyclohexyl carbodiimide), was used by Iraq before 1991 as a stabilizing agent for the nerve agent VX.
I’ve taken many calls over the years from people who’ve made the claim that chemical weapons are not WMDs (dictionary be damned), and that only a nuclear weapon qualifies. Ok, let’s address that.

Likewise, in the nuclear arena, the ISG has developed information that suggests Iraqi interest in preserving and expanding the knowledge needed to design and develop nuclear weapons.

One significant effort illustrating this was a high-speed rail gun program under the direction of two senior scientists associated with Iraq’s pre-1991 nuclear weapons program. Documents from this project show that the scientists were developing a rail gun designed to achieve speeds of 2-10 kilometers per second. The ostensible purpose for this research was development of an air defense gun, but these speeds are what are necessary to conduct experiments of metals compressing together at high speed as they do in a nuclear detonation. Scientists refer to these experiments as “equation of state” measurements.

Not only were these scientists developing a rail gun, but their laboratory also contained documents describing diagnostic techniques that are important for nuclear weapons experiments, such as flash x-ray radiography, laser velocimetry, and high-speed photography. Other documents found outside the laboratory described a high-voltage switch that can be used to detonate a nuclear weapon, laser detonation, nuclear fusion, radiation measurement, and radiation safety. These fields are certainly not related to air defense.
http://caseyhendrickson.wordpress.co...e-irrefutable/

Naw, Saddam had no WMD was not a WMD threat and never would be again......................... .............................N OT.

 

What does old and buried, read hidden, have to do with anything? When we were destroying our own in Anniston AL some of those went back to WW2 and still dangerous. The fact remains Saddam had hidden cache's of WMD he was not disclosing to UNSCOM and of course retain the capability to quickly rearm with the various proscribed materials we found.

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And now more troops coming out and talking about what they found, NYT reporting 600 more soldiers who were exposed to the chemical weapons Saddam had.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/world/middleeast/-more-than-600-reported-chemical-weapons-exposure-in-iraq-pentagon-acknowledges.html

 

Of course old munitions are dangerous but, they are no imminent threat to the US in any real sense of the word.

 

Well, give folks like Bluesguy a little credit. Iraqis could have taken those old rusted out piles of junk, boarded and airplane, and tried to fly them into a building or something. There's your "urgent threat" with the "WMD".

Heh heh

 

Ahhh ... that must have been the "mushroom cloud" Bush and his clown show were referring to.