XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.society.liberalism, sac.politics   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: biden.lies@nytimes.com   
      
   On 04 Dec 2021, Rudy Canoza  posted some   
   news:bLTqJ.52081$1d1.28954@fx99.iad:   
      
   > Bill Clinton said Iraq had WMDs.   
      
   American troops found nearly 5,000 abandoned chemical weapons in Iraq from   
   2004 to 2011, but their discoveries were kept secret by the U.S.   
   government, the New York Times reports.   
      
   According to the 10,000-word, eight-part interactive report ("The Secret   
   Casualties of Iraq's Abandoned  Chemical Weapons") by C.J. Chivers   
   published on the paper's website late Tuesday, at least 17 American   
   service members and seven Iraqi police officers were exposed to nerve or   
   mustard agents in Iraq after 2003.   
      
   On at least six occasions, American troops and American-trained Iraqi   
   troops were wounded by the abandoned munitions, but news of the encounters   
   was neither shared publicly nor widely circulated among the troops, the   
   victims told the Times. Others said they were told to be vague or   
   deceptive about what they found.   
      
   "'Nothing of significance’ is what I was ordered to say,” Jarrod Lampier,   
   a retired Army major, said of the 2006 discovery of 2,400 nerve-agent   
   rockets at a former Republican Guard compound, the largest chemical   
   weapons discovery of the war.   
      
   The paper also published heavily redacted intelligence documents it   
   obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.   
      
   Among the reasons for the secrecy? "The discoveries of these chemical   
   weapons did not support the government’s invasion rationale," Chivers   
   writes. "After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, [President George   
   W.] Bush insisted that [Iraqi leader Saddam] 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."   
      
   The discovery of pre-Gulf War chemical weapons — most of them "filthy,   
   rusty or corroded" — did not fit the narrative.   
      
   “They needed something to say that after Sept. 11 Saddam used chemical   
   rounds,” Lampier said. “And all of this was from the pre-1991 era.”   
      
   “I love it when I hear, ‘Oh there weren’t any chemical weapons in Iraq,’”   
   Jarrod L. Taylor, a former Army sergeant, told the paper. “There were   
   plenty.”   
      
   The troops began encountering the munitions in hidden caches and roadside   
   bombs.   
      
   The paper recounted a harrowing 2004 discovery in Baghdad by two   
   explosives-disposal technicians in detail. Staff Sgt. James F. Burns and   
   Pfc. Michael S. Yandell were transporting what they thought was the   
   remains of a makeshift bomb back to the base when they began experiencing   
   symptoms of sarin gas exposure:   
      
      
   Sergeant Burns noticed a bitter smell and thought, he said later, that “it   
   was rotten vegetables.”   
      
   Then he felt the onset of a headache. He told Private Yandell, who was   
   driving, that he did not feel right.   
      
   Nauseated and disoriented, Private Yandell had quietly been struggling to   
   drive. His vision was blurring. His head pounded. “I feel like crap, too,”   
   he replied.   
      
   Dread passed over Sergeant Burns. Maybe, he wondered aloud, they had   
   picked up a nerve agent shell.   
      
   The chemical shell Sergeant Burns and Pfc. Michael S. Yandell found that   
   day was on the highway to Baghdad’s international airport, called "Death   
   Street" at the time because of frequent insurgent attacks.   
      
   Neither man remembers the drive’s last minutes. At the base entrance, they   
   did not clear the ammunition from their rifles and pistols — forgetting   
   habits and rules.   
      
   As they arrived at their building, Sergeant Burns was sure. In the back of   
   the truck, the shell had leaked liquid. Illumination rounds, he knew, do   
   not do that.   
      
      
      
   “They put a gag order on all of us — the security detail, us, the clinic,   
   everyone,” Burns said. “We were briefed to tell family members that we   
   were exposed to ‘industrial chemicals,’ because our case was classified   
   top secret.”   
      
   The paper also reported that as a result of the secrecy, military doctors   
   were not prepared to treat the soldiers exposed to chemicals, preventing   
      
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