U.S. troops “found 5,000 chemical weapons in Iraq in 2004-2011”

PanARMENIAN.Net - 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, Yahoo News said citing New York Times.

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, 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.

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.

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.

“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 troops "from receiving proper medical care and official recognition of their wounds."

Rear Adm. John Kirby, spokesman for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, declined to address specific incidents detailed in the Times investigation but said that the military’s health care system and awards practices were under review.

The news of abandoned chemical weapons in Iraq comes as a U.S.-led coalition continues drone strikes on Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. While there is no evidence of munitions falling into the hands of the terror group, the possibility is nonetheless “worrisome.”