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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ggersh who wrote (903891)	11/30/2015 3:21:25 PM
From: Sdgla	1 Recommendation Recommended By FJB Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574122

So you fall back on more of the same ? Like I said.. Ignore reality at all costs. Enjoy your fantasy gersh. Meanwhile the soldiers that were exposed the actual WMD in Iraq prove you to be wallowing in your own lies. Iraq had WMDs Stephen Raab \| Monday, November 2, 2015 In Aesop’s Fable of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” a foolish shepherd repeatedly tells nearby villagers that a nonexistent wolf has come to attack his sheep. After failing to find the wolf, the villagers grow sick of his tricks. Unfortunately for the shepherd, a real wolf then appears, and when he tries to tell the villagers of the impending attack, they disbelieve him and his sheep are slaughtered. Such is the fate of the George W. Bush administration in the wake of the Iraq War. As a major plank of the pretext for invasion, the administration repeatedly claimed that Iraq possessed and was continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction (“WMDs”), and that these could be used by the Hussein regime or Hussein-affiliated terrorists to kill American citizens. When we got into Iraq, however, many of these claims turned out to be false or overblown, and the American people were incensed. WMDs became a punch line; years of stump speeches and late-night comedy burned the knowledge that Iraq had no such weapons into the public consciousness. The strange part is that we actually did find WMDs in Iraq. We found thousands of them. In February 2015, the New York Times released a detailed investigation of Operation Avarice. In this secret program, the CIA purchased rockets containing nerve agents from a secret merchant in post-Hussein Iraq, with the goal of keeping these weapons out of the hands of terrorists. (This sort of buyback program is conducted frequently by the CIA; they’ve done it with surface-to-air missiles in both post-Soviet Afghanistan and post-Qaddafi Libya.) From 2005 to 2006, more than 400 Borak rockets containing sarin gas were purchased and destroyed by the U.S. government, and others had been turning up as early as 2004. Meanwhile, American ordinance disposal teams were digging up M110 mustard gas artillery shells. In total, over 5,000 weapons, including airdropped bombs, were discovered over the course of the American occupation. In response to this report, many of those who had sung loudly of Bush’s blunder in Iraq (most of whom had opposed to the war from the start) began spinning so fast you’d think they were trying to enrich yellowcake uranium. Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post Fact-Checker, for instance, concluded that, “Anyone who claims that the New York Times story vindicates George W. Bush-era claims of Iraq WMD automatically earns Four Pinocchios.” With regard to the chemical weapons discussed by the Times story, the Post claims these weapons were pre-1991 relics and were largely useless. It is true that the recovered rockets and shells were not part of an active chemical warfare program. However, records from Operation Avarice indicate that many of these weapons were still dangerous. CIA reports indicate that the sarin recovered in some of the purchased rockets was “purer than the intelligence community had expected given the age of the stock,” while some of the artillery shells contained up to 84 percent mustard gas. Another internal report stated that even an IED made with a Borak rocket “could effectively disperse the sarin nerve agent.” Rear Admiral John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, stated, “the U.S. military worked diligently to find and remove weapons that could be used against our troops and the Iraqi people.” For the Post to claim that these rockets were harmless leads to a paradox — why would the CIA be trying to keep harmless weapons out of the hands of terrorists? Perhaps the American public paid less attention to the discovery of chemical weapons because they don’t fit our preconceptions of the term “weapon of mass destruction.” Certainly, chemical weapons lack the apocalyptic potential of megaton nuclear bombs or pandemic-inducing disease. However, they are WMDs by any formal definition. Sarin of the type discovered in Iraq is even specifically named as a banned weapon of mass destruction by UN Resolution 687, which set terms for the behavior of Iraq after the First Gulf War. U.S. federal law is broader still — Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction in the Boston bombing. I’m not going to argue that every claim about Iraq’s weapons program was true. Groupthink among political and intelligence leaders and sensationalism among journalists led to outrageous claims such as the rightfully-ridiculed assertion that Hussein could strike Great Britain in 45 minutes. Similarly, the much vaunted “mobile biological weapons labs” the Bush administration claimed it had discovered early in the invasion turned out not to exist, and none of Hussein’s chemical arsenal was produced after the Gulf War sanctions. In a sense, these early rumors inoculated the American public against the actual discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, much as the shepherd’s cry of “Wolf!” inured the villagers to the wolf’s final assault. It seems strange to me that the Bush administration didn’t make more noise about these discoveries during Operation Iraqi Freedom, instead choosing to be castigated for over a decade about the absence of WMDs. It’s possible that doing so might have exposed their buyer. Unfortunately, they also classified chemical injuries to ordinance disposal teams, leaving the soldiers without proper medical treatment. For its part, the Times speculates that treating these injuries would have called attention to the Western origins of the Iraqi chemical arsenal and the close cooperation of the United States with Saddam Hussein when he fought Iran. Truth can be a complicated matter, especially when mixed with politics. Many statements the Bush administration made about Iraq’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction were false. But some of them were true, and when you’re dealing with WMD’s, “some” is all it takes.

To: ggersh who wrote (903891)	11/30/2015 3:31:13 PM
From: Sdgla	2 Recommendations Recommended By FJB TideGlider Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574122

The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons BY C.?J. CHIVERS A controlled detonation of recovered mustard shells near Taji, Iraq, on Aug. 17, 2008. John Paul Williams Published: October 14, 2014 The soldiers at the blast crater sensed something was wrong. It was August 2008 near Taji, Iraq. They had just exploded a stack of old Iraqi artillery shells buried beside a murky lake. The blast, part of an effort to destroy munitions that could be used in makeshift bombs, uncovered more shells. Two technicians assigned to dispose of munitions stepped into the hole. Lake water seeped in. One of them, Specialist Andrew T. Goldman, noticed a pungent odor, something, he said, he had never smelled before. He lifted a shell. Oily paste oozed from a crack. “That doesn’t look like pond water,” said his team leader, Staff Sgt. Eric J. Duling. The specialist swabbed the shell with chemical detection paper. It turned red — indicating sulfur mustard, the chemical warfare agent designed to burn a victim’s airway, skin and eyes. All three men recall an awkward pause. Then Sergeant Duling gave an order: “Get the hell out.” Five years after President George W. Bush sent troops into Iraq, these soldiers had entered an expansive but largely secret chapter of America’s long and bitter involvement in Iraq. From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule. In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The United States had gone to war declaring it must destroy an active weapons of mass destruction program. Instead, American troops gradually found and ultimately suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West. The New York Times found 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers who were exposed to nerve or mustard agents after 2003. American officials said that the actual tally of exposed troops was slightly higher, but that the government’s official count was classified. Andrew T. Goldman in North Topsail Beach, N.C. In August 2008, Mr. Goldman was part of a team near Taji, Iraq, that was trying to destroy munitions that could be used in makeshift bombs. While holding a cracked shell, he noticed a strange smell. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times The secrecy fit a pattern. Since the outset of the war, the scale of the United States’ encounters with chemical weapons in Iraq was neither publicly shared nor widely circulated within the military. These encounters carry worrisome implications now that the Islamic State, a Qaeda splinter group, controls much of the territory where the weapons were found. The American government withheld word about its discoveries even from troops it sent into harm’s way and from military doctors. The government’s secrecy, victims and participants said, prevented troops in some of the war’s most dangerous jobs from receiving proper medical care and official recognition of their wounds. Eric J. Duling at his home in Niceville, Fla. The cache that contaminated his explosive ordnance disposal team in 2008 was not the first discovery of chemical weapons in the war. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times “I felt more like a guinea pig than a wounded soldier,” said a former Army sergeant who suffered mustard burns in 2007 and was denied hospital treatment and medical evacuation to the United States despite requests from his commander. Congress, too, was only partly informed, while troops and officers were instructed to be silent or give deceptive accounts of what they had found. “?'Nothing of significance’ is what I was ordered to say,” said Jarrod Lampier, a recently retired Army major who was present for the largest chemical weapons discovery of the war: more than 2,400 nerve-agent rockets unearthed in 2006 at a former Republican Guard compound. Jarrod L. Taylor, a former Army sergeant on hand for the destruction of mustard shells that burned two soldiers in his infantry company, joked of “wounds that never happened” from “that stuff that didn’t exist.” The public, he said, was misled for a decade. “I love it when I hear, ‘Oh there weren’t any chemical weapons in Iraq,’ ” he said. “There were plenty.” CHEMICAL WEAPONS FOUND BY AMERICAN FORCES IN IRAQBetween 2004 and 2011, American forces in Iraq encountered thousands of chemical munitions. In several cases, troops were exposed to chemical agents. Mosul Kirkuk Locations where chemical munitionswere found SYRIA Tikrit Compound Spider Areas under full control of the Islamic State as of September Balad Al Muthanna Baquba Camp Taji Falluja Baghdad SYRIAN DESERT IRAN IRAQ Najaf Amara Sources: Wikileaks and reporting by the New York Times (chemical munition locations); Institute for the Study of War (Islamic State area of control) Nasiriya Basra SAUDI ARABIA KUWAIT SOME EXPOSURES DETAILED IN THIS ARTICLE1 MAY 2004 Two soldiers exposed to sarin from a shell near Baghdad’s Yarmouk neighborhood.2 SUMMER 2006 Over 2,400 nerve-agent rockets found at this former Republican Guard compound.3 JULY 2008 Six Marines exposed to mustard agent from an artillery shell at an abandoned bunker.4 AUGUST 2008 Five American soldiers exposed to mustard agent while destroying a weapons cache.5 2010 OR EARLY 2011 Hundreds of mustard rounds discovered in a container at this Iraqi security compound. Rear Adm. John Kirby, spokesman for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, declined to address specific incidents detailed in the Times investigation, or to discuss the medical care and denial of medals for troops who were exposed. But he said that the military’s health care system and awards practices were under review, and that Mr. Hagel expected the services to address any shortcomings. “The secretary believes all service members deserve the best medical and administrative support possible,” he said. “He is, of course, concerned by any indication or allegation they have not received such support. His expectation is that leaders at all levels will strive to correct errors made, when and where they are made.” 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. In case after case, participants said, analysis of these warheads and shells reaffirmed intelligence failures. First, the American government did not find what it had been looking for at the war’s outset, then it failed to prepare its troops and medical corps for the aged weapons it did find. As Iraq has been shaken anew by violence, and past security gains have collapsed amid Sunni-Shiite bloodletting and the rise of the Islamic State, this long-hidden chronicle illuminates the persistent risks of the country’s abandoned chemical weapons. Many chemical weapons incidents clustered around the ruins of the Muthanna State Establishment, the center of Iraqi chemical agent production in the 1980s. Since June, the compound has been held by the Islamic State, the world’s most radical and violent jihadist group. In a letter sent to the United Nations this summer, the Iraqi government said that about 2,500 corroded chemical rockets remained on the grounds, and that Iraqi officials had witnessed intruders looting equipment before militants shut down the surveillance cameras. Soldiers in chemical protection gear, including Sgt. Eric J. Duling and Specialist Andrew T. Goldman, examining suspected chemical munitions at a site near Camp Taji, Iraq, on Aug. 16, 2008.The New York Times The United States government says the abandoned weapons no longer pose a threat. But nearly a decade of wartime experience showed that old Iraqi chemical munitions often remained dangerous when repurposed for local attacks in makeshift bombs, as insurgents did starting by 2004. Participants in the chemical weapons discoveries said the United States suppressed knowledge of finds for multiple reasons, including that the government bristled at further acknowledgment it had been wrong. “They needed something to say that after Sept. 11 Saddam used chemical rounds,” Mr. Lampier said. “And all of this was from the pre-1991 era.” Others pointed to another embarrassment. 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. Staff Sgt. Eric J. Duling, left, Specialist Andrew T. Goldman, far right, and another member of an ordnance disposal team being treated for exposure to a chemical agent in August 2008. via Andrew T. Goldman Nonproliferation officials said the Pentagon’s handling of many of the recovered warheads and shells appeared to violate the Convention on Chemical Weapons. According to this convention, chemical weapons must be secured, reported and destroyed in an exacting and time-consuming fashion. THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT DID NOT FIND WHAT IT HAD BEEN LOOKING FOR AT THE WAR’S OUTSET, THEN IT FAILED TO PREPARE ITS TROOPS AND MEDICAL CORPS FOR THE AGED WEAPONS IT DID FIND.The Pentagon did not follow the steps, but says that it adhered to the convention’s spirit. “These suspect weapons were recovered under circumstances in which prompt destruction was dictated by the need to ensure that the chemical weapons could not threaten the Iraqi people, neighboring states, coalition forces, or the environment,” said Jennifer Elzea, a Pentagon spokeswoman. The convention, she added, “did not envisage the conditions found in Iraq.” Nonetheless, several participants said the United States lost track of chemical weapons that its troops found, left large caches unsecured, and did not warn people — Iraqis and foreign troops alike — as it hastily exploded chemical ordnance in the open air. This was the secret world Sergeant Duling and his soldiers entered in August 2008 as they stood above the leaking chemical shell. The sergeant spoke into a radio, warning everyone back. “This is mustard agent,” he said, announcing the beginning of a journey of inadequate medical care and honors denied. “We’ve all been exposed.”