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.
But, but, but there were NO WMDs in Iraq! Everyone said so then and many liberals continue to say so to this day so the NYT must now also be considered part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (thank you Hillary).
"more than 2,400 nerve-agent rockets unearthed in 2006 at a former Republican Guard compound."
Iraq produced 10 metric tons of mustard blister agent in 1981; by 1987 its production had grown 90-fold, with late-war output aided by two American companies that provided hundreds of tons of thiodiglycol, a mustard agent precursor. Production of nerve agents also took off.
But do not let it be said that the NYT does not try to stick to its core:
Much of the chemical stockpile was expended in the Iran-Iraq war or destroyed when the weapons programs were dismantled after the Persian Gulf war of 1991.
Really? How do you know the program was dismantled after the Persian Gulf war? The same source that told you there were NO WMDs there at all?
Sergeant Burns’s team had picked up an exceedingly rare weapon: a 152-millimeter binary sarin shell.
Yep, no WMDs.
Reached recently, Mr. Duelfer agreed that the weapons were still a menace, but said the report strove to make it clear that they were not “a secret cache of weapons of mass destruction.”
“What I was trying to convey is that these were not militarily significant because they not used as W.M.D.,” he said. “It wasn’t that they weren’t dangerous.”
So by 2004 even some in the government worked to down play the risks and volume of WMDs in Iraq.
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.
British forces also destroyed 21 Borak rockets in early 2006, including some that contained nerve agent...
In 2006: the American Army made its largest chemical weapons find of the war: more than 2,400 Borak rockets.
Others still contained sarin. “Full-up sloshers,”
Even the Senate's own report as flawed as it was, included that chemical weapons were found: The report, released in September 2006, claimed “another 500 filled and unfilled degraded pre-1991 chemical munitions” had been found — about one-sixth of the Pentagon’s internal tallies.
It is almost funny that years ago, the paper of record and every other MSM outlet was pushing the mime that there were NO WMDs in Iraq and Bush lied! Despite the fact that he used the same intelligence that every other country used and Congress used. Now, years later no apology from the NYT for getting it wrong. Instead the NYT thinks enough history has passed that it is safe to come out with an "evil US Government hid the truth and is killing solders due to chem weapons" story.
The old gray lady is never wrong and we have always been at war with Eastasia...
