Bush admin. allowed US military to be harmed by chemical weapons in Iraq, forced them to remain silent about their injuries, denied them medical care, some in Congress knew, some injuries may have occurred under Obama, FOIA dox 'heavily redacted' by Obama admin.-NY Times

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10/14/14, "Iraq Chemical Weapons Harmed U.S. Troops," Daily Beast

"From 2004 to 2011, U.S. 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, The New York Times reports. In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The U.S. went to war declaring it had to destroy weapons of mass destruction, but instead, American troops gradually found, and suffered from, remnants of long-abandoned programs. The Times found 17 U.S. service members and seven Iraqi police were exposed to nerve or mustard agents after 2003."...

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NY Times article referenced above:

10/15/14, "Abandoned Chemical Weapons and Secret Casualties in Iraq," NY Times, C.J. Chivers

"From 2004 to 2011, U.S. and U.S.-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, U.S. troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and U.S. 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, U.S. 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 U.S. service members and seven Iraqi police officers who were exposed to nerve or mustard agents after 2003. U.S. officials said that the actual tally of exposed troops was slightly higher, 

but that the government's official count
was classified.

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 Qaida splinter group, controls much of the territory where the weapons were found.

The U.S. 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.

"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."

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 Hagel expected the services to address any shortcomings....

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.

The U.S. 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 had 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," Lampier said. "And all of this was from the pre-1991 era."...

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 Pentagon did not follow the steps but says 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.

In early 2009, at U.S. prodding, Iraq entered the Convention on Chemical Weapons. From that moment, its fledgling government assumed primary responsibility for securing and destroying any chemical munitions remaining from Saddam's time.

Iraq took initial steps to fulfill its obligations. It drafted a plan to entomb the contaminated bunkers on Al Muthanna, which still held remnant chemical stocks, in concrete.

When three journalists from The Times visited Al Muthanna in 2013, a knot of Iraqi police officers and soldiers guarded the entrance. Two contaminated bunkers - one containing cyanide precursors and old sarin rockets - loomed behind. The area where Marines had found mustard shells in 2008 was out of sight, shielded by scrub and shimmering heat.

The Iraqi troops who stood at that entrance are no longer there. The compound, never entombed, is now controlled by the Islamic State."

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