U.S. soldiers suffering from Iraqi chemical weapons
I just have no words for this, so I’ll quote a few from Adam Weinstein at Gawker, following up on a report from the NYT:
In bunkers now held by ISIS militants, and sometimes in streets emptied by bomb threats, scores of American service members secretly helped find and dispose of Saddam Hussein’s aging chemical weapons. Now stateside, many troops are sick with mystery ailments the military has at times tried to conceal.
Those are the broad strokes of an exhaustive 8,500-word New York Times dispatch tonight by conflict reporter C.J. Chivers—a story that not only reveals the existence of far more chemical munitions in pre-invasion Iraq than anyone had previously acknowledged, but details the disheartening aftermath for U.S. service members who secured those munitions, often finding them in IEDs planted by insurgents after American troops flooded into the country in 2003
NYT: U.S. Troops Got Untreated Illnesses From Iraqi Chemical Weapons
I’d encourage you to read the whole thing, and the NYT piece. Weinstein is a vet, served in Iraq and apparently came in contact with this stuff. I am incredibly saddened by this waste of life and health (and the waste of the entire war in general). I hope these soldiers can get the help they really need.
I don’t have any more to add, really. :(