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.
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