Claim Isis sitting on chemical weapons

Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby speaks about the claims in the NY Times. Background, an alleged chemical weapons site in Iraq. Photo / Getty Images, AP

Paper says US covered up caches found in Iraq war in areas now controlled by jihadists

The United States military has reportedly covered up the discovery of huge numbers of chemical weapons in Iraq which now lie in the occupied lands controlled by Isis (Islamic State).

According to an expose published by the New York Times, American soldiers reported finding about 5000 chemical warheads or bombs after the invasion of Iraq and ousting of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Between 2004 and 2011 at least 17 US soldiers and seven Iraqi police officers were exposed to nerve agents or mustard gas chemicals, but were encouraged by the Pentagon to downplay or under-report any injuries, the Times reported.

The details of Iraq's chemical weapons stores have only emerged now from Iraqi and US officials, redacted intelligence documents and interviews with soldiers because, the paper claimed, of potential embarrassment for the Government.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect is that many chemical weapons were reportedly kept around the Muthanna State Establishment.

The region is now held by Isis, and this year the Iraqi Government said it had seen intruders looting the corroded equipment before their surveillance cameras were shut off.

President George W. Bush led the US into war in Iraq on assertions Saddam Hussein had recently built weapons of mass destruction, supplies that had only increased in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Yet all the chemical weapons found by soldiers had been made before 1991, the Times reported. They were mostly 155mm artillery shells or 122mm rockets, not designed for mass destruction, and produced in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

According to the Times, these reports were embarrassing for the Pentagon because, in five of the six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been "designed in the US, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies".

It was also reportedly embarrassing for the US Government that chemical weapons were found, but not of the type they had claimed existed. As a result, military and medical staff were unprepared and ill-equipped for the task at hand.

"'Nothing of significance' is what I was ordered to say," said Jarrod Lampier, a recently retired army major who was present when more than 2400 nerve-agent rockets were found in a single compound in 2006.

Jarrod Taylor, a former sergeant who witnessed the disposal of mustard shells that burned two members of his company, told the Times the public had been misled for a decade. "I love it when I hear, 'Oh there weren't any chemical weapons in Iraq'," he said. "There were plenty."

Despite evidence from the Iraq war that militants can use old equipment in the production of improvised explosive devices, the US Government told the Times the abandoned weapons no longer posed a threat.

A Pentagon spokesperson told the newspaper the suspect weapons had to be destroyed "promptly".

"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, neighbouring states, coalition forces, or the environment," a statement read.

- Independent