Iraq buying blow

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Iraq buying blow

A controlled detonation of recovered mustard shells near Taji, Iraq, on Aug. John Paul Williams. Participants and victims of this secret chapter of the Iraq war discuss exposure to chemical weapons. It was August 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. Eric J. The specialist swabbed the shell with chemical detection paper. All three men recall an awkward pause. Five years after President George W. In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5, 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 Andrew T. Goldman in North Topsail Beach, N. In August , Mr. Goldman was part of a team near Taji, Iraq, that was trying to destroy munitions that could be used in makeshift bombs. While holding a cracked shell, he noticed a strange smell. The secrecy fit a pattern. These encounters carry worrisome implications now that the Islamic State, a Qaeda splinter group, controls much of the territory where the weapons were found. Duling at his home in Niceville, Fla. The cache that contaminated his explosive ordnance disposal team in was not the first discovery of chemical weapons in the war. Congress, too, was only partly informed, while troops and officers were instructed to be silent or give deceptive accounts of what they had found. Jarrod L. Between and , American forces in Iraq encountered thousands of chemical munitions. In several cases, troops were exposed to chemical agents. 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. Hagel expected the services to address any shortcomings. His expectation is that leaders at all levels will strive to correct errors made, when and where they are made. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. Bush insisted that Mr. United Nations inspectors said they could not find evidence for these claims. Then, during the long occupation, American troops began encountering old chemical munitions in hidden caches and roadside bombs. Typically millimeter artillery shells or millimeter rockets, they were remnants of an arms program Iraq had rushed into production in the s during the Iran-Iraq war. All had been manufactured before , participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area, according to those who collected the majority of them. In case after case, participants said, analysis of these warheads and shells reaffirmed intelligence failures. Many chemical weapons incidents clustered around the ruins of the Muthanna State Establishment , the center of Iraqi chemical agent production in the s. In a letter sent to the United Nations this summer, the Iraqi government said that about 2, corroded chemical rockets remained on the grounds, and that Iraqi officials had witnessed intruders looting equipment before militants shut down the surveillance cameras. Soldiers in chemical protection gear, including Sgt. Duling and Specialist Andrew T. Goldman, examining suspected chemical munitions at a site near Camp Taji, Iraq, on Aug. The New York Times. The United States 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 Participants in the chemical weapons discoveries said the United States suppressed knowledge of finds for multiple reasons, including that the government bristled at further acknowledgment it had been wrong. Lampier said. Others pointed to another embarrassment. In five of six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies. Staff Sgt. Duling, left, Specialist Andrew T. Goldman, far right, and another member of an ordnance disposal team being treated for exposure to a chemical agent in August According to this convention, chemical weapons must be secured, reported and destroyed in an exacting and time-consuming fashion. 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. This was the secret world Sergeant Duling and his soldiers entered in August as they stood above the leaking chemical shell. The sergeant spoke into a radio, warning everyone back. American troops had already found thousands of similar warheads and shells. Hussein also thought Iranians might rise against their new religious leaders. He miscalculated. Hussein was seeking new weapons. Iranian soldiers wearing gas masks southeast of Basra, Iraq, in , during the Iran-Iraq war. In the s, while at war with Iran, Saddam Hussein created a secret program that produced blister and nerve agents by the hundreds of tons. Associated Press. War provided urgency; Mr. Hussein added the cash. With remarkable speed, Iraq built a program with equipment and precursor purchases from companies in an extraordinary array of countries, eventually including the United States, according to its confidential declarations. German construction firms helped create a sprawling manufacturing complex in the desert south of Samarra and three plants in Falluja that made precursor ingredients for chemical weapons. The complex near Samarra, later renamed Al Muthanna State Establishment , included research labs, production lines, testing areas and storage bunkers. Iraq produced 10 metric tons of mustard blister agent in ; by its production had grown 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. Rising production created another need. So it embarked on another buying spree, purchasing empty ordnance — aviation bombs from a Spanish manufacturer, American-designed artillery shells from European companies, and Egyptian and Italian ground-to-ground rockets — to be filled in Iraq. As these strands of a chemical weapons program came together, Iraq simultaneously accumulated enormous stores of conventional munitions. 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 These were the circumstances that combined against ordnance disposal teams as they pursued their primary duty in the war: defeating makeshift bombs. Almost all of the bombs were made with conventional ordnance or homemade explosives. Here and there, among the others, were bombs made from chemical arms. James F. It was an unusual device. A short while before, it had been detonated beside an American patrol in southwest Baghdad. The blast had been small. No one had been wounded. Two ordnance disposal techs, Sergeant Burns since promoted to first lieutenant and Pfc. Michael S. Yandell, manipulated a robot toward the device to examine it via video feed. They expected to find a high-explosive shell. The video showed a damaged shell rigged to a telephone cable. It was May 15, Weeks before, Sergeant Burns had found a similar bomb made with an illumination shell — a pyrotechnic round that lacked explosive power. It, too, had been rigged with an identical telephone cable. Burns in Baghdad in A week after this image was taken, he and another technician put what they thought were the remains of a familiar makeshift bomb into their truck. Soon the symptoms began: headache, nausea, disorientation and pinpointed pupils. This shell, the sergeant thought, was a duplicate. The bomb maker had goofed again. To prevent militants from reusing materials, disposal teams often destroyed any warheads and shells they found on the spot. But snipers stalked this neighborhood. Sergeant Burns understood that risks grew the longer the soldiers remained. He decided he would destroy the shell near their base. The drive back passed through a bazaar. Then he felt the onset of a headache. He told Private Yandell, who was driving, that he did not feel right. Nauseated and disoriented, Private Yandell had quietly been struggling to drive. His vision was blurring. His head pounded. Dread passed over Sergeant Burns. Maybe, he wondered aloud, they had picked up a nerve agent shell. The chemical shell Sergeant Burns and Pfc. At the base entrance, they did not clear the ammunition from their rifles and pistols — forgetting habits and rules. As they arrived at their building, Sergeant Burns was sure. In the back of the truck, the shell had leaked liquid. Illumination rounds, he knew, do not do that. Disposal teams kept bleach for decontamination. Sergeant Burns found a jug and poured it onto the shell before stumbling to the showers, where he found Private Yandell at a mirror, transfixed by his own image. Yandell later recalled. He faced the sergeant. Burns with his dog Koda, at his home in Yakima, Wash. The soldiers lived with three sailors, who told them to rush to the clinic. The soldiers staggered in claiming exposure to a nerve agent. The staff, Mr. Yandell said, acted as if he and Sergeant Burns were lying. A medic who had been with them vouched that they had just handled an artillery shell. The staff changed its stance. Yandell said. The two techs were given oxygen, then Tylenol. At p. By then the Navy techs had examined the shell. Word was circulating. The chemical precursors are kept in two separate canisters, which break after launch. The precursors then mix together, forming liquid sarin. In , late in the war against Iran, Iraq had tested a batch of prototype millimeter shells containing segregated containers for sarin precursors, according to its confidential declarations. Very few were thought to have been assembled, fewer still to have survived. But this one found its way into a makeshift bomb. Private Yandell had handled the shell without gloves. Both men inhaled sarin vapors. Their cases, said Col. As the two soldiers were afflicted by symptoms of this unlucky distinction, their supervisors initially pressed for a cover-up. Two days later, the military released an account of their sarin exposure, without revealing names or units involved. A Navy explosive ordnance disposal team in , sealing the sarin shell that had wounded Sergeant Burns and Private Yandell. For nearly a decade this would be the only time the military released details of a chemical incident in Iraq in which troops were exposed. Ten days after the incident, both soldiers were awarded Purple Hearts. Both men said their company commander urged them to rest. Explosive ordnance disposal technicians are part of a small field with a code that encourages selflessness: Any call one team does not take, another team must. In June the two soldiers, still suffering symptoms, including intense headaches and difficulties with balance, asked to return to duty. Soon they were ordered to a site hit by millimeter mortar fire. Two shells had been duds. They were stuck, fins up, in the sand. Sergeant Burns freed them with rope and then set off carrying them to a disposal pit. He wondered why the Army had not sent the two of them home. The widely heralded report, by the multinational Iraq Survey Group, concluded that Iraq had not had an active chemical warfare program for more than a decade. The group, led by Charles A. Duelfer, a former United Nations official working for the Central Intelligence Agency, acknowledged that the American military had found old chemical ordnance: 12 artillery shells and 41 rocket warheads. It predicted that troops would find more. Army and Navy technicians prepare unexploded ordnance for demolition in near Baghdad. American troops destroyed thousands of arms caches in Iraq, some of which contained chemical weapons, including chemical weapons the troops did not report. By then the Pentagon had test results showing that the sarin shell could have been deadly. American chemical warfare specialists also knew, disposal technicians and analysts said, that in the s Iraq had mastered mustard agent production in its Western-built plant. Its output had been as pure as 95 percent and stable, meaning that the remaining stock was dangerous. Reached recently, Mr. The Duelfer report also claimed that the United States had cleared more than 10, arms caches but found no other chemical ordnance. One reason that government tallies were low, and that Mr. During and , the United States hunted for unconventional weapons and evidence that might support the rationale for the invasion. Some saw it as a distraction. One tech who served three tours in Iraq said his team twice encountered chemical weapons, but did not report one of them. That was in , he said, when his team found a mustard shell in a conventional ordnance cache. Reporting it, he said, would have required summoning chemical warfare specialists, known as a technical escort unit, and adding 12 to 24 hours to the job. In the difficult calculus of war, competing missions had created tensions. If documenting chemical weapons delayed the destruction of explosive weapons that were killing people each week, or left troops vulnerable while waiting for chemical warfare specialists to arrive, then reporting chemical weapons endangered lives. Many techs said the teams chose common sense. Everything, he said, went into demolition piles. Late in , roughly simultaneous to the release of the Duelfer report, the Army signaled internally that it was concerned about the risks of chemical weapons by distributing detailed new instructions for treating troops exposed to warfare agents. By then the soldiers wounded by sarin had returned home. They still suffered symptoms. Private Yandell complained of severe headaches. Sergeant Burns, in a note for his medical record in late , described memory lapses, reading difficulties, problems with balance and tingling in his legs. While speaking, I will stutter or stammer and lose my thought. After he and another soldier staggered into a clinic claiming exposure to a nerve agent in Iraq in , the staff, he said, acted as if they were lying. Nonetheless, the Pentagon continued to withhold data, leaving the public misinformed as discoveries of chemical weapons accelerated sharply. In late and early , soldiers collected more than Borak millimeter chemical rockets near Amara, in southeastern Iraq. And in the first nine months of , the American military recovered roughly chemical warheads and shells, according to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. British forces also destroyed 21 Borak rockets in early , including some that contained nerve agent, according to a public statement to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in Even as the Senate committee worked, the American Army made its largest chemical weapons find of the war: more than 2, Borak rockets. Lampier, who lived at the camp at the time. An Iraqi digging with a front-end loader ran away when an American patrol approached, leaving behind partly unearthed rockets. Lampier, then a captain commanding the th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company, was with the first to arrive. It was It went up from there. The rockets appeared to have been buried before American airstrikes in , he said. Many were empty. Others still contained sarin. At least 38 techs worked for weeks, excavating rockets, crushing many of them and then reburying them and covering them with concrete. With this discovery, the American military had found more than 3, pieces of chemical ordnance and knew that many were still dangerous. This tally, obsolete as it was published, was not updated in the ensuing years, as more chemical weapons were found and as more troops were exposed. The publicly released information also skirted the fact that most of the chemical artillery shells were traceable to the West, some tied to the United States. These shells, which the American military calls Ms, had been developed decades ago in the United States. Roughly two feet long and weighing more than 90 pounds, each is an aerodynamic steel vessel with a burster tube in its center. The United States has long manufactured Ms, filling them with smoke compounds, white phosphorus or, in earlier years, mustard agent. The United States also exported the shells and the technology behind them. When Iraq went arms shopping in the s, it found manufacturers in Italy and Spain willing to deal their copies. By , these two countries alone had sold Iraq 85, empty Mtype shells , according to confidential United Nations documents. Iraq also obtained shells from Belgium. By , the American military had found dozens of these blister-agent shells in Iraq, and had reports of others circulating on black markets, several techs said. Tests determined that many still contained mustard agent, some at a purity level of 84 percent, officials said. Once American forces began finding large numbers of M shells, it was all but inevitable that disposal teams would be exposed to blister agent. This happened for the first time, several techs said, on Sept. Foxwell — arrived at the blast site. They found three damaged shells, decided against destroying them in a populated area, and drove them to a demolition range beside their base, according to Mr. Foxwell, who left the Navy in There they discovered that one millimeter shell had leaked a noxious liquid. As he inhaled its vapors, Petty Officer Foxwell was instantly alarmed. The shell contained a brown crystalline substance they had thought was a homemade explosive. A swab with detection paper tested positive for sulfur mustard. The sailors radioed for a technical escort unit, then put on gloves and gas masks and wrapped the shell in plastic and duct tape. They waited. Hours passed. No chemical specialists arrived. Mustard agent acts slowly on victims. Symptoms of exposure often do not appear for hours, and intensify for days. Late that afternoon, with the sailors worried about the effects of mustard inhalation, they destroyed the shell with an explosive charge and entered the Army clinic on their base. Jeremiah M. Foxwell at his home in Washington. In while a Navy petty officer, he and another technician handled a leaking sulfur-mustard shell. Foxwell said. The clinic did not perform the required blood and urine tests on Petty Officer Foxwell, according to his medical records. His former team chief did not reply to written questions. Both men were returned to duty within days, though Mr. Foxwell said his breathing remained labored and his chest hurt. The Army opened an investigation into why the chemical specialists were delayed in arriving. An officer taking statements from participants forbade Petty Officer Foxwell from discussing the incident with his peers, restricting him from issuing a warning. If you experience a new battlefield weapon, it is your responsibility to share that actionable information with other teams. Foxwell said his Navy officer-in-charge did not visit them in the clinic or submit them for Purple Hearts. After Mr. Foxwell was honorably discharged, the Veterans Administration awarded him a partial medical disability in , noting chronic respiratory infections and the development of asthma. The incident was a foreboding sign. Several months later, on March 11, , two Army techs were burned. This second exposure occurred when a team from the th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company was summoned to a roadside bomb made with a rusty artillery shell. The team remotely detonated the shell and continued to the usual steps: checking to ensure the bomb was rendered harmless, and collecting evidence. Specialist Richard T. Beasley, one of the techs, picked up the broken shell, not knowing it contained mustard agent, and stowed it in a bin on their truck beside a fresh-air intake. Some of these shells found side by side near Camp Taji contained sulfur mustard, but some didn't. Improvised bombs were often built from Iraq's stockpile of old artillery rounds. Dirty and corroded exteriors made it difficult to tell whether shells were chemical or conventional. An X-ray of internal features was sometimes the only way to tell chemical from conventional shells. But X-rays are often impractical in a war zone. The next day Specialist Beasley noticed his pant leg was wet. Mustard exposure symptoms had set in. His fingers were tracing a seeping blister nearly the size of his hand. His team leader, a former sergeant who asked that his name be withheld to protect his medical privacy, discovered a similar blister on his own left leg. At first the soldiers were confused. Then, remembering the odorous shell, the sergeant felt a rising fear. If that was mustard, he thought, and was burning their skin, what might be happening in their lungs? Had the techs been burned a few years earlier, the military medical system, which had prepared before the invasion for chemical warfare casualties, might have recognized their wounds. But in , with blast and gunshot wounds the predominant causes of casualties, the doctors were not ready. The general feel was a whole lot of people shrugging their shoulders nonstop. The soldiers returned to Balad Air Base, where they were stationed, and visited another clinic. But the patients were not admitted to a hospital. All the while secrecy prevailed. The military determined the soldiers had been burned by an M shell. Both victims said word of their exposure was purposefully squelched. The order, he added, included prohibitions against mentioning mustard agent when writing home. The secrecy was so extensive that Dr. Lounsbury said he suspected officials hid the cases even from him and two other Army doctors assigned to prepare an official textbook on treating battlefield wounds. In March , Specialist Richard T. Beasley picked up a broken shell, not knowing it contained mustard agent. The next day, while on another call, he noticed his pant leg was wet. Chemical blisters erupted on his leg. Via Richard T. This is particularly true in the ordnance disposal field, because improvised bombs are dangerous before and after a foe sets them out. Bombs made with chemical ordnance pose more questions, because unlike explosives, chemical agents do not pass from dangerous to harmless in a flash. Several techs pointed out that chemical munitions found in explosive devices were a result of conscious enemy action. But troops wounded by chemical devices were treated inconsistently: Some received the medal, others did not. Under presidential order, Purple Hearts are awarded by each military service, which follow separate rules. The Army regulation, another spokesman said, excludes soldiers wounded by chemical agents not released by an enemy. And because this exposure was caused when the soldiers destroyed the chemical device, he said, it did not qualify for Purple Hearts. In the years since he returned to the United States and left the Army, he said, the Army has never contacted him again. His follow-up care amounted to one unsatisfying visit to a doctor near his last base. Although incidents with chemical arms were scattered across Iraq, many were clustered near the ruined complex, which this June was overrun by the Islamic State. After the American-led invasion of , many incidents with chemical arms were clustered near the ruined complex. During the occupation, little remained of Al Muthanna. The United States had destroyed much of it from the air in the gulf war. United Nations demilitarization in the s had made the grounds a boneyard. But one bunker, a massive, cruciform structure, still contained a menacing dud — a 2,pound airdropped bomb among a stockpile of sarin-filled rockets, according to people familiar with the complex. On July 11, , a platoon of Marines unwittingly discovered that another bunker still held mustard shells, too. A peek inside, said one of them, Jace M. As the Marines were carrying the shells out, another corporal swore. Mustard agent had spilled on his upper body. Corporal Klibenski helped him pull off his fire-retardant shirt. Six Marines had been exposed: five lightly, and the corporal who had lifted the leaking shell, the participants said. Doctors sedated him ahead of the expected symptoms. The military evacuated the corporal to the United States. Five days after being burned, he was awarded a Purple Heart. He later returned to duty. Klibenski said an officer visited the other five exposed Marines at Balad and urged them not to talk about what had happened. The incident remained out of public view, and with it knowledge that mustard shells remained on Al Muthanna — long after two wars and an international demilitarization effort to remove them. The exposures followed the discovery of a seemingly small batch of artillery shells by Bushmaster Company, First Battalion, 14th Regiment, a mechanized Army infantry unit searching an area from which American forces had taken fire. Specialist Andrew T. Goldman examining leaking chemical rounds at a site near Camp Taji, Iraq, on Aug. Sergeant Duling, of the th E. Company, arrived and relieved another disposal team. The first team leader was in a chemical protection suit. He was throwing up in his mask. Sergeant Duling and his team put on protective suits, approached the crater from upwind and found a pile of rusty millimeter shells. They tested negative for chemical agents. Relieved, the techs removed their chemical suits and detonated the pile from afar. The blast unearthed still more munitions. Soldiers from Bushmaster Company formed a human chain to stack shells for another blast, said one participant, Philip Dukett, a former sergeant. In the blast crater, Specialist Goldman noticed one of the shells was leaking; soon it tested positive for sulfur mustard. He swore. Sergeant Duling ordered everyone to decontaminate with bleach, but the team was not fully prepared. Goldman says he still suffers headaches, fatigue and shortness of breath from his exposure. Shortly after dawn on Aug. An orange blast shook the desert. When the cloud reached them, they coughed. Taylor said recently. Sergeant Duling and his soldiers were spent, and had a more pressing priority — finding medical care. They undressed, set their contaminated clothes afire with a thermite grenade, and left, leaving the shells unsecured. The Army did not return for two months, when it destroyed more than 20 remaining mustard shells, a participant said. The team entered a clinic at Camp Taji. The staff, all three victims said, was unhelpful. Goldman, who was honorably discharged in In the shower a short while later, he felt a blister on his buttock. Sergeant Duling struggled to breathe. The soldiers slept a few hours, woke feeling worse, and returned. By then, Mr. Goldman said, he too was short of breath. Blisters were forming around his eyelids. The medical staff remained unmoved. On Aug. Their company commander, Capt. Patrick Chavez, who retired as a major in , said that rather than help the patients, the clinic seemed intent on proving them wrong. As the techs went untreated, burns and blisters broke out on two soldiers from Bushmaster Company, who lived at another outpost. One, Staff Sgt. Adam Hulett, noticed a large blister on his left foot, which turned bright yellow. Medics told him to put cream on it, he said. Both sergeants were evacuated to Germany, while the more heavily exposed victims were still denied treatment. The team returned to duty. The first day out, when Sergeant Duling was examining an exploded device, he quickly gasped for air. Still the doctors resisted. It was as if, Sergeant Duling said, the staff suspected the soldiers were malingerers. Medical records show the shift. On Sept. A colonel visited from the Aberdeen Proving Ground, an Army chemical warfare center, to discuss lab results. Goldman said. These lab results were not put in his medical records, Mr. Why such vital information was withheld is not clear. The Army Medical Command, in a written statement, said it was unsure. Next the Army took up the question of Purple Hearts. Captain Chavez submitted the soldiers for the medals. In late October, the hospital staff told them the secretary of the Army, Pete Geren, would present awards and they needed soldiers for the photographs. The turnabout came weeks later. Duling speaking at his home in Florida, on June 27, The rejection was a bitter turn. And why were we in this country in the first place? The mustard exposure left him in permanently poor respiratory health; in he had surgery to keep his airway open. Goldman said he still suffered headaches, fatigue and shortness of breath. The Army, he said, has not tracked him to see how he has fared — part of what he described as a pattern of indifferent leadership and lackluster care, and secrecy to protect the bungling. Prompted by the Times reporting, the Army acknowledged that it had not provided the medical care and long-term tracking required by its chemical exposure treatment guidelines. It said it would identify all troops and veterans who had been exposed and update and follow their cases. From that moment, its fledgling government assumed primary responsibility for securing and destroying any chemical munitions remaining from Mr. One of the police officers involved, Farhan Hachel, said he and others were ordered to gather the shells and take them to Awenat, a village south of Tikrit. Officer Hachel picked up one the shells and carried it across his chest. His friends told him then that they had carried leaking chemical shells. In all, seven Iraqi police officers were burned, Officer Hachel and officials said. The American military secretly destroyed the shells, and photographed and briefly treated the burned police officers. The care was cursory. The last large discovery of chemical rounds widely known among ordnance techs occurred at a surprising place — a security compound known as Spider, beside a highway south of Tikrit. During the occupation, both American and Iraqi units had worked from the compound. The presence of mustard shells there, soldiers said, appeared a result of negligence. The discovery, described by different sources as in or early , was made when an Iraqi security officer visited Contingency Operating Base Speicher, and told the ordnance disposal troops there that Iraqi troops had opened a shipping container and found it packed with chemical shells. The report led to Operation Guardian, when an American soldier from a technical escort unit, wearing a protective suit and mask and carrying a detector, reopened the shipping container. Paul Yungandreas, one of the American techs assigned to recover the shells. Inside were stacks of Mstyle shells. The disposal technicians found nearly Many of the shells were empty. Others still contained mustard agent. Most showed signs of age and decay. Many had been wrapped in plastic — a powerful indicator, several techs said, that they had been collected elsewhere by an American or an Iraqi unit, which then failed to secure them properly. Like most incidents in which American troops encountered chemical weapons in Iraq, Operation Guardian was not publicly disclosed. By then adherence to the international convention, and the security of the stock, was not much longer a Pentagon concern. The United States had invaded Iraq to reduce the risk of the weapons of mass destruction that it presumed Mr. Hussein still possessed. But it had not shared this data publicly. And as it prepared to withdraw, old stocks set loose after the invasion were still circulating. Al Muthanna had still not been cleaned up. 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 , 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 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. John Ismay, a former Navy explosive ordnance disposal officer, found chemical weapons in Iraq his first week. Please upgrade your browser. See next articles. Key Points During the Iraq war, at least 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers were exposed to aging chemical weapons abandoned years earlier. These weapons were not part of an active arsenal. They were remnants from Iraq's arms program in the s during the Iran-Iraq war. Many troops who were exposed received inadequate care. None of the veterans were enrolled in long-term health monitoring. In response to this investigation, the Pentagon apologized, announced new steps to provide medical support and to recognize veterans who had been denied awards. Learn more ». Locations where chemical munitions were found. Areas under full control of the Islamic State. Compound Spider. Areas under full control of the Islamic State as of September. Al Muthanna. Camp Taji. Location of shell. Areas with positions for possible enemy snipers. Prototype photographed by United Nations inspectors. Baghdad Airport. Location of shells. FOB Falcon. Sulfur mustard leakage. Solid explosive. M conventional round. Small amount of explosive. M chemical round. Liquid chemical agent. Area of Detail. Lake Tharthar. Balad Air Base. Highway 1. Blast site. Still more mustard shells were found. And still more mustard shells were found. Security compound Spider. Documentary Chemical Secrets of the Iraq War. Documents Medical Records of U.