More then 600 U.S. troops exposed to chemical weapons in the Iraq War. Yahoo/AFP

U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Yahoo/AFP

More then 600 U.S. soldiers have reported exposure to chemical weapons since 2003 in the Iraq War. Yahoo/AFP. The new numbers are much larger then the original 17 cases the New York Times uncovered in their report this month. The report said that the troops had been ordered to stay silent about what they found and many of them did not receive training or treatment after discovering the weapons. After the report the Pentagon, lead by Chuck Hagel, reviewed the records and found hundreds of other soldiers who had been exposed. In response a hotline has been set up for troops to call so they can get treatment for any health problems they may have developed. In all over 5,000 warheads, shells and bombs were found. 

My Comment:

The original New York Times piece is here. I highly recommend it, though it is incredibly long. It gets into the personal effects these weapons had on these troops. Be warned though there are some graphic pictures of chemical burns buried half way through the article with no real warning. It's pretty nasty so if you are squeamish avoid it. If there is nothing else to take from the New York Times piece it is that the compound that stored these recovered weapons is now under control of ISIS...

As for the AFP article, it isn't surprising that these exposures were covered up. The Bush administration needed a smoking gun in Iraq proving that they had an active chemical weapons program and these old weapons were not it. Had the Bush administration not used the threat of an active program as the rational for the war things might have been different. Even then I thought they were foolish to focus so heavily on the threat of a chemical weapons program instead of the fact that the Iraqi's were shooting at our airplanes and killing their people. And the 5,000 shells found prove that Saddam Hussein was lying about destroying his entire stockpile of chemical arms. They might not have been effective weapons anymore and Hussein might not have had full control of them but they did exist. The soldiers wounded by the weapons are proof of that.  

Does it justify the war? I'll let you decide that for yourself.