Screwing up in Iraq

Aaron Stein 0:10

Hello and welcome to the Arms Control Wonk podcast. My name is Aaron Stein. I'm a contributor to Arms Control Wonk. I'm also an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London and a PhD candidate at King's College.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:22

And I'm Jeffrey Lewis. I'm the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

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Aaron 0:43

So Jeffrey, quite the bombshell story today in the New York Times by C.J. Chivers about chemical weapons in Iraq.

Jeffrey 0:50

Yeah, it's a big and appalling story.

Aaron 0:54

Appalling is the right word, I'd say.

Jeffrey 0:56

So if you're listening, it turns out that although we knew after the Iraq War that there were poorly disposed of stockpiles of pre-1991 chemical munitions— The scale of those stockpiles was never disclosed. And it turns out that U.S. service personnel have been running into them and getting very, very sick.

Aaron 1:28

Right. Yeah. When I read the story, I mean, first of all, I think I was shocked like everybody else was. But the thing I took away was... I mean, like you said, it was the number of munitions that these soldiers were coming across of and the number of times at which that we know of now from the story that soldiers were being exposed and how those exposures weren't treated properly.

And then follow-up care wasn't, I guess, like conducted properly. These soldiers weren't followed along. I find it chucking.

Jeffrey 2:00

It's really appalling. I mean, I think when... When the Iraq survey group, which was the entity created to go look for weapons of mass destruction, did its work. The The ISG did report that they were finding these old pre-1991 munitions. So in some sense, it's not surprising. But the Iraq Survey Group packed up and had completed its report by September 2004.

And there was a little addendum in March 2005. And so... When they finished, they kind of announced that, well, you know, there were no chemical weapons programs. There were some old, useless chemical weapons from before 1991. But they implied that it wasn't a very significant amount. And it's now obvious that the Iraq Survey Group did not do a very good job of surveying.

And they didn't find lots and lots of stuff. And I guess that those things have largely come to light In the years since. And so, you know, kudos to C.J. Chivers for getting to the bottom of this. But it seems like they have been stumbling on many, many, many pre-1991 chemical weapons. And it's really appalling that the Defense Department has not Dealt with this in a forthright way and has left these people basically to suffer with inadequate medical care.

Aaron 3:48

Yeah. I mean, I think we should make it clear that I don't think anybody, we should have expected to find some improperly disposed of chemical weapons in Iraq. I mean, we did so previously in 1991 and there's precedent for it in other places. I think The larger question, the much broader question, and I don't think we want to relitigate the Iraq war, is that why was the Iraq survey group only given one year to do so?

The article talks about it. It's because other priorities of the war started to prop up. And those other priorities of the war were the unfolding chaos and the bad way in which the post-invasion strategy was handled. Isn't this just part of like this broader, just poor planning in place before the start of this invasion? Yeah, I know.

Jeffrey 4:40

I find it right. Did Donald Rumsfeld do anything right? Like, it's so frustrating.

Aaron 4:46

It's extremely frustrating.

Jeffrey 4:48

You know, I think that there is, as a consequence of these revelations, there is going to be a lot of blame to go around. And so just as though the, the entire mission and in particular, the post-war planning seemed shall we say poorly thought out? It really now seems obvious that the effort to go in and secure, to find and secure Call them WMD programs, but in specific, the chemical weapons stockpiles were incompetent.

And, you know, I think when you go back and you read the Iraq survey report and you read the addendum, it's very clear, particularly on the subject of what they call WMD leftovers, that it is comprehensive. And that there should not be any surprises. And in fact, there's a point where Dolpher says if there were to be a surprise in the future, it most likely would be in the biological weapons area, right?

So... They really expressed this level of confidence that they had gone in and they had done a comprehensive survey and they had found everything that there was to be found. And this shouldn't be a problem. And, you know, it was, and it's a, it's a problem with real human consequences.

Aaron 6:15

Well, go ahead. No, it's, it's, it's because it's real human beings who are being put on the front lines here. I mean, and, One thing I came across when reading the story is that the soldiers seemed well-prepared. They were essentially stumbling across what were large quantities of munitions buried in the ground. And in the process of removing what were both conventional and now what turns out chemical weapons, they were inadvertently exposed.

And they quickly realized that, A, they knew the smell, what to look out for, and, B, they all knew the symptoms to look out for. It was the back end. Where these people got screwed, for lack of a better word, when they showed up at clinics, the medical personnel were dismissive. And it seems like they were dismissive because it came sort of after the, let's say, the rationale for the invasion was popped.

The bubble in terms of this was a WMD-specific mission got popped and this became a peacekeeping mission. You understand what I'm saying there?

Jeffrey 7:21

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I find so frustrating about this is that There's no reason for the Defense Department not to have been prepared for precisely this eventuality. You know, in 1991, there were lots and lots and lots of chemical weapons that U.S. forces came across. And there were, depending on how you count it, five or six incidents where troops were exposed to agents, including the Rather infamous event where there were chemical weapons in a pit and in a bunker and where they tried to destroy them by exploding them.

And, and they ended up with a very large release. And so there's just, I mean, I find we, we, I guess we, we keep saying this about everything that has gone wrong in Iraq since 2003, but there's just no excuse for it.

Aaron 8:17

No, no. The excuse is there is no excuse. I mean, I think the question is why'd they cover it up? I mean, I think we know why they covered it up, but the story goes into that there was a concern that all the munitions they were finding were pre-1991, which implies that the original arms control efforts that were put in place after the first Gulf War were successful.

Successful in the sense that the programs were stopped and that these munitions were buried and not usable. Not in the best way possible, by the way, caveat there, and two, is that the materiel came from U.S., but primarily European suppliers, which we also knew. I mean, again, if you follow the Iraqi chemical weapons program and its history of use in the Iran-Iraq war, that wasn't a big concern either.

I find that rationale for the cover-up To be lacking, for lack of a better term.

Jeffrey 9:15

Yeah, I, you know, it is really hard to understand why, my suspicion is, and I don't want to seem at all critical of what I think is an amazing piece of reporting, and it's amazing because of its quality, but it's also amazing because it's really important, right? Because again, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that they're human beings, we're not getting proper medical care, Because the government didn't want to admit and people in the government didn't want to admit that they had made a series of mistakes, right?

So it's really important in that regard. I suspect that the cover-up has just as much to do with incompetence as anything else. That just the fear of... Admitting that there is yet another problem in the failing occupation. Things just kept going badly and badly and badly, and I bet it would have been You know, it's more bad news, right?

Oh, wow, we, you know, the Iraq Survey Group missed another buried stockpile of chemical weapons and, you know, more people have been exposed. I just think that things were going so badly that there is this human but still totally unacceptable tendency to To try to cover up this stuff and hide this stuff and pretend that it didn't happen.

I don't know. Aaron, can you tell that I'm angry? I can tell.

Aaron 10:41

I can definitely hear that you're angry. Yeah, I agree. I think the PR value of most of these things coming from, again, what are primarily European suppliers, I don't think is a good enough reason not to have told us what was going on here. And it certainly doesn't excuse the fact for what we've just been talking about.

They should have been prepared for this.

Jeffrey 11:08

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's really – I think that it's so hard to understand. I just – I find it inexplicable. I think that if I were to be an official in a position of responsibility – And something like this were to happen, and it were to happen again, and it were to happen again, I would feel some ethical responsibility.

And I just think that, you know, I mean, we've beaten up on Donald Rumsfeld, and he will take a significant part of the blame. But I have to say, I think that, you know, this is going to harm Bob Gates's reputation, because he was at the helm for what seems like a significant number of these events.

Aaron 12:02

Yeah, and you know who else? Chivers alluded to it, but they got no follow-up care from the Veterans Affairs Administration. Did you catch that? Yeah. And it goes back to you send these people to war, and then when they come home, the VA can't take care of them because they're overwhelmed.

Jeffrey 12:20

Yeah, I heard in one of the – I didn't see it in the story, but I heard one of the people interviewed say that they had been – they'd been recommended for Purple Hearts because these are wounds, right? This is – it doesn't matter, right? Purple Hearts are about – you don't have to be shot by the bad guy, right?

And they were denied. And so you just get the sense of there's this incredible – Callousness about their fate, which I just think is, again, is really going to reflect incredibly poorly on all of the people who are in the chain of command.

Aaron 13:06

Yeah, I think what he also made clear in the story, it really was very comprehensive and a very good story, is that one of the exposures happened because they stumbled across an IED. The IAD had used this shell. And a lot of the areas or the places in which these shells are now – were stored are now under the control of the Islamic State.

Keeping in mind, of course, that the Islamic State is just the latest offspring of what was al-Qaeda in Iraq. You know what I mean?

Jeffrey 13:41

So, yeah, right, right. We, we, we went into Iraq in order to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. And the direct result of that is now that a group of terrorists have access to admittedly old rusty and not terribly effective weapons of mass destruction. It's, it's a little maddening.

Aaron 13:59

It is maddening. How concerned should we be about this? I mean, that's ultimately where this story is going to go. So let's cut it off here. How concerned should we be, do you think, about the possibility of IS using improvised explosive devices, perhaps wired up with chemical munitions?

Jeffrey 14:19

Well, I think the first thing I would say is... Insurgents have done precisely this. One of the events that Chivers mentions in the story is actually reported in the Iraq Survey Group report. In the survey, in the story rather, he mentions an IED incident With a sarin shell. And if you go back and look at the Iraq survey report from 2004, you can see that event is described.

And so it's absolutely possible that they could, they could do this. Now, how effective that's going to be is very difficult to say. But it's certainly a nasty thing to do. It's And, you know, I think that Just like the soldiers have come home sick and with symptoms, you know, human beings who are exposed to these things in the form of explosives are also going to get sick.

And so whether it makes a military difference or not, you know, there is this now continuing potential for harm. And it looks like just from the very nice map, and I have to say the New York Times is getting very good at visually presenting information, but from the map showing where U.S. forces found chemical munitions, many, I don't know if I'd say most, but many, it kind of looks like most, are in areas that are now held by ISIS or Daesh.

Aaron 15:57

Yeah, I agree with you. In some ways, we might actually want them handling these munitions because they'll die a little quicker and might save us a little bit of money in smart bombs to be extremely cynical. But it speaks to the overarching point When you invade a country, you should have a plan for the post-invasion, especially when it's all but assured that you're going to win.

And just blunder after blunder of WMD sites, nuclear sites in Iraq that weren't protected by U.S. forces. You know what I mean? This isn't the first time where these chemical weapons were basically just left exposed, even though ostensibly we should have known where they were, some of the sites. Sufficient forces weren't allocated to go look out for these things, to account for them.

Jeffrey 16:47

Yeah, I think that's right. There's another aspect to it which really frustrates me, which again has a lot to do with errors that I think one saw throughout all of the post-war planning, which the story mentions. There is a procedure that For handling these kinds of chemical weapons under the Chemical Weapons Convention. And it seems that those procedures were not followed.

Right. And the story implies, although it's hard to know for certain, but the story seems to imply that the... Disregard for the Chemical Weapons Convention may have contributed to the exposure of units. And, you know, it's a frustration that I think one saw across the board in the post-war planning, which is there was this kind of disregard for international norms, international capabilities, and a sort of sense of, ah, we're Americans, we can do anything.

We can do it the way we want.

Aaron 17:54

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 17:56

And, you know, it turns out, like, no, there is a reason that the Chemical Weapons Convention has these procedures spelled out, right? It's not the kind of thing that... It's not just treaty weenies, right, which is this term certain folks like to use. Like, there's a very good reason that you're supposed to destroy chemical... that you're supposed to destroy chemical weapons in a particular and a methodical way.

And it doesn't seem like there was any thought given... Given to that. I mean, I have to say, the story is, I'm sure the Defense Department will have a series of defenses and maybe it won't look quite as damning as it does in the New York Times, but it looks horrible. It does.

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Aaron 19:41

I almost felt as if – well, A, as we've said multiple times over and over again, we should have expected that there would have been chemical munitions buried out in the desert. There were in 1991, and our troops got exposed back then. So this is not a moment of hindsight being 2020. It's that these chemical weapons were all from pre-1991, which is when – We first instigated, with the use of force obviously, Iraq signing a chemical weapons convention.

Is this almost an indirect reaffirmation of the need for arms control? Like however imperfect, A, you get proper disposal techniques that could have helped prevent exposure by certain U.S. troops. B, Iraq was – Iraq had no active chemical weapons program but had rather just buried a bunch of shells out in the desert.

Jeffrey 20:33

Yeah, it's – It's one of these incredibly ugly life lessons, right? There's nothing about the elimination of Iraq's WMD programs and its legacy that was made better by this war, right? Nothing we did, whatever you think about Saddam in general and the use of force in general, there's nothing that we did, as far as I can tell, that made this problem Better, right?

It only made the problem worse. And so, you know, it's just this incredible frustration that, that I, that the story sort of like manages to generate in me you know, that we did, we had this chemical weapons convention and there were these procedures and yes, the Iraqis did not follow them correctly. But we would have been far better off Dealing with this as an environmental remediation problem over a long period of time.

More, more than anything else. I, I actually, I just dug up, I have to say the the spokesperson's response. And, and it's, I have to say it's, I, they're going to have to try again because this is basically admission of incompetence. It's, 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, neighboring states, coalition forces, or the environment.

The convention, she added, did not envisage the conditions found in Iraq. You know, it's like, oh, that's not like actually an excuse, right?

Aaron 22:19

Yeah, and it's starting to ring, it rings hollow, especially with the way in which the OPCW operated in Syria.

Jeffrey 22:26

Well, I mean, she basically says we had to do things in an improper and half-assed manner because we didn't want the chemical weapons to threaten the Iraqi people. It's like, well, why would that be exactly that you were worried about that? And the answer is because we did a lousy job of finding them And we were doing a lousy job of providing security, and we are now terrified about the outcome that we are now seeing, which is that these jerks from Daesh have access to all this stuff.

Right. You know, it's like the convention did not envisage the conditions found in Iraq. And it's like, yes, you're right. It's rare that arms control treaties can envision the perfect storm of stupidity that marked our occupation of Iraq. I just – I'm so mad at Don Rumsfeld. Like – You know, and I hope I should say I hope listeners don't take this as a as a purely partisan statement, because I still vividly remember sitting at a bar with a friend who described himself directly as a neocon.

And he had an incredibly frustrated moment where he says, you know, there's nothing about being a neocon that forbids you from planning for the postwar environment.

Aaron 23:36

Well, yeah, planning doesn't stop at partisan lines.

Jeffrey 23:39

Right. So even if you are the kind of person who thinks that it was a good idea to go into Iraq, I think you would be doubly insulted that they made such a mess of it.

Aaron 23:50

Yeah. So what's the solution here? I always like to end podcasts on a positive note, as listeners know. What's our policy solution? What would we say is arms control walks here? I have a few ideas, but I'm curious to hear yours.

Jeffrey 24:03

I got nothing, man. I mean, the people have been exposed. The people are sick and, you know, Dash is running riot. And we now have a name, Operation Inherent Resolve. I guess dilatory half measure was taken. You know... I don't think it's going to beat back these guys. And so I think the policy recommendation that I can come up with, which is not a happy note, which is why we won't end there, is we're going to have to suck it up and deal with yet another frustrating legacy of the poor planning that went into this invasion.

Aaron 24:44

No, I think we should own it. I mean I think when you make a mistake, you own it. That's my policy recommendation, is own this. Not equivocations about that we had to destroy them in a prompt manner to protect the Iraqi people. That's BS. Let's own it. We made a mistake. And especially after the success of the OPCW in Syria, caveats aside, there are many, particularly about Bashar al-Assad's declaration.

I think we might even consider declaring ourselves in violation of the OPCW, making a full declaration about where we screwed up. And saying this is how future countries should learn from our poor planning.

Jeffrey 25:20

You mean admit that we have treaties for a reason and that we've just learned that the hard way? Yes. I think it's time to end the charade.

Aaron 25:29

That's my policy recommendation. Admit we screwed up. Admit we screwed up because you know what? We did screw up. Look, if you don't want to make this about the Iraq war, fine. We screwed up in the way in which to properly dispose of chemical weapons. We screwed up in the way in which to properly take care of our veterans who were on the front lines, who disposed of these chemical weapons.

And we screwed up when they came home that they received no follow-up care. We screwed up in every facet.

Jeffrey 25:56

And do you know why that's not going to happen? Why? That's not going to happen for two reasons. The first is that it would require our political leadership taking responsibility for their actions, which I don't know if you have noticed is not something they're very good at.

Aaron 26:11

Oh, you mean that we started an air war over Iraq and Syria and our Congress didn't come home to vote on it?

Jeffrey 26:16

I think that there is so much blame to go around for whatever is passing for policy at the moment. People are in full buck passing mode. And so I cannot imagine somebody stepping up and looking at this and saying like, hey, you know what? We did wrong by these human beings. But the second thing is lawsuits, right?

I mean, that's... I got to think that they are at this point terrified of liability issues.

Aaron 26:50

And I know that there are some... Limitations, right.

Jeffrey 26:55

On, on one's ability for for I, I always, I, I have to say, I'm, I'm not totally familiar with this, but you know, it's like really hard to sue the government if you're employed by the government, right.

Aaron 27:10

Right. If you're performing your duties

Jeffrey 27:14

But even saying that and whatever the legalities of that are, I just – I would have to imagine that people both privately and professionally would be incredibly reluctant to open themselves up to this kind of criticism. But yeah, you're right. We should own it, right?

Aaron 27:34

Yeah, I think so. I mean it reinforces the norm against arms control. I think – We are the Arms Control Wong team. We believe in Arms Control Wong norms. And we'd call other countries out on it if they screwed up. I think it's time to take a hard look in the mirror to see where we failed along the way.

Is that a happy note, Aaron? Maybe this podcast isn't going to end on a happy note because this story is not happy. No, it is definitely not a happy story. Yeah, so perhaps we'll end it there.

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Jeffrey, this was fascinating. Thanks for the chat.

Jeffrey 28:22

It was nice talking to you, even if the subject was an unhappy one. Thanks, everybody, for listening.