Karl Rove linked to covering up WMDs in Iraq, soldiers exposed to chemicals

Many President Bush supporters pointed to satellite images, on ground testimonies from Iraqis and the Saddam papers to fend off assertions that Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. Now, years later, Iraq is a hot topic again and this time it’s Karl Rove who being blamed for spreading misinformation on Iraq.

Karl Rove caricature by donkeyhotey [email protected]

Now, the Oct. 17 article from the NY Times shocks readers with the reflections: “When it was first reported in May 2004 that Saddam-era chemical weapons shells had injured U.S. troops, the editors of the New York Times dismissed that, “Finding some residual weapons that had escaped a large-scale destruction program would be no great surprise and if the chemicals had degraded, no major threat.” Now, a major New York Times report on the issue has been followed by an editorial warning of “A Deadly Legacy in Iraq”: some 5,000 chemical shells have been discovered over the years in Iraq by U.S. or U.S.-trained Iraqi forces. Many more such munitions litter the wreckage of an old Iraqi weapons facility northwest of Baghdad, which the Islamic State captured in June.”

Not only did they have weapons, but the truth was covered up years later when Bush advisor Karl Rove advised against releasing facts during a re-election campaign and again during the economic struggles of his second term.

The Daily Beast details Rick Santorum’s cry that canisters were found in Iraq, the weapons are/were there and what he was told by the White House.

“…in 2005 and 2006, the Bush White House wasn’t interested. ‘We don’t want to look back,’ Santorum recalled Rove as saying (though Santorum stressed he was not quoting verbatim conversations he had more than eight years ago). ‘I will say that the gist of the comments from the president’s senior people was ‘We don’t want to look back, we want to look forward.’” the article recounts.

The Beast then turns to Dave Wurmser, a senior adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney: ““in 2005-6, Karl Rove and his team blocked public disclosure of these (findings) and said ‘Let these sleeping dogs lie; we have lost that fight so better not to remind anyone of it.’”

Rove declined to comment for this story.

Santorum on Thursday stood by that claim. “There was no active chemical-weapons operation in Iraq—that doesn’t mean there were no chemical weapons,” he said. “That was the point we were making. It’s clear from The New York Times’ article that the military as well as the administration didn’t want to have that conversation because they missed it.”

More on the Times coverage HERE

Check out the full Daily Beast article HERE

U.S. Air Force photo by by Senior Airman Grovert Fuentes-Contreras