Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 31

"Mockin' in the Free World"

Neil Young joined Stephen Colbert last night for an enviornmental anthem.  Stephen still worried that terrorist dolphins may attack us.  Dare I add, "Splash"?


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ISIS and Mustard Gas and USA

My latest at Huff Post leading from the big NYT scoops:  "ISIS May Be Using Mustard Gas--Linked to US--Against Kurds."

My Photos of the Day

Just a reminder that I now have a sister blog here, for my photographs (from around the world), with a new one launched every morning.  Visit here. 

'NYT' Shocker: Saddam's Chem Weapons Did Harm U.S. Soldiers--and We Covered It Up

Out of the blue, NYT with top story tonight at its site, plus documentary (see below) and links to key docs (and photo, above), by C.J. Chivers reporting what was allegedly "top-secret" until now, but found in FOIA docs: The U.S. and other troops encountered long-abandoned chem weapons, including sarin, in Iraq for years after the 2003 U.S. invasion.

And because of secrecy, troops did not receive proper warning and then medical care.  Chivers notes that the discovery of these largely decrepit weapons, manufactured two decades earlier, "did not support the government’s invasion rationale."  Plus: a worrisome ISIS angle.  UPDATE:  Among the documents posted by the Times is 48-page report that includes info on two U.S. companies, in Maryland and S. Carolina, that made needed precursors for mustard gas for Saddam

The New York Times found 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers who were exposed to nerve or mustard agents after 2003. American officials said that the actual tally of exposed troops was slightly higher, but that the government’s official count was classified.

The secrecy fit a pattern. Since the outset of the war, the scale of the United States’ encounters with chemical weapons in Iraq was neither publicly shared nor widely circulated within the military. These encounters carry worrisome implications now that the Islamic State, a Qaeda splinter group, controls much of the territory where the weapons were found.

The American government withheld word about its discoveries even from troops it sent into harm’s way and from military doctors. The government’s secrecy, victims and participants said, prevented troops in some of the war’s most dangerous jobs from receiving proper medical care and official recognition of their wounds....

“I felt more like a guinea pig than a wounded soldier,” said a former Army sergeant who suffered mustard burns in 2007 and was denied hospital treatment and medical evacuation to the United States despite requests from his commander.

Congress, too, was only partly informed, while troops and officers were instructed to be silent or give deceptive accounts of what they had found....

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....

Nonproliferation officials said the Pentagon’s handling of many of the recovered warheads and shells appeared to violate the Convention on Chemical Weapons. According to this convention, chemical weapons must be secured, reported and destroyed in an exacting and time-consuming fashion.

Louvre The One You're With

Photo at top:   When I visited the Louvre three years ago.  Below:  a certain unnamed couple last week when they paid for a private tour. 

Berlin, Balloons--and Beethoven

I've known about this for awhile but here's good story and photos.  Next month Berlin and Germany (and really, all of us) will be marking the fall of the Wall 25 years ago with all sorts of ceremonies and events, but the coolest is the use of lighted balloons to mark an amazing nine-mile path of the barrier (I visited one key area a few months ago).  And, as I'd expect: the events will climax with the playing of, what else, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.  That was also the climax back in 1989, when Leonard Bernstein led an international orchestra and chorus there.  The story is told in the current film by Kerry Candaele that I co-produced and in the related book we have written. 

"Beginning" Again

I've posted part III of my "Hiroshima Cover-up" series at Huff Post, this time on the White House/Pentagon censorship of MGM's 1947 epic on The Bomb.  Wild trailer, which took the form of a news event...My e-book on it all, Hollywood Bomb .

Morello Marches Again

Tom with new "Marching on Ferguson" to benefit Ferguson October protests.  Here's studio version and details, and live below.

Cooke's Tour

Fifty-one years later, it's still one of the greatest rock 'n roll vocal performances ever: Sam Cooke, live at the Harlem Square Club, Miami (later immortalized in the opening of the Will Smith Ali film).  Greil Marcus once called it maybe the greatest rock 'n roll vocals (30 years ago) and I won't argue!  I love the aside near the end, no doubt based on something a woman in the crowd was doing, "I better leave that alone."  Sadly, Sam did not... And if this is great, some of his work with gospel group The Soul Stirrers a decade earlier was even greater.

Van the Man's Greatest?

There are those of us--Greil Marcus may be another--who think Van Morrison's cult classic Veedon Fleece, released exactly 40 years ago, might be his greatest album.  Here's just one "highlight."  Ain't it lonely, livin' with a gun?  And then one of his all-time greats, "Streets of Arklow."