Robert Torricelli: “this morning, millions of Americans awoke to some startling revelations, news that was particularly painful to thousands…”

“this morning, millions of Americans awoke to some startling revelations, news that was particularly painful to thousands of veterans of the Persian Gulf war. Yesterday the Central Intelligence Agency released a report that stated that as early as 1984 it had intelligence reports warning that chemical weapons held by the military of Iraq were stored at a previously undisclosed chemical weapons site. Indeed, in 1986, the CIA had received even more specific reports and obtained a copy of an Iraqi chemical weapons production plan that mentioned large storage facilities and the exact location and even the types of chemicals and other weapons that were being stored at that location. Despite each of these reports and the existence of this detailed information in the very files of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon was not informed at any level on any basis of any of this information when the ground war commenced in the Persian Gulf in January 1991. Without this information, tragically, American ground forces entered the specific chemical weapons storage facility named within Central Intelligence Agency files in March 1991. Fully 20,000 American soldiers were in the vicinity and potentially were exposed to the residue of those chemicals when this facility was destroyed.”