Blog post

"Worries Over Being Slimed"
Posted by IAVA Staff on March 17 2008

Marine officer Nathaniel Flick penned an Op-Ed in the New York Times this weekend, describing his unit's fear of chemical attacks at the beginning of the Iraq war.

The prospect of being “slimed” — and having to battle through a chemical attack — dominated every part of our planning. We wore heavy charcoal suits to protect us from chemicals, taped nerve-agent-detection paper to the windshields of our vehicles, and practiced jabbing antidote needles into our thighs. We made bets not on whether it would happen, but when. We didn’t know what line we had to cross to provoke Saddam Hussein into using weapons of mass destruction — maybe the border, the Euphrates, the Tigris or the doorway to his presidential palace — and so the overriding objective was speed: get to Baghdad and cut the head off the snake.

Read the rest of his piece by clicking here.