Gulf War commander H. Norman Schwarzkopf challenged Thursday suggestions that U.S. troops weren’t told about a CIA report of chemical weapons at an Iraqi ammunition dump.

Schwarzkopf told Congress he would “be very surprised” if the intelligence report had not been passed down to the 82nd Airborne Division, the unit ordered to blow up the depot at the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

In a report issued earlier this week, the Pentagon suggested that the unit had not received the intelligence report.

The revelation in that report that there had been wartime suspicions of chemical weapons at the Khamisiyah depot drew cries from Congress of military cover-up and negligence and a call from President Clinton to investigate the case.

But Schwarzkopf was skeptical of the report: “I see no reason why they would have given it to one (division) and not given it to the other.

“You have to understand we were involved in the middle of the ground war,” he said.

“The night before, a Scud missile had killed 28 people and wounded a hundred. We had battles going all over the place, and we also had tons - literally tons … - of unrefined information coming in … which we then … sent directly out to the units involved.”

Schwarzkopf reiterated that he is offended by suggestions that the military had been careless with U.S. troops during the war.

“My commanders over there … would have willingly sacrificed their own lives to protect the lives of their troops,” he said. “So any implication whatsoever that we would ever do something like that just shows a complete lack of understanding of the moral and ethical climate that exists in our armed forces today.”