U.S. Defense Department calls chlorine attacks the first use of poison against Iraqis since Saddam's day

The poison gas attack on the Iraqi town of Halabja was the largest-scale chemical weapons attack against a civilian population in modern times. It began early in the evening of March 16, 1988 -- the seventh year of the Iraq-Iran war -- when a group of eight aircraft began dropping chemical bombs, and the chemical bombardment continued all night. The Halabja attack involved multiple chemical agents, including mustard gas, and the nerve agents sarin, tabun and VX. Some sources have also pointed to the blood agent hydrogen cyanide. In a New York Times opinion piece, Stephen C. Pelletiere, the CIA's senior political analyst for the Iran-Iraq war, wrote, "This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target."

WASHINGTON: Ratcheting up its rhetoric against Iraq's Sunni insurgents, the U.S. Defense Department on Friday condemned their recent use of chlorine gas as a weapon, calling it the first use of a poison gas against Iraqis since Saddam Hussein ordered mustard gas attacks on Kurds in northern Iraq nearly 20 years ago.

Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, a deputy operations director on the Joint Staff, said he was not implying that the insurgents are following Saddam's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, but his comments recalled a key U.S. argument for invading Iraq — Saddam's history of using chemical weapons against his own people.

"I strongly believe this use of chlorine should not be dismissed merely as a new tactic or as a new trend," Barbero told a Pentagon news conference. "Chlorine is a poison gas. It is a poison gas being used on the Iraqi people. Before these attacks, the last time poison gas was used on the Iraqi people was by Saddam Hussein."

Read the rest at the International Herald Tribune

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