***begin Pentagon excerpt***
As soon as the war with Iran ended, Iraq announced its determination to crush the Kurdish insurrection. It sent Republican Guards to the Kurdish area, and in the course of this operation according to the U.S. State Department gas was used, with the result that numerous Kurdish civilians were killed. The Iraqi government denied that any such gassing had occurred. Nonetheless, Secretary of State Schultz stood by U.S. accusations, and the U.S. Congress, acting on its own, sought to impose economic sanctions on Baghdad as a violator of the Kurds' human rights.
Having looked at all of the evidence that was available to us, we find it impossible to confirm the State Department's claim that gas was used in this instance. To begin with there were never any victims produced. International relief organizations who examined the Kurds in Turkey where they had gone for asylum failed to discover any. Nor were there ever any found inside Iraq. The claim rests solely on testimony of the Kurds who had crossed the border into Turkey, where they were interviewed by staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
. . . .
It appears that in seeking to punish Iraq, the Congress was influenced by another incident that occurred five months earlier in another Iraqi-Kurdish city, Halabjah. In March 1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical weapons, producing a great many deaths. Photographs of them, Kurdish victims, were widely disseminated in the international media. Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack, even though it was subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemicals in this operation, and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds.
***end of Pentagon excerpt***
Editors: There is no evidence Saddam used anthrax or any other chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurds. There have been allegations, but Iraq has always insisted it did not use such weapons in the two 1989 incidents alleged. There were estimates that 1,400 to 4,000 Kurds died of chemical weapons in an Iraqi offensive. The Iraq Defense Minister insisted it did not use gas and that it was neither logical nor feasible to use gas against small groups of Kurds in areas through which government forces had to pass.
The sole "evidence" seems to be the finding of a British laboratory that soil samples in the Kurdish region contained mustard gas (not anthrax). Edward Peck, our ambassador to Iraq in 1977-79, who today teaches at the government war colleges, recalls a Department of Defense statement at the time that the gas used in that region was not of the type we had supplied Iraq for its use in the war with Iran. Nizar Hamdoon, today the deputy foreign minister of Iraq, told me the army had used gas, but only against the human waves of suicide soldiers in the Iranian army. He did not know what kind was used. At the time, I think he was ambassador to the U.S. in Washington.
So I guess all of the other countries in the world are saints and their leaders never ever lied to their people about anything huh? We are the only nation that's not perfect?! At least our government doesn't force us women to get circumcised and keep our faces covered at all times wrapped up in a sheet. 
LOL!
