In two of these attacks, the most extreme reports maintain that 300 or 400 might have been killed. Iraqi forces also used chemical weapons on other towns in the area. The Iranians apparently also asserted that an additional 5,000 were wounded by the chemical weapons, even though experience suggests that any attack that killed 5,000 would have injured vastly more than that.
Although some of them report the 5,000 figure, this number is consistently identified as coming from Iranian authorities, an important qualification that was often lost in later accounts. Moreover, journalists who were taken to the town shortly after the attack report that they saw at most “hundreds” of bodies. But the siege on the city took place over several days and involved explosive munitions as well. It is commonly contended that 5,000 people died as a result of the gas attacks. Other episodes in that war - in particular, Baghdad’s chemical attack on the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988 - have been held up as examples of the extensive destructive potential of chemical weapons. According to Iranian reports, of the 27,000 Iranians gassed through March 1987, only 262 died. Their effectiveness in killing in that conflict remains a matter of some controversy. Iraq made extensive use of chemical weapons in its 1980-88 war against Iran (to little outside protest). To be sure, some armies occasionally still saw a purpose. As the official British history of the war concludes (in a footnote), gas "made war uncomfortable.
For the most part, the militaries of the combatant nations were quite happy to get rid of the weapons. After the war, some military analysts such as Basil Liddell Hart came to believe that chemical warfare was comparatively humane - these weapons could incapacitate troops without killing many.īut that view lost out to the one that the British propagandists had put forward - that chemical weapons were uniquely horrible and must, therefore, be banned. By contrast, wounds from a traditional weapon proved 10 to 12 times more likely to be fatal. Only about two or three percent of those gassed on the Western front died. It is estimated that the British quintupled their gas casualty figures from the first German attack for dramatic effect.Īs it happened, chemical weapons accounted for considerably less than one percent of the battle deaths in the war, and, on average, it took over a ton of gas to produce a single fatality. The British emphasized the weapons’ inhumane aspects as part of their ongoing program to entice the United States into taking their side in the war. The notion that killing with gas is more reprehensible than killing with bullets or shrapnel came out of World War I, in which chemical weapons, introduced by the Germans in 1915, were used extensively. Although understandable, that is likely to be a substantial misreading of the message coming out Washington. By threatening “enormous consequences” should the Syrian regime use chemical weapons, he seemed to be saying that the first chemical attack would bring the Americans running in, guns blazing. At times, President Barack Obama has implied that the United States can’t do much to help them because none of them has been gassed. The rebels in Syria could be excused for wondering what U.S.
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