[MustangSally]

Are you privy to info that the rest of us aren't?

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/cw/program.htm
Although the Iraqis initially used chemical weapons to prevent defeat and to reduce battlefield losses, they later integrated CW attacks into combined-armed operations designed to regain lost territory and to gain the offensive. Iraq's use of CW in the war with Iran can be divided into three distinct phases:
1983 to 1986--used in a defensive role; typically to deflect Iranian human-wave assaults. In 1984 Iraq became the first nation to use a nerve agent on the battlefield when it deployed Tabun-filled aerial bombs during the Iran-Iraq war. Some 5,500 Iranians were killed by the nerve agent between March 1984 and March 1985. Tabun kills within minutes. Some 16,000 Iranians were reported killed by the toxic blister agent mustard gas between August 1983 and February 1986.
1986 to early 1988--iraq adapts use against Iran to disrupt Iranian offensive preparations.
early 1988 to conclusion of the war-- Iraq integrated large nerve agent strikes into its overall offensive during the spring and summer of 1988 leading to the ceasefire.
Iran used chemical weapons late in the war, but never as extensively or successfully as Iraq. The success of Iraqi offensive operations in the southern sector in mid-1988 ultimately caused the Iranians to cease hostilities. The use of chemical weapons contributed to the success of these operations.

The first chemical attacks by Saddam Hussein against civilian populations included attacks launched by Iraqi aircraft against 20 small villages in 1987.


Saddam Hussein's forces reportedly killed hundreds of Iraqi Kurds with chemical agents in the Kurdish town of Halabja in March 1988. The poison gas attack on Halabja was the largest-scale chemical weapons (CW) attack against a civilian population in modern times. Halabja had a population of about 80,000 people who was predominantly Kurdish and had sympathised with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Troops from the Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) entered Halabja on 15th March 1988, accompanied by Iranian revolutionary guards. The Iraqi CW attack began early in the evening of March 16th, when a group of eight aircraft began dropping chemical bombs; 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 report that cyanide was also used.