I was researching something else and as so often happens I was diverted and started exploring our support to Saddam in the 1980s in Iraq's war against Iran. Of interest is the discussion on chemical weapons use and our policy regarding it at the time. It has relevance to the ongoing discussions regarding Syria. These were different times and the context was different, but reviewing this still provides some valuable lessons in my opinion. IMO we're getting closer to right with a zero tolerance towards chemical weapons.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...a_surveillance

Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran The U.S. knew Hussein was launching some of the worst chemical attacks in history -- and still gave him a hand.

In contrast to today's wrenching debate over whether the United States should intervene to stop alleged chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government, the United States applied a cold calculus three decades ago to Hussein's widespread use of chemical weapons against his enemies and his own people. The Reagan administration decided that it was better to let the attacks continue if they might turn the tide of the war. And even if they were discovered, the CIA wagered that international outrage and condemnation would be muted.
This is a long article, and it has several declassified CIA reports attached that provide a different tone than the author of the article. The reports were professionally written, and in some of the reports they left the rest of the intelligence summary so many will find the assessments of the troubles in Yugoslavia, Sudan, Nigeria, etc. during the 80s interested and remarkably accurate.

http://mondediplo.com/1998/03/04iraqkn

When our "friend" Saddam was gassing the Kurds

Interesting piece from the French.

We learn, for example, that Mr Al Majid convened the Ba’ath Party leaders on 26 May 1987. “As soon as we complete the deportations,” he informed them, “we will start attacking [the Pershmega resistance] everywhere... then we will surround them in a small pocket and attack them with chemical weapons. I will not attack them with chemicals just one day; I will continue to attack them with chemicals for fifteen days... I told the expert comrades that I need guerrilla groups in Europe to kill whoever they see of them [Kurdish oppositionists]. I will do it, with the help of God. I will defeat them and follow them to Iran. Then I will ask the Mujaheddin (2) to attack them there (3).”
Implications are clear in the following passage, and the prologue to this is around 400,000 Kurds were killed.

Clearly, Iraq’s powerful allies did not want Baghdad condemned. In August 1988 the United Nations Sub-Committee on Human Rights voted by 11 votes to 8 not to condemn Iraq for human rights violations. Only the Scandinavian countries, Australia and Canada, together with bodies like the European Parliament and the Socialist International, saved their honour by clearly condemning Iraq.
A Frontline report on the arming of Iraq, originally aired in 1990.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...tc/arming.html

This is a complicated story of miscalculation, deceit and greed, and it leads inevitably to the conclusion that the most dangerous weapons Western forces face today in the desert are in many ways our own creation.
Dr. CARUS: By the late '70s, however, they discovered that there were West German companies that would gladly provide this kind of equipment. So, basically, they went into Germany, they found companies and individuals who would help them, and over the course of four or five years they built a small but capable production infrastructure.
Everybody gets dirty in this piece, the Brits for providing long range missile technology, the U.S. for providing the chemicals and banking support, etc. This piece was developed as we were building up forces to liberate Kuwait. It ends with:

NARRATOR: Failure has no friends, and so it's only too easy to condemn the policy which led us into our desert showdown with Iraq. But for me, the most important lesson is not that presidents can be wrong -- which they have been, and will be again -- but that it is a mistake to ignore principle for the sake of supposed practicality, of realpolitik. It is a mistake to support those who share neither our values nor our goals. It is a lesson we have been taught repeatedly, and a lesson we repeatedly forget. We always pay a price for not remembering. I'm Hodding Carter.
Then a roll up of various articles (credibility unknown) at this site. I haven't read any of these yet.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/iraq-con...ss-regime.html