Retired US Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff on the use of chemical weapons in Halabja in 1988, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war (From the Wilderness Publications, 3/17/03):
Stephen Pelletiere was the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. He was also a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000. In both roles, he had access to classified material from Washington related to the Persian Gulf. In 1991, he headed an Army investigation into Iraqi military capability. That classified report went into great detail on Halabja.
Halabja is the Kurdish town where hundreds of people were apparently poisoned in a chemical weapons attack in March 1988. Few Americans even knew that much. They only have the article of religious faith, "Saddam gassed his own people."
In fact, according to Pelletiere -- an ex-CIA analyst, and hardly a raging leftist like yours truly -- the gassing occurred in the midst of a battle between Iraqi and Iranian armed forces.
Pelletiere further notes that a "need to know" document that circulated around the US Defense Intelligence Agency indicated that US intelligence doesn't believe it was Iraqi chemical munitions that killed and aimed the Kurdish residents of Halabja. It was Iranian. The condition of the bodies indicated cyanide-based poisoning. The Iraqis were using mustard gas in that battle. The Iranians used cyanide.