The Use of Chemical weapons

" "Chemical weapons are a double-edged sword, and practically useless on the battlefield unless used against massed armies as happened in World War I," said Ed Blanche, a Beirut-based analyst and a member of London's International Institute for Security Studies. "They're not game-changers." He noted that Saddam Hussein's warplanes and artillery had made repeated strikes against Halabja in 1988 for several hours in order to achieve the concentrations of poison gas needed to kill large numbers of unprotected civilians."