The interesting thing is that both parties are divided on the issue. The majority of the American people do not seem to support any action at this time.
For some reason I keep remembering that we didn't get too upset when Saddam Hussein gassed his own people back in 1988.
Halabja poison gas attack
The Halabja poison gas attack (Kurdish: کیمیابارانی ھەڵەبجە Kîmyabarana Helebce), also known as Halabja massacre or Bloody Friday,[1] was a genocidal massacre against the Kurdish people that took place on March 16, 1988, during the closing days of the Iran–Iraq War, when chemical weapons were used by the Iraqi government's forces in the Kurdish town of Halabja in Southern Kurdistan. The attack came within the scope of the Al-Anfal campaign against the Kurdish people in northern Iraq, as well as part of the Iraqi attempt to repel the Iranian Operation Zafar 7; it took place just 48 hours after the fall of the town to the Iranian forces and Kurdish guerrillas.
The attack killed between 3,200 and 5,000 people, and injured around 7,000 to 10,000 more, most of them civilians;[1][2] thousands more died of complications, diseases, and birth defects in the years after the attack.[3] The incident, which has been officially defined as an act of genocide against the Kurdish people in Iraq,[4] was and still remains the largest chemical weapons attack directed against a civilian-populated area in history.[5]
The Halabja attack has been recognized as a separate event from the Anfal Genocide that was also conducted against the Kurdish people by the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein.[6] The Iraqi High Criminal Court recognized the Halabja massacre as an act of genocide on March 1, 2010, a decision welcomed by the Kurdistan Regional Government. The attack was also condemned as a crime against humanity by the Parliament of Canada.[7]
***snip***
International response at the time was muted. The United States intelligence and government suggested that that Kurdish civilians were not a deliberate target, and even that Iran was indeed responsible.[13][15] A briefing paper by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office stated: "We believe it better to maintain a dialogue with others if we want to influence their actions. Punitive measures such as unilateral sanctions would not be effective in changing Iraq's behaviour over chemical weapons, and would damage British interests to no avail."[12]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack
= new reply since forum marked as read