Iraqi Defense Ministry: ISIS Using Chlorine Gas in Attacks

Iraqis Report Three Separate Attacks Involving Chemicals

by Jason Ditz, 

Iraqi Defense Ministry officials have reported three separate incidents recently in which security forces, either police or military, have fallen suddenly ill in clashes with ISIS, and were hospitalized with symptoms consistent with chlorine poisoning.

Iraqi forces say that the incidents are signs that ISIS is increasingly turning to the use of crude chemical weapons, in the form of chlorine gas attacks, and warn that ISIS might be increasing its capabilities.

Iraqi officials are acting like this is unprecedented, but it really isn’t. ISIS was bragging about its chemical weapons capabilities over a year ago in Syria, and those incidents the US were so eager to blame on the Assad government sickened Syrian troops fighting ISIS.

At the time, the Obama Administration was focused on trying to launch a war with Syria, so the possibility that ISIS was the culprit was loudly dismissed, seemingly for being politically inconvenient. Now that ISIS is the enemy, the US will doubtless be only too willing to reexamine the evidence, looking to revise its story to whatever allows it to escalate the war the most, and says it is now looking into the reports.

http://news.antiwar.com/2014/10/23/iraqi-defense-ministry-isis-using-chlorine-gas-in-attacks/