[4]In his book World Orders Old and New, Noam Chomsky claimed that Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons, suggesting they be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment".
[11] Another historian, Lawrence James, stated, "By September the local commander, General Sir Aylmer Haldane, was beginning to get the upper hand, although he was still desperate enough to clamour for large supplies of poison gas.
[13] Niall Ferguson, in his 2006 book The War of the World, wrote: "To end the Iraqi Insurgency of 1920 ... the British relied on a combination of aerial bombardment and punitive village burning expeditions.
The War Office also instructed the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force in February that "as a result of a decision of the Washington Conference, it has been decided that the use of gas in any form is inadmissible.
"[18] Douglas observed that contradictory claims by historians and commentators surrounding the use of gas in Iraq were partly the product of an inaccurate September 1921 letter by J.
The Army General Headquarters (GHQ) in Baghdad had informed Percy Cox in November that "gas shells have not been used hitherto against tribesmen either by aeroplanes or by artillery".
[17] Douglas also noted that Churchill's forceful 1919 memo in support of gas had served to convince observers that weapons of mass destruction had been used when in fact they had not been, which ironically paralleled events in 2003.
[citation needed] Britain had used gas weapons in the Middle East, most notably in the Second Battle of Gaza against Ottoman forces in World War I.
It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas.