...and if you want to know what us Brits were doing in Iraq back in 1917 and 1941 then this page is informative:

http://www.channel4.com/news/2003/special_reports/iraq_hard_place.html

...turns out we would have been the first to gas the Kurds, if we could have got our bombs to work.

JOHN FORTUNE:
What is it about Kurds? They were still giving trouble to Saddam in the eighties. He gassed them. Where could he have got that idea?

CAPTION: SECRET 29 MARCH 1919

JOHN BIRD
Secret. Dated 29th of March 1919. “Gas bombs are required by the 31st Wing for use against recalcitrant Arabs, the suggestion being concurred in by General Staff Baghdad.

RORY:
At the Air Ministry Lieutenant Colonel Gossage worried about the effects of gas on the innocent. But those qualms were not shared by the then Secretary of State for War and Air, the future Colonial Secretary, Prime Minister and Greatest Briton of All Time.

CHURCHILL:
“I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes”.

JOHN FORTUNE:
Churchill felt that what was required was to arouse in the local population, what he called, “a lively terror”. Which is a neat phrase, bearing in mind that we’re now busily fighting a war against terror. But there were still worries at the Air Ministry.

JOHN BIRD:
“I understand that the Secretary of State has approved the general policy of using poisonous gas on uncivilised tribes. So far although considerable time and trouble was expended on research during the war, we have not yet evolved suitable and practical gas bombs for use from aircraft”.

JOHN FORTUNE:
So there we are, another good idea goes down the tube. Not because we didn’t have the heart, but because we didn’t have the technology.

It's a crazy world.