Report X Marks the Spot: The British Government's Deceptive Dossier on Iraq and WMD
2014; Oxford University Press; Volume: 129; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1002/polq.12252
ISSN1538-165X
Autores Tópico(s)Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
ResumoTHE BRITISH GOVERNMENT PUBLISHED A DOSSIER on 24 September 2002 setting out its claims regarding Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).11 UK Government, Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government, 24 September 2002, accessed at http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/02/uk_dossier_on_iraq/pdf/iraqdossier.pdf, 19 April 2013. Parliament was recalled for an emergency session on the same day to hear Prime Minister Tony Blair's presentation of it. The dossier stated that Iraq had WMD and was producing more. After the invasion in March 2003, no WMD were found. Ever since, there has been controversy as to whether the dossier reported accurately intelligence which turned out to be wrong, as Blair has claimed consistently, or whether the dossier deliberately deceived by intentionally giving the impression of greater Iraqi WMD capability and threat than the intelligence suggested. Despite a great deal of attention to the September dossier, there has not been any analysis conceptually well developed enough, or sufficiently grounded in the empirical evidence, to make much headway in resolving this disagreement. This article assesses the extent to which the dossier was part of a campaign of organized political persuasion and whether that campaign involved demonstrable deception. It shows that the dossier did not accurately represent the content and strength of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. Instead, the dossier portrayed a misleading picture of greater capability and greater certainty than the intelligence warranted. The misleading nature of the dossier was not an accident. There was a concerted effort by many of those involved in producing the dossier to push the claims about the intelligence as far as possible. The phrase “dodgy dossier” was originally used to describe this September dossier.22 Brendan O'Neill, “Blair's Dodgy Dossier,” Spiked Online, 24 September 2002, accessed at http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/4905#.VHRA0IusWSo, 25 November 2014. The British government published another dossier on 3 February 2003 which was exposed as being mostly plagiarized.33 UK Government, Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation, 3 February 2003, accessed at http://web.archive.org/web/20040619112534/http://www.number-10.gov.uk/files/pdf/iraq.pdf, 19 April 2013; Glen Rangwala, “Intelligence? The British Dossier on Iraq's Security Infrastructure,” Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq Discussion List, 5 February 2003, accessed at http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2003/msg00457.html, 19 April 2013. Subsequently, the term “dodgy dossier” has tended to be applied mainly to this second dossier. In view of the arguments in this article, the September dossier ought to be known as the deceptive dossier. The argument in this article is structured in four sections. The first section surveys official claims regarding the dossier, the results of four successive inquiries (the fifth has not yet reported), and the scholarly literature to date. Here the article shows that, despite some discussion of the dossier in numerous publications, there has still not been an in-depth analysis of its contents and production which is conceptually well developed and which draws on vital information that has become available in the last few years. The second section sets out the conceptual framework, while the third applies it to the empirical record. The article shows that the dossier was fundamentally misleading about the intelligence and that deliberate deception through omission and distortion was involved. The conclusion considers the significance of the deceptive dossier. Those directly involved in the September dossier's production have asserted that it was an accurate and objective document, written by the intelligence services, and designed to inform a public demanding to know why the UK sought action against Iraq. For example, in 2010, Blair stated that “we came under pressure in the lead-up to the publication of the September dossier. We came under enormous pressure to say what it was our intelligence was actually telling us.”44 Blair, public oral evidence to Chilcot Inquiry, 29 January 2010, 73, accessed at http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/45139/20100129-blair-final.pdf, 1 June 2013. Alastair Campbell, Blair's Strategy and Communications Chief, emphasized the role of the dossier as a way of showing the intelligence that had increased government concerns: “The dossier was seen to be necessary because the Prime Minister had been growing more and more concerned, in part because of the intelligence that he was seeing over a period of time … it was an exercise in openness … so that they [the public] can be informed about all the factors.”55 Campbell, public oral evidence to Chilcot Inquiry, 12 January 2010, morning session, 64, accessed at http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/42384/20100112am-campbell-final.pdf, 1 June 2013 Campbell described Sir John Scarlett, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) as the “person, if you like, [who] had the single pen.”66 Campbell, public oral evidence to Chilcot Inquiry, 12 January 2010, morning session, 79. The JIC functions to direct the key components of the intelligence services, including the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6), Security Service (MI5), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), and to communicate advice to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. At least to an extent, the involvement of government officials, civil servants, and intelligence officials means that the JIC fuzes policy and intelligence in a way that does not occur in the United States. A series of official investigations in Britain has, generally speaking, agreed with these official positions. In a report published in 2003, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee (FASC) criticized some aspects of the dossier and the strength with which some claims were made. However, it concluded that Campbell “did not exert or seek to exert improper influence” on its drafting and that the claims in the dossier “were in all probability well founded on the basis of the intelligence then available”77 UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee (FASC), The Decision to Go to War in Iraq [FASC Report], Ninth Report of Session 2002–03, volume 1, HC 813-1, 7 July 2003, 4, accessed at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmfaff/813/813.pdf, 20 April 2013. In the same year, the British government-appointed Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) concluded similarly that, although the dossier should have reported levels of uncertainty over the intelligence, no political pressure was put on the JIC and the JIC's impartiality was not compromised.88 UK Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction—Intelligence and Assessments, Cm 5972, 31, September 2003, accessed at http://tinyurl.com/cy9ys3p, 20 April 2013. The Hutton inquiry in 2004 agreed with its predecessors that the dossier had the full approval of the JIC, made the case against Iraq as strongly as possible but contained only material that was consistent with the intelligence, did not contain material “known or believed to be false or unreliable,” and was drafted in a proper manner.99 Report of the Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Dr David Kelly C.M.G. by Lord Hutton, [Hutton Report] House of Commons HC 247, 28 January 2004, chap. 12 para. 467(1), accessed at http://tinyurl.com/huttoninquiry, 25 November 2014. The Butler Report in July 2004, in contrast, presented a somewhat more critical stance and has provided the most thorough review to date. It concluded that the way in which the material was presented in the dossier, and Blair's 24 September 2002 Commons statement introducing the dossier, could have created the impression of greater intelligence certainty than was the case and went further than the previous reports in calling this “a serious weakness.”1010 Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors, [Butler Report], House of Commons HC 898, 76, 14 July 2004, accessed at http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/14_07_04_butler.pdf, 25 November 2014. One particular issue that Butler examined was the role of what has become known as Report X and how this influenced the dossier. However, while acknowledging that Report X “resulted in a stronger assessment in the dossier in relation to Iraqi chemical weapons production than was justified by the available intelligence,”1111 Ibid., 139. the Butler Report contradicted itself in concluding that “judgements in the dossier went to (although not beyond) the outer limits of the intelligence available.”1212 Ibid., 82. The crucial intelligence report, Report X, is discussed at length later on this article because it is central to our refutation of the position that the dossier did not go beyond the assessed intelligence. Generally speaking, by rejecting the notion that deliberate deception played a major role, all the inquiries emphasize intelligence failure, that is, the mistaken belief among the intelligence services that Iraq had WMD. The academic literature contains a wider spread of positions than the official reports. Some of it shares their relatively benign view. James Humphreys argues that the dossier was produced in a legitimate way for the legitimate purpose of communicating the government's intelligence-based view of Iraqi WMD policy.1313 James Humphreys, “The Iraq Dossier and the Meaning of Spin,” Parliamentary Affairs 58 (January 2005), 156–170, at 167. He makes general observations about the endemic nature of spin making outright lies usually unnecessary and regards the use of spin in the case of the dossier as not exceptional or particularly problematic. As a result, his article does not tease out and apply distinctions that this article develops in its conceptual framework between informing, persuading, and deceiving. Similarly, although Richard Aldrich concludes that omissions, misrepresentations, oversimplifications, and exaggerations occurred in the dossier's presentation of the intelligence, he does not analyze these issues extensively. Instead, he focuses on what he sees as the main issue, namely the error of most Western intelligence agencies in believing that Iraq had WMD.1414 Richard J. Aldrich, “Whitehall and the Iraq War: The UK's Four Intelligence Enquiries,” Irish Studies on International Affairs 16 (2005): 1–16. Some scholars such as Ian Davis and Andreas Persbo explain the belief that Iraq had WMD in terms of the collective psychological phenomenon of “groupthink,” in which political actors are collectively biased toward a particular view and interpret the available intelligence to support that view.1515 Ian Davis and Andreas Persbo, “After the Butler Report: Time to Take on the Group Think in Washington and London,” BASIC Papers, 1 July 2004, accessed at http://www.basicint.org/sites/default/files/PUB010704.pdf, 26 May 2013. Even if this occurred, it does not address or account for the fact that those producing the dossier knew there was a gap between what they wanted to claim and what the intelligence said. For Anthony Glees, the publication of intelligence to support policy on Iraq resulted in a politicization of the intelligence so that claims of certainty were made that were not warranted by the intelligence.1616 Anthony Glees, “Evidence-based Policy, or Policy-based Evidence: Hutton and the Government's Use of Secret Intelligence,” Parliamentary Affairs 58 (January 2005): 138–155, at 148. However, he does not have much to say about this, as his focus is on the inadvisability of publishing secret intelligence to justify policy. Some of the academic literature emphasizes the abuse of intelligence for political purposes. Alex Danchev argues that the dossier involved deception and misrepresentation in order to make the case for war, with Scarlett's ownership of the dossier a sham and with Scarlett simply doing what Campbell wanted.1717 Alex Danchev, “The Reckoning: Official Inquiries and the Iraq War,” Intelligence and National Security 19 (Autumn 2004): 436–466. This piece is more a scathing presentation of a particular interpretation than a detailed sorting through of competing interpretations. Andrew Doig and Mark Phythian claim that Blair “knowingly exaggerated” the intelligence to make the case for war.1818 Andrew Doig and Mark Phythian, “The National Interest and the Politics of Threat Exaggeration: The Blair Government's Case for War Against Iraq,” The Political Quarterly 76 (July 2005): 368–376, at 375. In a brief analysis, their method is to draw on Butler to show the gaps between what Blair and the dossier claimed on the one hand and what the intelligence showed on the other and to infer from those gaps deliberate exaggeration. In contrast, this article traces the processes involved to show directly what happened rather than merely inferring it. Glen Rangwala and Dan Plesch wrote a booklet that made the strongest case using the material then available that Blair deliberately misled the public and Parliament.1919 Glen Rangwala and Daniel Plesch, A Case to Answer (London: Spokesman Books, 2004). However, this item and all the others referred to above were published in 2004 or 2005 in relation to the FASC, ISC, Hutton and Butler reports. Hence they were written without benefiting from the crucial information which has emerged subsequently. More recent publications have still not filled the conceptual or empirical gap regarding the dossier. Steven Kettel agrees with those who see the dossier as involving exaggeration of intelligence material to advance the campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein.2020 Steven Kettell, “Who's Afraid of Saddam Hussein? Re-examining the ‘September Dossier’ Affair,” Contemporary British History 22 (September 2008): 407–426. However, he does not systematically identify those exaggerations, and his analysis devotes only one sentence to Report X and misses its vital importance. Although providing little detailed evidence and analysis, John Morrison blames the intelligence services for having “unconsciously exaggerated” Iraq's WMD capabilities, but mainly blames Blair for “active” misuse of the exaggerated intelligence.2121 John N.L. Morrison, “British Intelligence Failures in Iraq,” Intelligence and National Security 26 (August 2011): 508–520. Joshua Rovner argues that the September dossier involved the politicization of intelligence, but, as his focus is on the United States, he examines the dossier only briefly.2222 Joshua Rovner, Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). Deploying a typology of lying, spinning, and truth-telling, John Mearsheimer argues that the George W. Bush administration lied—that is, made claims that it knew or suspected were false—when it asserted that it knew for certain that Iraq had WMD.2323 John J. Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie (Oxford University Press, 2011), 3–5, 16, 50–52. He does not apply his framework to Britain's handling of intelligence on Iraq other than in passing. His method is essentially the same as that of Doig and Phythian—comparing the gap between public certainty and private uncertainty—but Mearsheimer concludes lying, whereas Doig and Phythian conclude knowing exaggeration, and the difference between them is unclear. Brian Jones, Head of the Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Technical Intelligence Branch of the DIS, published an important book on British intelligence and Iraqi WMD in 2010.2424 Brian Jones, Failing Intelligence: The True Story of How We Were Fooled into Going to War in Iraq (London: Biteback, 2010). In the British intelligence system, the DIS are considered the key experts whose task it is to evaluate and assess all incoming intelligence.2525 Ibid., 4. The subtitle of his book, published in 2010, referred to being “fooled” into war, but in the text of the book, he concentrated on setting out what happened and the gap between what the dossier said and what the intelligence he was aware of said. His discussion of the dossier and these interpretations is brief and insufficient to clarify and demonstrate these claims. In sum, the literature on the September dossier has three limitations: it lacks a clear conceptual framework to distinguish between informing, persuading, and deceiving; an in-depth application of such a framework to the production and presentation of the dossier; and an engagement with the significant new information that has become available in the last three years. This article provides that conceptual framework and applies it to an in-depth case study of the dossier using that new information. This approach makes it possible to draw important conclusions about whether the dossier was part of a campaign of organized political persuasion and whether that campaign involved deliberate deception. This study, then, addresses two interrelated questions. The first concerns whether the September dossier was an objective and accurate reflection of the intelligence as part of an attempt to inform the British public; or, alternatively, whether it involved a crafted presentation of the intelligence in order to influence public opinion. In other words, is the dossier most accurately understood as the product of organized political persuasion? The second research question concerns the extent to which the dossier involved intentional deception and, if so, what form that took. Organized political persuasion and deceptive organized political persuasion are defined as follows. Organized political persuasion, a phrase coined in this article, refers to a deliberate and systematic attempt to shape perceptions in order to gain support for a policy. Other terms in more common usage include propaganda, political marketing, public affairs, public relations, spin, information campaign, and public relations. In military circles, commonly employed terms are perception management, public diplomacy, strategic communication, global engagement, and psychological operations.2626 For example, John Corner, “Mediated Politics, Promotional Culture and the Idea of ‘Propaganda’,” Media, Culture & Society 29 (July 2007): 669–677; D.H. Dearth, ‘Shaping the “Information Space,”’ Journal of Information Warfare 1(May 2002): 1–15; Garth S. Jowett and Victoria J. O'Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion, 6th edn. (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 2014); David Miller and William Dinan, A Century of Spin: how public relations became the cutting edge of corporate power (London: Pluto Press, 2007). All of these activities have two features in common: the intention to persuade people to think in a particular way about a policy, and the existence of an organized and systematic approach to achieving this goal. At the core of our definition is the distinction between the communication of information understood as only an attempt to inform, but which does not involve the intention to persuade, and communication that is aimed at persuading an audience to think in a particular way about an issue. Informing and persuading are different. One might inform another person as to why one is pursuing a particular policy, but without wishing to persuade them to support one's actions. The phrase “organized political persuasion” captures the essence of the various terms mentioned above (propaganda, spin, and so on). It does so in a clear and concise fashion while avoiding the value-laden, context-specific, or euphemistic character of many of them. It also avoids necessarily associating all acts of organized political persuasion with deception. Our definition of organized political persuasion includes the sub-categories of non-deceptive and deceptive organized political persuasion. As such, organized political persuasion may be conducted in a way that is honest and non-misleading, or it can be conducted in a way that involves deception. With respect to Mearsheimer's recent work on lying and deception, by including the sub-categories of non-deceptive and deceptive organized political persuasion, our notion of political persuasion spans his categories of truth-telling, deception, and lying.2727 Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie, 15. Identifying the point at which organized political persuasion becomes deceptive is challenging; indeed the tensions between truth, rhetoric, and political debate is a perennial issue. It is also important to distinguish between attempts to simplify in order to demonstrate the essence of a situation and manipulation of facts in order to mislead about the essence of a situation. Drawing upon the relevant classic and contemporary literatures,2828 Principally, Hannah Arendt, “Lying in Politics: Reflections on the Pentagon Papers,” in Crises of the Republic (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace, 1971), 1–47; Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie; and Thomas L. Carson, Lying and Deception: Theory and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2012). there are categorizations available that can be used to help define when organized political persuasion becomes deceptive. First, there is deception through lying, defined here as making a statement that one knows or suspects to be untrue in order to mislead. Officials and politicians know it would be very costly were they to be exposed as having lied and so have a major incentive to find other ways of misleading. Second, deception can be achieved through withholding information to make the viewpoint being promoted more persuasive; the article refers to this as deception through omission (synonymous with Mearsheimer's category of deception through concealment). It is deceptive because those involved know that an audience might not be persuaded if they knew the full picture. Third, deception through distortion can also occur. This involves framing a statement in a deliberately misleading way to support the viewpoint being promoted. Our categories of deception through omission and deception through distortion are equivalent to Mearsheimer's categories of concealment and spin respectively.2929 Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie, 16–17. Central to the task of assessing whether the above categories of deception are in play is the issue of intentionality. Omissions, distortions, and the circulation of untruths may all occur through accident, misperception, or even self-deception by those responsible.3030 Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984); Robert Jervis, “Understanding Beliefs,” Political Psychology 27 (October 2006): 641–663; Robert Trivers, Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others (Allen Lane, 2011). This study proceeds by establishing whether the dossier contained untruths or distortions or involved important omissions and then assessing whether they resulted from a deliberate intent to deceive about the essence of the situation. Of course, establishing that the dossier was misleading is an easier task than establishing intentionality, and due consideration is given to the possibility of self-deception and misperception on the part of those involved. Where uncertainty or lack of information prevents a clear assessment regarding intentionality, this will be noted. The first problem that emerges with the official claim that the dossier was simply an attempt to inform public understanding is the history of both the dossier and the lead up to the Iraq War. The dossier originated in the need to make the case to the public for British backing for U.S. plans to invade Iraq, rather than in response to public demand for information. The policy of removing Saddam Hussein from power had been a component of conservative U.S. thinking throughout the 1990 s, and the terrorist attack of 9/11 provided an opportunity for these aspirations to be realized. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, some in the Bush administration advocated attacking Iraq. However, the Bush administration decided to invade Afghanistan first. From late 2001, regime change in Iraq through military force was back on the agenda.3131 Joyce Battle, “The Iraq War – Part I: The US Prepares for Conflict, 2001,” 22 September 2010, accessed at http://www2.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB326/, 30 May 2013; John Prados and Chris Ames, “The Iraq War – Part II: Was There Even a Decision?” 1 October 2010, accessed at http://www2.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB328/, 30 May 2013. Leaked British documents from March 2002 show that the British government told the U.S. government that it backed regime change through military force; would need a strategy to sell military action to the public, the press and Parliament by wrong-footing Iraq on weapons inspections; and would also need a public document to help make the case on the basis of disarming Iraq of WMD.3232 Iraq Inquiry Digest, “The Downing Street Documents,” accessed at http://www.iraqinquirydigest.org/?page_id=161, 5 June 2013. See Jane M.O. Sharp, “Tony Blair Nurtures the Special Relationship,” in Jane K. Cramer and A. Trevor Thrall, eds., Why Did the United States Invade Iraq (London: Routledge, 2012), 167–200. By late July, the internal British assessment of the U.S. position was that war was inevitable.3333 Matthew Rycroft, “Iraq: Prime Minister's meeting, 23 July,” 23 July 2002, S 195 /02, accessed at http://downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html, 26 May 2013. The pressures facing Britain were different from those facing the United States. Britain put much greater weight on trying to secure at least a semblance of UN Security Council authorization in order to buttress the claim that the war was legal. The British government also faced much greater public opposition compared with the Bush administration, again creating great pressure to justify any military action. This contributed to the emphasis on imminent threat from chemical weapons rather than a potential longer-term threat from nuclear ones that was more of a focus in the United States. Starting in February 2002, there were internal discussions about the publication of declassified intelligence regarding WMD threats. A letter dated 28 February and released in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request refers to a “meeting last Tuesday,” held to “consider the unclassified paper on [four] WMD countries of concern.”3434 J. Hamilton-Eddy, “WMD Programmes of Concern,” 28 February 2002, in FOI305712, WMD Programmes of Concern, 14, accessed at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files/resources/foi-wmd-iraq.pdf, 22 April 2013. This is the earliest indication of the existence of plans for the dossier, and the meeting noted that “Iraq continues to look a bit thin.”3535 Hamilton-Eddy, WMD Programmes of Concern, 14. References to using a dossier to help build public support appear in a number of other documents released due to FOI requests. For example, on 6 March, a letter titled “WMD: Public Handling” from Julian Miller, chief of the JIC assessment staff, to the U.S. Embassy in London states that “we were preparing a draft paper for public consumption, setting out the facts on WMD in a number of nations … [T]here are also continuing discussions on the policy approach to handling this material in public. And it may be buffed up somewhat by the presentational experts.”3636 Julian Miller, “WMD: Public Handling,” 6 March 2002, WMD Programmes of Concern, 26. On 8 March 2002, the “Iraq Options Paper” from the Defence and Overseas Secretariat in the Cabinet Office listed steps to be taken in relation to launching an invasion of Iraq, the final one of which referred to “sensitising the public” and the need for “a media campaign to warn of the dangers that Saddam poses and to prepare public opinion both in the UK and abroad.”3737 UK Defence and Overseas Secretariat, “Iraq Options Paper,” 8 March 2002, accessed at http://downingstreetmemo.com/docs/iraqoptions.pdf, 14 September 2011. A minute from Scarlett dated 15 March indicated the involvement of Campbell: “Getting the presentational tone right will clearly be a key. We will need to consider at what stage to consult Alastair Campbell. Alastair … stands ready to advise.”3838 Excerpt of minute from John Scarlett to David Manning, 15 March 2002, WMD Programmes of Concern, 27. The Butler Report, when discussing this period, refers to “[t]he importance of presentational activity on Iraq's breaches to persuade other members of the United Nations Security Council as well as domestic audiences of the case for action to enforce disarmament.”3939 Butler Report, 67. Hence, the starting point was preparing the public for war on the basis of an Iraqi WMD threat and with heavy emphasis on presentation. In other words, the dossier was part of a campaign of organized political persuasion. The Foreign Secretary felt that an earlier draft did not demonstrate why Iraq posed a greater threat than other countries of concern. The new draft highlights some unique features (violation of SCRs [UN Security Council Resolutions]; use of CW [Chemical Warfare] agents against own people). You may still wish to consider whether more impact could be achieved if the paper only covered Iraq. This would have the benefit of obscuring the fact that in terms of WMD, Iraq is not that exceptional.4242 Minute from Scarlett to Manning, 15 March 2002, document 13, WMD Programmes of Concern, 50. Thereafter, if it appears that we do have to change our public line, I wonder if we might finesse the presentational difficulty by changing the terms? Instead of talking about tonnes of precursor chemicals (which don't mean much to the man in the street anyway), could we focus on munitions and refer to precursor chemicals sufficient to produce x thousand Scud warheads/aerial bombs/122mm rockets filled with mustard gas/the deadly nerve agen
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