Pelletiere was the CIA's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and served as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000. He also headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the United States would fare in a war against Iraq, and the classified report created from this investigation contained voluminous details of the Halabja attack.

"Immediately after the battle," wrote Pelletiere, "the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas. The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent - that is, a cyanide-based gas - which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time."

No one can deny that Saddam Hussein had many murders to his name, and yet the facts revealed in this classified report give pause. We have here an example of political expediency in the American style, where facts are ignored because they ruffle the story line and derail the rationalizations that sustain us. When the slogan on the battle standard is a lie, those who rally to it become victims of a fraud.