[B-Man]

"Chemical weapons are designed to do one thing--kill everyone who is near them, and do it in a horrible manner."

Sounds a lot like our bombing raids to me.

Similar perhaps in the end result, but very different purposes and means of getting to the result. We bomb infrastructure, military targets and, apparently, high level political leaders. Our objective is to destroy the target, not kill as many people as possible (though anyone in the building will be in big trouble). If we wanted to kill as many people as possible, we would be doing things like specifically targetting civilian areas, residences, hospitals, etc.

Use of chemical weapons by Saddam would be for one purpose--kill as many Americans (and British, Australians, etc.) as possible. Our objective is not to kill as many Iraqis as possible, in fact, a major concern is minimizing deaths of Iraqis.