Will Islam condemn chlorine attack war crimes?

Henry Porter:

At least nine of the large-scale attacks in Iraq since the beginning of the year have involved the use of chlorine. These bombs strike a particular fear because if people are not killed by the blast, they may easily die an agonising death when the chlorine is dispersed and inhaled.

Chlorine reacts with the water in moist human tissue, such as the eyes, nose, throat and lungs, and forms an acid which then burns the tissue. It was first used as a weapon during the First World War in April 1915 by a German chemist named Fritz Haber who synchronised the release from 6,000 cylinders along a four-mile stretch of the front line. The attack caused the death of about 5,000 allied troops with another 10,000 suffering from inhalation, skin burns and blinding. The following month, Haber returned to his family in Berlin. His wife, Clara, also a scientist, was so repelled by what he had done that she shot and killed herself. Haber won the Nobel Prize in 1918 for his work with ammonia.

The gas bombs have a special significance with Iraqis because of the use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein in Halabja 19 years ago. In most cases, the gas is consumed by the explosion, but when a truck bomb exploded in Ramadi in Anbar province on 6 April, scores of people suffered from the effects of chlorine.

It is now established that this tactic has been one of al-Qaeda's gifts to Iraq. Large quantities of chlorine, commonly used in water treatment plants in the Middle East, was stolen in Anbar, where al-Qaeda has a strong presence. A dozen truck bombs loaded with gas cylinders are said by intelligence sources to have been prepared by the group which is seeking, among other things, to dominate Sunni resistance in Iraq and is showing signs of the Khmer Rouge's blood lust.

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If the number of attacks diminished, the Americans and British troops would leave Iraq far faster than seems likely at the present. The situation, therefore, can no longer be taken for a classic resistance of an occupying force. Nor can it be entirely seen as the opposite, that is to say a guerrilla war that is maintained by Islamist, Shia and Ba'athists groups for the sole purpose of engaging the American and British military.

The proof of this lies in the fact that the great majority of casualties are caused by Arabs killing Arabs, Muslims slaughtering Muslims.

This brings us back to the chlorine bombs being built by al-Qaeda to terrorise and kill their Muslim brothers, who, we must remember, were so recently oppressed by the atheistic regime of Saddam Hussein. It is as if Protestant and Catholic groups in the French Resistance used the Nazi occupation to blow up each other's churches and market places and slaughter each other's children. Actually, it is weirder in Iraq because the Sunni extremists of al-Qaeda are killing and torturing more Sunnis than Shia, let alone US soldiers.

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There is much more.

Actually the pathology of al Qaeda is not that hard to comprehend when you consider the groups devotion to the brutality of Shari'a law. It is based on a series of cruel and unusual punishments in order to encourage compliance with its guidelines for "appropriate conduct." Al Qaeda adopts the same approach to getting compliance with its agenda.

The reason al Qaeda is intent on punishing Sunnis in great number now is because they have rejected al Qaeda In Anbar where the chlorine attacks are taking place. Without the Sunnis, al Qaeda has even less chance of being able to punish Shia in order to effect compliance with its weird religious beliefs. Remember that those who reject al Qaeda's weird religious beliefs are condemned to death because they are in effect rejecting God's will in the minds of these religious bigots.