Britain wanted to threaten Saddam’s Iraq with chemical weapons

‘Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s former prime minister, wanted to threaten the deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons before the Gulf War, documents show.
The newly-released papers show that Thatcher was keen to scare Saddam with the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) after he invaded Kuwait in 1990.
The plan was eventually headed off by the US, in particular by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who later became a key architect of the 2003 Iraq War.
The ‘Iron Lady’ reportedly told then-US President George Bush Sr that faced with Saddam’s aggression it was “no time to go wobbly” as the Western powers postured for a war with Iraq.
Records show that in a meeting in October 1990, amid fears that Saddam could use chemical weapons himself, Thatcher told Cheney: “We had to decide what our response would be. If we wished to deter a CW [chemical weapons] attack by threatening to retaliate in like manner, we must have CW weapons [sic] available.”’
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