From the Riegle Report, which was delivered to the Senate regarding the health of Gulf War veterans on February 9, 1994, “In April 1993, two U.S. based human rights organizations confirmed that they had found residues of chemical weapons used by the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein against [a] Kurdish village in northern Iraq in 1988. These groups, Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch, said they had used advanced analytical techniques to discover the presence of mustard gas and the nerve gas Sarin. Those chemical weapons reportedly were dropped by aircraft on August 25, 1988 and killed four people in the Kurdish village of Birjinni. Testimony from survivors of the Birjinni bombing, who said victims of the raids died writhing and coughing blood, led to accusations that Iraq had gassed its own citizens as part of a campaign against rebellious Kurds that killed tens of thousands.”
– Donald Wayne Riegle, Jr. and Alfonse M. D’Amato, The Riegle Report, May 25, 1994, Page 35