It probably has more to do with something like gas being easier to produce so western countries can paint poorer countries as villains more easily by showing ho

It probably has more to do with something like gas being easier to produce so western countries can paint poorer countries as villains more easily by showing how they violate human rights. U.S. weapons such as napalm, white phosphorous, cluster munitions, and land mines disfigure entire countries, people, and children but the media and military have such a lock on the public discourse that these images and stories are very sparsely shared. Images of the bombing and napalm in Vietnam generated an incredible backlash so the pentagon and their friends in the media conglomerates have been very circumspect. This is not in any way to condone the use of gas, far from it. It is to condemn the actions of the US military and the strategic planners for using human rights as a cudgel when our own crimes are so stark. Note that the US provided Saddam with chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq trench warfare of the 1980s. We later invaded Iraq to retrieve weapons we gave him.