By your arguments you should be more concerned with the use of submunition bombs and cluster ammunition, as well as mines. These lay around for months and years after the fighting has been done. Chemical weapons that so far got used in wars have short living times only, the agents are gone after short time and are difficult to be brought to focused, amassed effect.
To me, the difference is made by targets selection (or no target selection):
The intended targeting of persons not supporting directly or indirectly the enemy and not participating in actual fighting and not being a member of the enemy force, or abusing them as human shields
versus
targeting enemy combatants, and non-combating but still supporting "helpers" and sympathizers, also mentioning here the victims falling to "collateral" damage where the victim is not targetted as the shot's objective but just unluckily happens to be in in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
The weapon does not make the moral difference. The intention of aim, the purposes of a war - these make the moral difference.
What makes a difference is to intentionally bombard and mass-kill civilian crowds as a tool to terrorize them for the purpose of terrorizing them, or blaming the other side. In Rwanda, the genocide was committed by machetes (delivered by the Chinese). Whether children and women and men, old and young, get mutilated my machetes and blood to death, get burned to deathn by white phosphorus, get mowed down by machine guns, or get ripped apart by cluster ammunition- is that method of doing the killing really the standard by which to assess the severity of the event?
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If you feel nuts, consult an expert.
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