This is a good point from Txsleuth. If this Chemical Platoon was for decontamination, who was he worried would be using chemical weapons against him? I don't know if he might have had a clean-up unit fearing Iran or someone else would hit him with chemical weapons.
LOL ... Maybe he was worried that Syria would use the chemical weapons he gave to them against him.
And the excerpts above potentially demonstrate that against the Iranians, cleanup and decontamination were not high priorities. Perhaps having no Air Force really affected their WMD deployment capabilities against the Coalition.
True, he had demonstrated offensive chemical capabilities in the Iran-Iraq war. Given chemical's propensity to blow back, a decontamination capability is a data point.
However, I think you also have to recognize that if Iraq adopted the Russian army structure - regiments etc. then a chemical unit is part of the force package.
It is pretty interesting to watch the onion being peeled.