Defining down Weapons of Mass Destruction

[bluestateguy]

What are WMD's? Nuclear? Biological? Chemical? That would seem to be the consensus for most people. Unless, of course, such weapons are never found. Then Al Samood missiles become defined as "WMD's", then it's scud missiles, then it's a trailer with a couple of test tubes in it, and now today it appears to be a stash of primative weapons found in Tikrit. The Pentagon does not come out and directly call them WMD's, but the heavy breathing with which they make the announcement and the tone of FOXNEWS as they repeat the information is meant to suggest that the long lost WMD's have been found.

[jpgray]

1. The words have lost all meaning

They used to be very serious diplomatic lingo, now they're a joke. A buried piece of a centrifuge, a possible fragment of a tiny part of a massive yet undiscovered program is now labeled with the WMD stamp.

[DarkPhenyx]

2. The only WMD is a nuclear weapon.

Everything else is simply a non-conventional weapon. They do not cause mass destruction. Period. The whole set of weapons you mentions is more appropriately, and accurately, called NBC weapons, or Nuclear/Biological/Chemical Weapons.