I'm not sure what scares me more weapon of mass destruction or the fact that
we can conveniently abbreviate it as WMD. It sounds so much nicer. Weapon of
mass destruction become just another TLA.

The argument that US didn't use weapon of mass destruction is specious. This
is because somebody conveniently defined weapon of mass destruction as
nuclear, biological or chemical. This is pure sophistry.

The US dropped napalm on Vietnamese villagers. Apparently, even though
napalm is a chemical, thank you Dow, it does not constitute a weapon of mass
destruction. Daisy Cutter bombs don't count as a weapon of mass destruction
despite the fact that they carry 17,000 pounds of explosive and they're now
testing a 21,000 pound bomb. Depleted uranium (not DU, see above) doesn't
count as a weapon of mass destruction. (Jose Padilla would probably be
interested in hearing why on the off chance he ever gets a trial.) Tracy
Johnson says that depleted uranium is no longer being used and I'll accept
that. However, it was being used during the Kosovo campaign, which was less
time ago than the gassing of the Kurds. (I guess the US has undergone regime
change since then so it's OK.)

The definition of a weapon of mass destruction begs the issue of what is
mass. How many people must be killed by a single use of the weapon in order
for it to be called a weapon of mass destruction? Is it the heinousness of
the weapon or the outcome of tits use? 100,000 starving pussycats dropped on
a city constitutes a weapon of mass destruction. 10,000,000 teddy bears
dropped from a height of ten miles constitutes a weapon of mass destruction.
A weapon of mass destruction is any weapon that has the ability and intend
to destroy masses of people.

I'm sure that the people killed by any weapon are neither glad or upset by
the fact that the weapon was or was not officially a weapon of mass
destruction. They are neither gratified nor saddened by the fact they were
killed by the "good guys" or the "bad guys." Being sanctimonious about other
peoples deaths is the worst form of immorality.

Let Peace be the maxim by which we act because we will Peace to become a
universal law.
Work For Peace
The opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of my
employer.
Yosef Rosenblatt

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