Tuesday, April 23, 2013

further downgrading WMDs

i noticed that detail in the charges when they were announced yesterday. i guess any bomb is now a weapon of mass destruction.

this is really just a logical extension to the slippery slope started in the run up to the iraq war. nuclear weapons that can destroy whole cities, were joined with biological weapons and chemical weapons under the catch phrase "weapons of mass destruction." never mind that biological weapons are difficult to use for mass destructive effect. and never mind that chemical weapons' area of "mass destruction" is limited to a much smaller area than a nuclear blast radius (like a single enclosed space, or a field). by calling them all WMDs, it made them all seem like nuclear weapons, which heightened the sense of danger posed by saddam hussein. it makes total sense that ten years later the WMD slope has further slipped to encompass a pressure cooker bomb.