Thread: Saddam's WMD
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Joeaksa Joeaksa is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: N. Phoenix AZ USA
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Agreed and OnRamp needs to get a clue...

Today, the term WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) means different things to different people. The most widely used definition is that of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons (NBC). http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/treaties/mtcr_anx.html]), although there is no treaty or customary international law that contains an authoritative definition. Instead, international law has been used with respect to the specific categories of weapons within WMD, and not to WMD as a whole.

The acronym NBC is used with regards to battlefield protection systems for armored vehicles, because all 3 involve insidious toxins that can be carried through the air and can be protected against with vehicle air filtration systems. However, there is a persuasive argument that nuclear weapons do not belong in the same category as chemical, biological, or radiological weapons, which have limited destructive potential (and close to none, as far as property is concerned), whereas nuclear weapons are famously colossally destructive and belong in a class by themselves.

The NBC definition has also been used in official US documents, by the US President ([2], [3]), the US Central Intelligence Agency ([4]), the US Department of Defense ([5], [6]), and the US General Accounting Office ([7]).

Other documents expand the definition of WMD to include radiological or conventional weapons. The US military refers to WMD as:

Weapons that are capable of a high order of destruction and/or of being used in such a manner as to destroy large numbers of people. Weapons of mass destruction can be high explosives or nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons, but exclude the means of transporting or propelling the weapon where such means is a separable and divisible part of the weapon.([8])
While in US civil defense, the category is now Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosive (CBRNE), which defines WMD as:

(1) Any explosive, incendiary, poison gas, bomb, grenade, or rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces [113 g], missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce [7 g], or mine or device similar to the above. (2) Poison gas. (3) Any weapon involving a disease organism. (4) Any weapon that is designed to release radiation at a level dangerous to human life. This definition derives from US law, 18 U.S.C. Section 2332a and the referenced 18 USC 921. Indictments and convictions for possession and use of WMD such as truck bombs, pipe bombs, shoe bombs, cactus needles coated with botulin toxin, etc. have been obtained under 18 USC 2332a.
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Old 06-26-2006, 12:19 PM
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