WMD = Weapons of Mediocre Destruction?

Great Debates
1

Here I’m limiting this to Chemical WMD’s only. I question whether a terrorist attack using this method would be very effective.

I can’t get a copy of the chart from this page to copy here… but it’s about 1/3rd of the way down.

U.S. Government White Paper, released February 13, 1998

To put it in a nutshell…From aug '83 to mar '88:

Kurds killed by Saddam’s use of CNS angents and mustard gas = approximately 3 thousand.

Iranians killed = around 25 to 30 thousand.

From the white paper: “Iraqi forces delivered chemical agents (including Mustard 5 agent and the nerve agents Sarin and Tabun/6) in aerial bombs, aerial spray dispensers, 120-mm rockets, and several types of artillery”

Basically every delivery system that was available was employed; and on Iraqi territory. Would you really consider this an efficient way of killing people. It’s cheap but is it really so devastating in it’s effect that the hysteria is warranted? Especially when considering an attack on US soil. By comparison, IIRC, Our troops in Iraq had killed over 10 thousand in the first month. Without the elaborate delivery systems used during Saddams war with Iran those agents don’t seem to be too effective. Witness the sarin gas attack in Japan. Only a handful of people were killed.

Of course the reason I bring this up is not down play the lethality or to say we should’nt be wary of this stuff. But to question whether hysteria is running rampant. Hysteria which is threatening our freedoms here in the US.

G.W., from his new political ad:

Maureen Dowd’s Op-Ed today

“It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known,” Mr. Bush says, in a State of the Union clip.

By the way, I read somewhere that the machinegun has killed far more people than everything else put together…

2

So, you’re measuring “horror” by “body count”? That it only counts as a “horror” if there’s, like, a really humongous body count? You don’t think a “handful of people” dying in a subway because of nerve gas distributed by a few loonies counts as a “horror”?

I thought 9/11 counted as a “horror”, and only a few thousand people died then.

It’s the method that makes it “horror”, not necessarily the final body count. The Jewish Holocaust would have been a “genocidal horror” even if it had involved only 3,000 dead, like the Kurds, instead of 6 million.

3

I don’t think a handful of people dead in a subway is a “horror like none we have ever known”.

Considering the WTC, a “horror like none we have ever known” would have to be either more then 3000 dead or dying in a more horrible way then burning, choking, crushing and jumping to their death.

4

The concern is that WMD would be used in the more densely populated cities in America. With more people per square kilometer, it stands to reason that the casualty levels would be rather higher.

It really would take only one vial of the right stuff to cause some serious terror. Ditto for canisters. A crate with the proper contents could destroy a nice chunk of Manhattan or Chicago.

Dowd is just pissed at the fact that people of her ilk have no credibility when it comes to national defense. The ad just plays on one of the GOP’s greatest strengths. And as the dems keep sliding left, they will keep losing credibility on such matters.

5

More densly populated then Tokyo?

:dubious:

6

If the same quanity of material was used in Tokyo that was used in Al Faw or Umm ar Rasas, I am confidant that there would have been more casualties.

7

Actually, it only takes mentioning the possibility of the existence of a vial of this “right stuff” to send a shot of terror quivering through the minds of voters already traumatized by the events of 9/11. It’s a much easier route to to reelection than actually doing something about real threats; just as invading Iraq was easier than dealing with the real threat of Osama bin Laden and his ilk. Sure, sarin is nasty stuff, ask the Japanese. VX is worse, but a little vial like Powell held up at the UN isn’t going to kill thousands, except under ideal circumstances. It’s only when you conflate chemical agents with replicating biological weapons, such as smallpox, that you achieve chemical mega-terror in a handy carrying size. The magnitude of this chemical threat to America is an illusion. We’re far more likely to die from the sabotage of a chlorine bearing railway car, than some mystical chemical that combines the best properties of chemical and biological agents. Of course, actually working on the safety of the rail system, as opposed to a bandaid-banning of fireworks shipments, would be difficult, it would require effort and sacrifice by many ordinary Americans. Hell, it might even knock some people off of their pink-cloud of belief in the president’s “superthreats” and get them talking about the safety of the food system (hepatitis anyone?), old russian nukes (I wonder if they’ll actually spend the money this year) and numerous other real threats to the homeland. That’d be bad for the president’s reelection campaign.

8

Not to side with your characterization of Dowd’s ‘ilk,’ but it’s a question of quality as well as quantity. The sarin used in Tokyo by Aum Shinrikyo wasn’t pure sarin, hence the relatively low number of fatalities.

Got ilk?

9

And these people dedicated their lives and untold amounts of money to developing chemical and biological weapons. They made several attempts to kill massive amounts of people. If their plans had worked, tens- maybe hundreds- of thousands would be dead. But each time something just wasn’t quite right.

Put simply, making WMDs is hard. Making them useful for killing people is even harder. Getting them somepleace useful and setting them off- well, the odds are against you. You know those dirty bombs we’re all worried about? Assuming they can get radioactive material, exposives, assemble a bomb, transport it and set it off- when any one of millions of things could go wrong at each step- they might kill 300 people. And a couple of blocks might be blocked off for a couple months during the clean up. It’d be a psychological blow, for sure. But it’s hardly the unthinkable horror it’s made out to be.

Why do you think terrorists are still screwing around with car bombs and the like? Because those things work consistantly. They arn’t a big pain in the ass that is most likely to get your organization caught and destroyed than to kill even a handful of people.

Of course, we must be vigilant. But we must also be realistic about the threat. I’m sure a large amount of people are conviced that a dirty bomb would kill millions. That just plain isn’t true and it is wrong to use that kind of fearmongering to gain votes.

10

the real threat from terrorist weapons isn’t the weapon–it’s the terror.
Anybody remember the Washington sniper? He was just sentenced to death today, and that seems to end the story. But look back on the way society reacted for those few days before he was caught–it was worse than Sept 11.Entire cities shut down. Schools closed. People laid on the ground along their car while pumping gas. Local economies came to a halt because everybody was afraid to leave their house. One lone gunman using a weapon everyone knew was totally incapable of mass destruction, succeeded in causing mass panic.

The real horror of Sept 11 wasnt the death toll,–it was the way that the stability of our society was undermined. More people died in random traffic accidents than were murdered by the random shootings of the Washington sniper over those few days.
But the panic was very real.
It isnt the body count that is important. Saying that a WMD attack with sarin or a dirty bomb will “only” kill a few dozen or a few hundred people wont make the attack less effective.It’s the public’s reaction that counts
When people start to fear that society is falling apart, then the terrorists have succeeded.

11

IIRC, handgrenades count as WMDs.

12

think of it this way: if I killed 3 people with a hand gun in new york, would I make national news?

what if I skinned someone and hung them from a flag pole in time square?

its not just body count that makes something

13

I think it’s the invisible, indescriminate nature of these weapons that makes them so terrible to contemplate. You can see and hear a machine gun. You can’t see or hear chemical weapons and if you smell them it’s too late for you. Plus they’re a pretty nasty way to watch someone die. With nerve agents in particular, the fear of an odorless colorless killer that can reduce you to a twitching drooling corpse in seconds is pretty powerful emotionally.

14

It is if you launch a war to prevent it. It is if you start deporting foreign nationals to Syria to get tortured on mere allegations. Or vote into law a set of principles that undermine the basic prinicples of freedom the US of A has upheld for over two centuries. No offense, but if you start taking those kind of measures, you’d better make sure there is a body count to back it up, rather than Fox-style media hysteria.

15

[
It’s the method that makes it “horror”, not necessarily the final body count. The Jewish Holocaust would have been a “genocidal horror” even if it had involved only 3,000 dead, like the Kurds, instead of 6 million. **
[/QUOTE]

No. Your so called ‘horror’ lies in the fear. And fear can be cultivated. For what ends? You decide.

The holocost was a “Horror”. So are the many other genocidal killings of the large magnitudes we have seen in the 20th century. The number of dead Does matter. I’m sorry; I don’t mean to be callous here but in discussing history and how it should hopefully not be repeated there has to be some perspective. All of the major genocidal killings (I dare say Ever Done) were done by those in power at the time. And they were done to the Minority. Ethnic, religious, or otherwise… And the majority was convinced thru their own (unreasoned) fear that their survival was at stake.

We are, I believe, the greatest, most powerful country ever. Therefore also, I hope not naively, that we should also exercise the greatest amount of restaint in the use of our power, which truly is devastating (We really have WMD’s!).

16

The qoute above was from Duck Duck Goose… have’nt quite got the hang of this yet.
Eric