Weapons of mass destruction

From SourceWatch

This article is part of the Nuclear spin analysis project of SpinWatch (UK) and the Center for Media and Democracy.

A basic and deliberately limited definition for the term weapons of mass destruction, also known as WMD, comes from the National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction of 2002:

"Weapons of mass destruction (WMD)--nuclear, biological, and chemical--in the possession of hostile states and terrorists represent one of the greatest security challenges facing the United States." Also included in this category are missiles capable of reaching both the United States and U.S. interests abroad.

This limited "NBC" definition also occurs in other official and quasi-official projects such as the Nuclear Threat Initiative. However this focus may be a distraction, similar to the notion of cyberterror or cyberwar, intended to move attention away from several facts that are rarely or never mentioned by any official American document:

The United States claims to have "clear superiority" in nuclear weapon, biological weapon and chemical weapon technologies, and has stockpiles of nuclear and other weapons sufficient to wipe out Earth's whole population.
The United Nations prefers a wider definition of WMD than the old NBC trio - including radiological weapons. Also the American Committee for the United Nations University in its 2001 State of the Future report cited the Swedish Peace Insitute and other sources as arguing that artificial intelligence, genetics, proteomics, molecular engineering had vastly greater potential than NBC weapons to destroy not only human but all life on Earth, within credible near-term development pathways. Early promoters of some of these technologies actually tend to have the most cautionary views: Hugo de Garis, K. Eric Drexler, Bill Joy, and recently Martin Rees, the UK Astronomer-Royal, have made such apocalyptic predictions.
Various US think tanks, e.g. Foresight Institute, and corporations, e.g. Zyvex, and even some nonprofit 'charities', e.g. Singularity Institute, are actively researching these technologies and effectively promoting them - they have been successful in achieving vast investments from the US military-industrial complex, e.g. the National Nanotechnology Initiative funded under the Clinton Administration. By contrast the Chinese initiatives in this area have been mostly privately funded with medical or materials objectives.

Fighting Words: An Iraq War Glossary says that Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are "chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. The Washington Post quoted historian Paul Fussell on the subject: 'A machine gun, properly fired, is a weapon of mass destruction. We're pretending that only awful and sinister people own weapons of mass destruction. We own them, too. We just call them something else.'"

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2003

"Calendar of errors," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 2003: "This one's for the history books, folks. While it's always possible that some Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or WMD--which posed such an immediate threat to the United States that the Bush administration was compelled to invade that country--may some day be found, so far the weapons have proved elusive. Just for the record, (and in case in a few years no one can believe what happened, or the story becomes confused with the plot of a Marx Brothers movie), here's a representative sample of reports from the U.S. and British news media since the search for Iraq's WMD began."
Wolf Blitzer, "Search for the 'smoking gun'," CNN, January 10, 2003. "Last September 8, I interviewed President Bush's National Security Adviser, Dr. Condoleezza Rice. I was pressing her on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities."
Ayman El-Amir, "The burden of truth. Who's to produce the smoking gun?" Al-Ahram Weekly, January 23-29, 2003: "Iraq is guilty until proven guilty."
Phyllis Bennis, "Powell's Dubious Case for War," Foreign Policy in Focus, February 5, 2003.
Firas Al-Atraqchi, "Irrefutable Evidence Against Iraq? The Telling of a Tall Tale," Dissident Voice, February 7, 2003.
Lisa Porteus, Weapons of Mass Destruction Handbook, FoxNews.com, February 23, 2003.
David Isenberg, "Iraq's WMD revisited," Asia Times, April 9, 2003.
Ari Fleischer, White House Press Briefing, April 10, 2003.
Nicholas Watt, "Hans Blix: US was Bent on War," Guardian/UK, April 12, 2003.
Nicholas D. Kristoff, Missing in Action: Truth, The New York Times, May 6, 2003.
Trevor Findlay and Ben Mines, "Iraq's Weapons: The US fails to best UNMOVIC," basicint.org, June 4, 2003.
Christopher Scheer, 10 Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq, AlterNet, June 27, 2003.
Scott Ritter (former UNSCOM Weapons Inspector), A Weapons Cache We'll Never See, The New York Times, August 25, 2003.
The Elusive Iraqi Weapons, New York Times Op-Ed, October 4, 2003.
Warren Hoge, Blair Doubted Iraq Had Arms, Ex-Aide Says, New York Times, October 6, 2003.
Will Dunham, Pentagon Mulls Shifting Experts Away from Iraq Arms Hunt, Reuters, October 29, 2003: "The Pentagon is considering shifting intelligence personnel in Iraq from the so-far fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction to strengthen efforts to combat the intensifying resistance, officials said on Wednesday. ... 'What's more important right now and what's more destabilizing: the insurgency or knowing about the WMD?' asked a defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity."
David Ensor, U.S. gets tough over WMD trade, CNN.com, December 3, 2003: "The Bush administration says the U.S. and its allies are willing to use "robust techniques" to stop so-called rogue nations from getting materials to make weapons of mass destruction."
William Rivers Pitt, We Caught the Wrong Guy, TruthOut.com, December 15, 2003. A "must read" article.
Richard W. Stevenson, Remember 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'? For Bush, They Are a Nonissue, New York Times, December 18, 2003.
David E. Sanger and Judith Miller, Libya to Give Up Arms Programs, Bush Announces, New York Times, December 20, 2003.
Jim Lobe, "Who needs WMD when you've got Saddam?," Asia Times, December 20, 2003: "With former president Saddam Hussein in the bag, the administration of President George W Bush appears determined to make US voters forget Washington invaded Iraq on the pretext that its now evidently non-existent weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed a direct threat to the United States and its allies. ... The effort so far has taken two forms: the suggestion by administration officials, including Bush himself, that ousting and capturing Saddam were ample justifications for going to war; and the quiet dissolution of the nearly billion-dollar effort to find WMD in Iraq."

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2004

Christopher Marquis, "Powell Admits No Hard Proof in Linking Iraq to Al Qaeda," New York Times, January 9, 2004: "Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conceded Thursday that despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no 'smoking gun' proof of a link between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and terrorists of Al Qaeda. ... 'I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection,' Mr. Powell said, in response to a question at a news conference. 'But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did.'"
Bill Maxwell, "After Pigeon Inspections, Bush Eats Crow," St. Petersburg Times, March 3, 2004.
Peter Slavin, "Brazil Shielding Uranium Facility. Nation Seeks to Keep Its Proprietary Data From U.N. Inspectors," New York Times, April 4, 2004.
"UN inspectors: Saddam shipped out WMD before war and after," World Tribune, June 11, 2004.
Ben Johnson, "Exporting Saddam's WMDs," FrontPageMag.com, June 18, 2004.
Paul Kerr, "UN: Iraqi Weapons Sites Looted," Arms Control Today, July/August 2004.
"No WMD: Bush Legitimizes Invasion of Iraq," Washington Dispatch, October 7, 2004.
Jonathan S. Landay, "Vast amounts of weapons-related material missing, official says," Knight Ridder, October 8, 2004.
"Findings of US team confirms UN analysis of Iraq's weapons programme," noticias.info, December 3, 2004.