If that is the legal definition of WMD then in this case the law is an ass. When was this legal definition created? Pre or post 9/11? I'm betting post. Do please correct me if I'm wrong. If I am though how come nobody at the time of the Iraq invasion^H liberation sought to point this out? I missed that memo.
And so further down the Orwellian tunnel of language distortion we go: if we (the good guys of course) do it then it's collateral damage and enhanced interrogation; if they (those evil scum) do it then it's weapons of mass destruction.
I think when people hear WMD they take it to mean nuclearchemical and biological weapons capable of killing thousands in an instant or very short space of time. There is no way anyone seriously considers an IED of any crappy variety to be a WMD no matter how it is deployed or what the intent behind the murders is.
But yeah, let's keep on barreling down that road, let's see where it'll take us.
EDIT: as anigbrowl points out the answer is pre: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5591399
Also interestingly mass in this sense means indiscriminate as opposed to targeted. I don't know is it just me or were others under the impression that mass meant on a massive scale. It certainly seems to have been used in that sense in the run-up to Iraq 2003 at which time it entered the public lexicon. And as I say I don't remember any legal-heads piping up to correct the misconception.
I really don't remember enough about the media landscape in the runup to the Iraq war to know whether people were drawing the distinction or not; certainly they didn't make much impact since people associate WMD with large-scale destruction. However, you might want to consider the disparity between the individual and the state here; just as a handgun is a more suitable weapon for an individual than a howitzer, the quantitative impact for something to qualify as a WMD would be scaled up accordingly. And this is what happens in practice; if I pipe tear gas into your air ducts it counts as WMD, but chemical warfare between nations usually involves nerve gas or similarly horrific stuff.
I don't see this as the state reserving special privileges over the individual, incidentally; it seems to me that this an inevitable consequence of multiple individuals pooling a small degree of their individual sovereignty into military and police forces.
Comments
If that is the legal definition of WMD then in this case the law is an ass. When was this legal definition created? Pre or post 9/11? I'm betting post. Do please correct me if I'm wrong. If I am though how come nobody at the time of the Iraq invasion^H liberation sought to point this out? I missed that memo.
And so further down the Orwellian tunnel of language distortion we go: if we (the good guys of course) do it then it's collateral damage and enhanced interrogation; if they (those evil scum) do it then it's weapons of mass destruction.
I think when people hear WMD they take it to mean nuclear chemical and biological weapons capable of killing thousands in an instant or very short space of time. There is no way anyone seriously considers an IED of any crappy variety to be a WMD no matter how it is deployed or what the intent behind the murders is.
But yeah, let's keep on barreling down that road, let's see where it'll take us.
EDIT: as anigbrowl points out the answer is pre: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5591399 Also interestingly mass in this sense means indiscriminate as opposed to targeted. I don't know is it just me or were others under the impression that mass meant on a massive scale. It certainly seems to have been used in that sense in the run-up to Iraq 2003 at which time it entered the public lexicon. And as I say I don't remember any legal-heads piping up to correct the misconception.
I really don't remember enough about the media landscape in the runup to the Iraq war to know whether people were drawing the distinction or not; certainly they didn't make much impact since people associate WMD with large-scale destruction. However, you might want to consider the disparity between the individual and the state here; just as a handgun is a more suitable weapon for an individual than a howitzer, the quantitative impact for something to qualify as a WMD would be scaled up accordingly. And this is what happens in practice; if I pipe tear gas into your air ducts it counts as WMD, but chemical warfare between nations usually involves nerve gas or similarly horrific stuff.
I don't see this as the state reserving special privileges over the individual, incidentally; it seems to me that this an inevitable consequence of multiple individuals pooling a small degree of their individual sovereignty into military and police forces.
It was created in 1994, as anigbrowl mentions in another comment, also going into detail on why the categorical definition makes sense.
Thanks for that kvb, I've edited my previous post