WHen we say Weapons of ‘Mass’ Destruction, what do they mean by ‘mass’? Is mass the 55 innocents killed in a market or sixty killed in Afghanistan in a wedding? Is ‘mass’ 320 lives extinguished in a bomb shelter which served as a nursery or is it nearly 500 women, children and old people killed in one bomb shelter? Or maybe the number is 1,000. So if you drop two bombs which kill 500 each, would that be equal to or considered a WMD…Or how would using Uranium depleted bombs whose effects last and linger for decades resulting in fetal diseases, premature deliveries and mutated children in countless millions? Would that be ‘mass’? I would be looking at answers from mod-Muslims in particular because they have a tendency to be very objective and unemotional in their scrutiny of Muslim lives lost…(We of course don’t want to mention American lives lost as this makes mod Muslims very uncomfortable and emotional)…Jokes aside…What constitutes ‘mass’? I can imagine a butcher looking at a cow in terms of ‘mass’ or weight, so how do USA and UK define ‘mass’?
How about 8000+ bombs in 12 days?
saddam has killed his own people at the slowest rate of 1 lac per year. i think that means 'mass'.
Anand, i did not know that you were running a massive research project. Please enlighten us with your data, stats and interviews with the natives(Iraqi). There is no doubt that Saddam has killed people who opposed him or his regime(number is much smaller than what you claimed), however, it still does not give the right to US to go and destroy the whole country and claim it as the liberation for the people.
Kaleem
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*Originally posted by anand: *
saddam has killed his own people at the slowest rate of 1 lac per year. i think that means 'mass'.
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For people like you, here is another information:In US alone, road accidents kill more than 10,000 every year
Mass= Massive oil reserves
Mass= control of the massive Middle east population.
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*Originally posted by anand: *
saddam has killed his own people at the slowest rate of 1 lac per year. i think that means 'mass'.
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I think the amount of propaganda your mind has been fed means mass...:)
This may shed light on your question. I’ve higlighted the interesting parts in bold.
WMD: Words of mass dissemination
weapons of mass destruction • n 1. any weapon which could potentially inflict fatalities and physical damage on a massive scale. 2. polit. the nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) arsenals of states identified as belonging to the axis of evil. also abbrv. as WMD.
CURRENT USAGE: “These [UN] reports do not contend that weapons of mass destruction remain in Iraq, but nor do they exclude that possibility.” Dr Hans Blix’s statement to the UN Security Council - 27/01/03.
ORIGIN: **British newspapers called bomber aircraft “weapons of mass destruction” in 1937, when the Nazi Luftwaffe was flattening towns - such as Guernica - during the Spanish Civil War. **
**In the arms race of the Cold War, WMD was exclusively applied to thermo-nuclear bombs **- since the opposing sides were ready with enough nukes to mutually assure the destruction of, well, everything.
BROADENED DEFINITION: UN Resolution 687 - which ended the Gulf War in 1991 - called on Iraq to relinquish its NBC ambitions and summed up the unpleasant trio as WMD.
In 1998, US law formalised WMD as devices able “to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people” using chemicals, a disease organism, radiation or radioactivity.
DISPUTED DEFINITION: **the FBI says conventional explosives can also be WMD. “A weapon crosses the WMD threshold when the consequences of its release overwhelm local responders.” **
DISPUTED DEFINITION (TWO): **Colombia’s Vice President Gustavo Bell Lemus told the UN that small arms are also WMD, because bullet fatalities “dwarf that of all other weapons systems - and in most years greatly exceed the toll of the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki”. **
DISPUTED DEFINITION (THREE): **some say that fewer - rather than more - weapons should be deemed capable of mass destruction.
“Only nuclear weapons are completely indiscriminate by their explosive power, heat radiation and radioactivity, and only they should therefore be called a weapon of mass destruction”** says chemical weapons expert Gert G Harigel.
ALTERNATIVES: **Mr Harigel prefers to call clouds of anthrax or poison gas or radioactive dust “weapons of terror” when aimed against civilians and “weapons of intimidation” for soldiers in gas masks and protective suits. **
“Weapons of indiscriminate destruction”, “weapons of mass disruption” and “weapons of catastrophic effect” have also been suggested.
MASS USE: WMD has had a mass impact of its own. Its recent ubiquity has earned it a place on Lake Superior State University’s famed list of “misused, overused and generally uselessness” words.
MASS destruction is generally used to describe weapons that can harm "the masses". They are indescriminate and are the opposite of precision. The INTENT (an unknown, underused, and unimportant word around here) of WMD is to destroy large areas inhabited by humans. In theory a microscopically small atomic weapon WOULD NOT be a WMD, as it could be used to kill a very small area occupied only by combatants.
WMD's, by their nature, induce terror. Precision weapons on the other hand, have some level of accuracy that will attempt to induce death or destruction in a given area.