- NEW YORK -- "Weapons
of mass destruction." No term has been more abused, or less understood.
George Bush has made it his personal mantra, and the slogan of his presidency.
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- An administration that may have concocted fake evidence
to launch war on Iraq may yet conveniently "discover" unconventional
weapons there - before November's U.S. elections. So let's define what
such weapons are - and are not.
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- Three types of unconventional arms are called WMD: nuclear,
chemical and biological.
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- Of those, the only true weapons of mass destruction are
nuclear. The U.S., Russia, China, France, Britain, Israel, India, Pakistan
and North Korea, alone possess them. Japan could make nuclear weapons within
90 days.
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- Without specialized medium and long-range delivery systems
(aircraft or missiles), nuclear weapons are useless, even suicidal.
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- Last week, Bush warned of nuclear proliferation and called
for a worldwide ban on the trade of nuclear material. This when U.S. ally
Pakistan has been exposed as a major proliferator, Israel is covertly helping
build India's nuclear capabilities and the U.S. plans to deploy a new generation
of nuclear weapons designed to attack Third World targets.
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- Chemical weapons, which are not WMD, are blistering,
choking, or toxic agents. Mustard gas possessed by Iraq, Libya, Syria,
Egypt and other nations is World War I technology. Horrible as they are,
these are strictly battlefield weapons, requiring large, clumsy holding
tanks, and depend on favourable winds. Winston Churchill authorized using
poison gas against "primitive tribesmen" - Kurds in Iraq and
Afghans - when he was British home secretary. Benito Mussolini's Italy
used mustard gas in Ethiopia and Libya.
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- Choking gas, like chlorine, is also a tactical battlefield
agent. French troops without gas masks defending a 4-km front at Verdun
in 1916 were hit by 60,000 chlorine gas shells, yet held their lines. So
did Canadian troops in Flanders, also without masks, who heroically fought
off superior German forces.
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- World War II vintage
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- Nerve gases, like Sarin and VX, are World War II vintage.
Though deadly, they, too, are tactical agents designed for area denial
and neutralizing high value targets. Using nerve gas requires specialized
vehicles or aircraft with highly complex dispensing systems. Gas is dependent
on temperature, humidity and wind. The Soviets tried various nerve agents
in Afghanistan, but found them ineffective and dangerous to their own troops.
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- Nerve agents would be extremely lethal if released by
terrorists in a large building, mall or airport but, again, they are weapons
of localized destruction, not mass destruction. In 1995, a Japanese cult
released nerve gas in Tokyo's subway, killing 12 people.
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- Nerve gas was not used during WW II because of its unreliability
and lack of wide area lethality. Many gases are unstable and have limited
shelf lives. Iraq and Iran used poison gas during the 1980-88 Gulf War
- killing or maiming many soldiers but achieving no strategic breakthroughs.
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- Biological agents, like anthrax, botulism, Q-fever, tularemia
and plague, are the most feared, yet least understood weapons. They are
difficult to produce, store, transport and deliver. Germ weapons have never
been successfully used in warfare. The USSR was secretly working on mutated,
drug-resistant forms of anthrax and plague when it collapsed.
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- In the 1930s and '40s, Japan used anthrax in bombs, and
also released plague-infected rats against Chinese civilian and military
targets. These attempts produced some localized casualties. The Japanese
military ruled their biological warfare campaign a failure.
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- Biowarfare agents are weapons of uncertain, limited destructiveness.
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- Conventional weapons can be as destructive as nuclear
weapons. The two atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan in 1945 killed
103,000 people. In one night alone, U.S. firebombs incinerated 100,000
civilians in Tokyo.
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- Japanese sources say one million civilians were killed
by U.S. bombing raids. More than 100,000 German civilians were burned to
death by the Allied fire-bombings of Dresden and Hamburg.
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- Fuel-air explosives, or thermobaric weapons, used by
Russia in Chechnya and by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq, can be as destructive
as small, tactical nuclear weapons. So can America's recently deployed
21,500-lb. MOAB bomb. Larger versions are planned.
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- Given these facts, it's important to dissipate the hysteria
and confusion over WMD. Even if Iraq had chemical or biological weapons
in 1993 - which it did not - they were not true WMD. Iraq had no means
of delivering them to the U.S., and they could never have posed the threat
Bush claimed.
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- No terrorist group is likely to sneak enough chemical
or biological material into the U.S. to cause more than localized damage.
Attacks like those on the World Trade Center may be horrible, but they
are not mass destruction. Even a small nuclear device would cause only
limited destruction.
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- Ironically, the most lethal, yet most ignored, WMD faced
by Americans happens to be their beloved cars, trucks and SUVs in which
some 43,000 die each year in traffic accidents.
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- Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com.
- http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_feb15.html
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