Weapons of mass destruction

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.

Aside from the pro-technology propaganda implied in, and spurred by, the above, use of industry-friendly experts (e.g. Richard Smalley, Hans Moravec or Ray Kurzweil) or balanced experts (as Drexler and de Garis have become), some use of raising standards of evidence and a very notable degree of replacing credible with sensational claims is common in any debate around such an expanded debate on the destructive potential of post-NBC weaponry.

Given their "lead", it is absolutely inimical to the interests of the US military-industrial complex to see open debate of such technologies, or of their relinquishment along lines Joy advises, or a cessation of research in certain fields as Rees has advised. The debate over whether nanotechnology requires a Precautionary Principle approach has been marked by strong positions taken by the Texas Nanotechnology Initiative and National Nanotechnology Initiative that molecular engineering does not lead necessarily to dangerous technology such as artificial life, while the ETC Group and Center for Responsible Nanotechnology take the opposite position. The Foresight Institute has taken a middle position but is often discredited by the cautionary side for its pointing out and then ignoring ethics issues, and for the promoters for pointing them out at all.

What is truly remarkable is that these increasingly public debates which have gone on for years, are successfully kept out of the spotlight reserved for "NBC" threats. This suggests that the public relations crisis of US complicity in spreading dangerous technology has, so far, been quite successfully managed.

Other weapons of mass destruction in current use include:

• Cluster Munitions[1]
• Depleted Uranium munitions
• Napalm

Other Related SourceWatch Resources

• Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction
• Arms-to-Iraq affair
• Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
• ETC Group
• Foresight Institute
• Gilmore Commission
• Homeland defense
• Homeland security
• House Science Committee Hearing on the Societal Implications of Nanotechnology
• Iraqi supergun affair
• National Nanotechnology Initiative
• Nuclear Threat Initiative
• nuclear weapons
• Pro-technology propaganda
• Texas Nanotechnology Initiative
• weapons of mass destruction investigation
• Weapons of Mass Distraction

External Links

Documents

• Let the Record Speak, TomPaine.com: Bush Administration Quotes from August 26, 2002 through May 30, 2003.

• Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs. U.S. Government White Paper, released February 13, 1998.
• Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East, Monterey Institute of International Studies, September 2001.
• Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Assessment of the British Government, September 24, 2002.
• Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), October 2002.
• National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, December 2002.
• Weapons of Mass Destruction Intelligence Threat Assessments, 1992-2003.
• Jeffrey Richelson, ed., Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 80, December 20, 2002/Updated - February 26, 2003.
• U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control.
• WMD: U.S. Interdiction, Council on Foreign Relations' Update on Weapons of Mass Destruction, June 26, 2003.
• Weapons of Mass Destruction Branch Department for Disarmament Affairs, United Nations.

General

• Calendar of errors, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: "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."
• Weapons of mass destruction - Wikipedia
• John Steinbach, Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction: a Threat to Peace, DC Iraq Coalition/Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca, March 3, 2002.
• Lisa Porteus, Weapons of Mass Destruction Handbook, FoxNews.com, February 23, 2003.
• Nicholas D. Kristoff, Missing in Action: Truth, The New York Times, May 6, 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.
• 20 December 2003: "Who needs WMD when you've got Saddam?" by Jim Lobe, Asia Times: "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."
• 9 January 2004: "Powell Admits No Hard Proof in Linking Iraq to Al Qaeda" by Christopher Marquis, New York Times: "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.'"