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Saddam Does Not Have "Weapons of Mass Destruction"Unless he already has nukes that we don't know about.

By Timothy NoahPosted Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2002, at 5:56 PM ET

In articulating the case for going to war with Iraq, the Bush administration emphasizes that Saddam Hussein possesses and has used "weapons of mass destruction." In an Aug. 26 speech, Vice President Dick Cheney said that Saddam wants

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more time to husband his resources, to invest in his ongoing chemical and biological weapons programs, and to gain possession of nuclear arms. Should all his ambitions be realized, the implications would be enormous for the Middle East, for the United States, and for the peace of the world. The whole range of weapons of mass destruction then would rest in the hands of a dictator who has already shown his willingness to use such weapons [italics Chatterbox's], and has done so, both in his war with Iran and against his own people.

In the Sept. 2 New Republic, an editorial headlined "Best Case" states this more starkly:

What is it, then, about the villain in Baghdad that should provoke the United States to rid the world of him? One spectacular thing: He is the only leader in the world with weapons of mass destruction who has used them. He used them against Iranian troops and against Kurdish civilians. This is what makes Saddam Hussein so distinguished in the field of evil.

The trouble with this distinction is that it rests on the long-standing dubious convention of classifying chemical and biological weapons as "weapons of mass destruction." Saddam has indeed used mustard gas and chemical agents to commit genocide "against his own people," and that is indeed a horror. (For details, see Chatterbox's earlier item, "Jude Wanniski's Genocide Denial.") Were Saddam to use them against anybody now, the U.S. would probably be justified in declaring immediate war on Iraq. But to call chemical and biological agents "weapons of mass destruction" is to blur the crucial distinction between these weapons and nuclear weapons, the use of which would be a far greater horror, both because it would kill many more people and because it would open the door to further, and deadlier, nuclear warfare.

That chemical and biological weapons don't deserve to be called "weapons of mass destruction" is a point long familiar to arms control experts. Here, for example, is Gert G. Harigel of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:

The term "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD), used to encompass nuclear (NW), biological (BW), and chemical weapons (CW), is misleading, politically dangerous, and cannot be justified on grounds of military efficiency. …Whereas protection with various degrees of efficiency is possible against chemical and biological weapons, however inconvenient it might be for military forces on the battlefield and for civilians at home, it is not feasible at all against nuclear weapons.

Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky spells out the comparative lethality of nuclear versus chemical and biological weapons in the April 1998 issue of Arms Control Today, in an article headlined "Dismantling the Concept of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' ":

The weapons detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed about a quarter of a million people, had an explosive power about one-tenth that carried by a modern nuclear weapon. … If a 1-megaton thermonuclear warhead exploded at optimum altitude over a large city, little would be left standing or alive within five miles. A firestorm could be ignited, further extending the range of destruction. In a large-scale exchange, lethal fallout would cover an entire region.

Biological and chemical weapons, though certainly very nasty, are not nearly so deadly:

If virulent BW materials were to be widely distributed over an exposed population, then the ratio of potential lethality to the total weight of the material could be comparable to that of nuclear weapons. However, for this horrifying scenario to occur, the materials cannot be dispersed by a single-point explosion, but instead must be spread by an appropriate mechanism such as spray tanks or by "fractionating" a missile's payload and dispersing separate mini-munitions over a wide area. Moreover, survival of BW material depends critically on local meteorological and other conditions which define the delivery environment. The survival of agents is generally of short duration and effects are delayed for days. … There is little question that the lethality of chemical weapons—as measured by per unit weight of delivered munitions—is lower by many orders of magnitude than it is for nuclear weapons or the undemonstrated and inherently uncertain potential of biological weapons.

Cheney's claim that Saddam "has already shown his willingness" to use weapons of mass destruction and the New Republic's claim that Saddam is the "only leader in the world with weapons of mass destruction who has used them" undermine the extremely valuable concept of nuclear exceptionalism. The New Republic's claim is also just plain wrong. Saddam is the only living leader in the world with weapons of mass destruction who has used them. The only leader in the world with nuclear weapons who ever used them was Harry Truman. If you agree that biological and chemical weapons deserve to be called "weapons of mass destruction," then the New Republic's condemnation may be extended to include Woodrow Wilson and many others who deployed chemical warfare during World War I.

Is Chatterbox saying that Harry Truman and Woodrow Wilson were no better than Saddam Hussein? Of course not. Saddam is a brutal dictator, while Truman and Wilson are justly admired presidents. But it remains true that Wilson and Truman allowed use of weapons in their time that today are judged beyond the pale within the international community. Quite rightly, the international consensus further holds that nuclear warfare is much more dangerous, and therefore much more reprehensible, than chemical and biological warfare. This is a distinction that the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" undermines. If Saddam has already used "weapons of mass destruction" (and, moreover, suffered little for it), what deters him from using nukes in the future? They're all "weapons of mass destruction," aren't they?

E-mail Timothy Noah at .

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

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Notes From The Fray Editor:

Although the discussion of WMD is just beginning, already there are obvious sides: the absolutists who want to maintain the firewall between weapons categories (like Noah) and the operationalists who argue that the firewall doesn't exist for terrorists (like John below). Readers who wish to jump into the Chatter Box Fray should know two things: 1. The previous article dealt with a national anti-obesity campaign and many people are still commenting on that; 2. Chatter Box, more than any other Fray, can be offputting because of the degree of disconnect between on-topic and off-topic posts. To avoid having to slog through someone else's personal quagmire, you might click on Fray Editor's Picks, which is a draconian filter that will reduce your reading time.

Remarks From The Fray:

Unconventional weapons are not weapons of mass destruction. What Bush & buddies need to note is that while Nuclear weapons can be considered "unconventional weapons" as well as weapons of mass destruction, the various chemical and biological agents used in the past by Saddam Hussein do NOT qualify as weapons of mass destruction.

Why? They're simply not lethal to enough people to qualify. He's managed to kill, perhaps, several thousands of Kurds and Iranians with such weapons, perhaps, with repeated use, tens of thousands.

This versus the hundreds of thousands or millions immediately killed by a nuclear weapon, before counting in the effects of lingering radiation and environmental damage.

Now, if Smallpox were weaponized, that could count as a weapon of mass destruction. (For a good idea of what it does to a "virgin population," I highly suggest reading any decent anthropological text on the affect of smallpox in Native America - in places, it may have had a 90% mortality rate). But there's no evidence that smallpox has been weaponized by any nation, let alone by Iraq.

Besides, when Iraq used its unconventional weapons on Iran, the US was backing him. Now, we're using this as an excuse to go to war?

As if GW hadn't already shown he's a complete hypocrite...

-- Tara

(To reply, click here.)

Mr Noah is absolutely correct to point out the exponential degree of difference between the lethality of chemical and biological weapons, versus the lethality of nuclear weapons.

To continue that argument further, while it is very easy to manufacture poison gas, and just as easy to obtain anthrax spores (though it's a trickier business weaponizing them), it is extremely difficult to obtain the raw materials needed to make a nuclear device, and just as difficult to build one that works. So the line of reasoning that lumps all weapons of mass destruction into one big pile, wherein if Saddam has A and B he must therefore have C, is just as outrageous as saying that mustard gas is as dangerous as an atomic bomb.

-- Utek

(To reply, click here.)

Biological and chemical weapons don't deserve to be called weapons of mass destruction? OK, if you must put a fine point on it, let's call them "weapons of mass lethality." One official and widely cited study (referenced below) suggests that an airplane delivering 100 kg of anthrax spores or 1000 kg of sarin nerve agent under ideal conditions in the Washington, D.C. area could kill between one and three million people. Yes, you can wear a gas mask or a protective suit, but that's only if terrorists are kind enough to give you some advance warning of their impending attack. Since terrorist are generally not inclined to do that, the fact you can, in principle, prepare for a biological or chemical attack (whereas you can't really prepare for a nuclear attack) is irrelevant. Also, Chatterbox cites Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky talking about the difficulties of delivering these weapons:

However, for this horrifying scenario to occur, the materials cannot be dispersed by a single-point explosion, but instead must be spread by an appropriate mechanism such as spray tanks or by "fractionating" a missile's payload and dispersing separate mini-munitions over a wide area. Moreover, survival of BW material depends critically on local meteorological and other conditions which define the delivery environment.

Forget about missiles. Did you already forget about the 9/11 hijackers who looked into the use of crop dusters? That's how they'd do it, and they'd presumably wait for a night when the weather conditions were ideal. And if they ever did that, I think Chatterbox would be inclined to retract the central thesis of his new article!

Reference:

U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: Assessing the Risks, OTA-ISC-559 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, August 1993).

You can find this study on-line here (page 54 has the most relevant information):

http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk1/1993/9341/9341.PDF

-- John

(To reply, click here.)

(8/27)

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