Where, oh where, have my WMD gone?

While we are still waiting to hear how the search for Iraqi weapons pans out, there's a interesting piece here, suggesting the possibility that Saddam's own weapons scientists might have been scamming him. It concludes:

In the event that we do not find the WMD smoking gun this is the only explanation that would make any sense. Saddam wanted the program and was willing to endure crippling sanctions to have it. However, his henchmen were unable to deliver and, unwilling to be on the receiving end of Saddam's zero-defects program, they faked it. In the process of making Saddam believe he had a functioning program they could easily have sucked U.S. intelligence into the deception. In fact, deceiving U.S. intelligence in this way would have been important to them. It would not have been conducive to a long life if the United States had come to Saddam and told him they had discovered he had no WMD program and all of his most trusted advisers were lying.

INCIDENTALLY, how did the term, "weapons of mass destruction", end up applied to biological and chemical agents? One would never refer to the results of an epidemic or of poisoning as "destruction". If you want to lump together unconventional weapons that kill huge numbers indiscriminately, why not stick to the old military acronym NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical)? "WMD" seems pretty well entrenched, however -- though one might choose to redefine it as standing for "weapons of mass death".

Posted by David on May 17, 2003 9:24 AM