How do Chemical Weapons cause Mass Destruction?

[Bandit]

They don't even kill as many people as do high explosive weapons but they certainly don't cause any destruction at all. What does cause Mass Destruction is the MAABs that are currently being used in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The whole purpose of those twenty thousand pound bombs they call mother of all bombs or MAABs is destruction. Mass Destruction. Why are Americans soooo stupid?????

[ProfessorGAC]

1. Mass Death

I think that's the distinction. Killing a lot of people and buildings, or killing a lot of people and leaving structures standing. It's a distinction without a difference. Dead is dead. No?
The Professor

[johnnie]

2. I don't know but

I do know how *lying* about them causes mass destruction.

[still_one]

3. It is all B.S. David Kay and others already trashed that argument

they were looking for nukes. In addition, Iraq was NOT a threat, and most important it had NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11

but you can count on it that the MSM will spread this lie until November

[gratuitous]

4. See, suppose Saddam invited us all over for a big dinner party . . .

And just as we sat down for aperitifs, well, you can probably see where this is going . . .

[The_Casual_Observer]

5. When your cause has been so thoroughly discredited and

your leaders have been humiliated you hang on to shit like that. What else have they got?

[Crabby Appleton]

6. WMD defined as nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons

In security and foreign policy analyses, "weapons of mass destruction" is a term that generally encompasses nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, with radiological weapons occasionally included.

more here

[asthmaticeog]

7. Ask a Tokyo subway passenger.

[htuttle]

12. 12 people died in the Tokyo subway sarin attack

Twelve is a 'mass death'?

Didn't US troops kill twice that many in about an hour in Haditha? With rifles?

Many 'experts' have, in fact, pointed to the Tokyo subway attack as a reason why gas attacks are NOT as bad as the MSM has played them to be. That was supposed to be nearly a 'best case' (or 'worst case', depending on your point of view) scenario -- closed in area, large crowd -- yet the gas still dispersed so quickly that most people were able to flee on foot away from the area.

[asthmaticeog]

19. Yes, 12 is a mass death.

Because, you see, a mass of people all died at once from the same cause. Sorry the numbers aren't sufficient to really pump your nads up good and big, but that was an attack by a cult of amatuers. If someone were really trying, such an attack could be a major disaster.

[leftyladyfrommo]

20. He looks like a vampire in that photo.

I wonder what he sees when he looks in a mirror.

[Minnesota Libra]

8. Chemical Weapons can/do cause mass killings, just ask..........

.....the relatives of those in the village that Saddam attacked with chemical weapons.

Killing Power of Chemical Weapons


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=edit&forum=364&topic_id=1484513&mesg_id=1484591

edited to make sure I got entire link

[Bandit]

11. Yes they kill but not as much as high explosives kill

Unless they are in confined areas the gas dissipates rapidly and I would venture there is not a single person with military experience that would agree chemical weapons are more deadly than HE

[Recursion]

9. It's an open terminology debate in the military

There are two TLA's (three-letter acronyms) that are
controversially used interchangeably: WMD (weapons of mass
destruction) and NBC (nuclear, biological, and chemical
[weapons]). Most NBC guys I knew (and I was attached to an
NBC/UXO unit for a while, so that's quite a few) did not
classify chemical agents as WMDs, and doctrine seemed to
support that distinction. The distinction is based on the
following characteristics of chemical weapons:

1. Relatively small area of effect
2. Difficulty in weaponizing quantities to increase that area
of effect
3. Non-persistence

A nuclear device can destroy an entire city; a biological
agent can wipe out an entire region (or even the world,
conceivably). A chemical agent can kill several thousand
people in a small area, and cause low levels of persistent
casualties in the area for some time (weeks) after that, and
then "only" cause environmental degradation
(increased illnesses, decreased fertility, etc.) in that area.

For a long time I've been saying people who said we used
"WMDs" in Fallujah need to be very very careful,
because by that criteria Saddam had (and used against us)
WMDs. White phosophorous is not a chemical agent; it's an
incindiery agent. But it's often been A) called a chemical
agent and B) classed by that as a WMD, when neither is true
(it's not a chemical agent, and if it were, that doesn't make
it a WMD).

As a final note, there is a huge difference between chemical
and nuclear or biological weapons in terms of their theater of
usefulness. Chemical weapons are tactical; biological and
nuclear weapons are not (though some idiots still consider the
notion of "tactical" nuclear devices, most experts
I've read have long dismissed that possibility). A chemical
agent can be used against an enemy within the range of
engagement to produce immediate casualties; this might as well
be the definition of a tactical weapon. A biological agent can
be used against an enemy within the range of engagement, but
will not produce immediate casualties. A nuclear weapon can
produce immediate casualties, but cannot be used by a unit
near enough to engage that enemy (well, not non-suicidally, at
least).

Saddam had chemical weapons, and used them in non-tactical
situations. In that sense they could conceivably be called
WMD's, in that a single munition produced large numbers of
casualties indiscriminantly, without requiring ground forces'
engaging those targets directly.

So, FWIW, my call is that it's not entirely dishonest to call
chemical weapons WMD's, but it's fairly misleading and doesn't
reflect operational reality.

And -- need I mention? -- words that don't reflect operational
reality (or as we called them in a simpler time,
"lies") have caused more deaths in this war than
Saddam's arsenal ever did.

[markbark]

10. Case in point....

Back during my Army "career" ('83-'89) as an NBC NCO I would give classes to the grunts in my company on the definition of "Weapons of Mass Destruction"
I told them that the mightiest weapon an infantry squad had at its disposal was the AN/PRC-77 (a field radio)
With it, they could call up their friendly neighborhood artillery battery and call a fire mission.
A "battery fire for effect" would result in 15 tubes firing in unison.
If the loads were high explosive, somewhere down range, one square kilometer would suddenly leap 100 meters in the air and come back down.
Lots of destruction, but if you weren't IN that one square km... no big deal.

Replace the HE with chemical rounds:
One square km is now dripping with nerve agent. Everything in there is dead (same result as with HE)
BUT....
Find on a map where that one square km is. Draw a one km diameter circle. Find the prevailing wind direction and draw a 30km line in that direction.
Draw another line perpendicular to the wind direction line (this is your baseline) then go back to your original circle. Tangent to that circle draw two lines 30 degrees either side of your wind direction line all the way down to the baseline. Everything inside the resultant triangle had better have a mask on to avoid a rather unpleasant death from nerve agent poisoning.

Thus, switching from HE to nerve agents increases the effected area from one square kilometer to more than 400 square kilometers.

Replace the HE with nukes? (Yes Virginia, we DO have Nuclear Artillery)
That's SIMPLE.... just find the map sheet it landed on and throw it away. Nothing of any military significance exists there anymore.

Mass destruction means instead of a few scores or even a few hundred casualties, we're talking about many THOUSANDS of casualties from a SINGLE round.

/rant off

--MAB

[rman]

13. Artillery with chem rounds wouldn't be a threat to the world,

would it? As with nuclear weapons, you'd need intercontinental delivery capability for it to be a global threat - which Saddam didn't have.
Also payloads for intercontinental delivery are typicality larger then those of an artillery battery. I mean, regarding destruction there's "massive", and then there's "massive".

[markbark]

16. Threat Level

Artillery rounds are tacnukes (10 to 100 kilotons) not city erasing strategic nukes (5 to 20 MEGAtons)
Big Bangs as opposed to Global Thermonuclear Armageddon (tm).

As for delivery capability... if you have the time, a ship or truck is a very efficient delivery system. Just ask UPS

--MAB

[rman]

31. delivery capability - looks like the US could save a lot of money

on cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and long-range bombers.
Or would there be a good reason not to use UPS?

[Beelzebud]

14. They don't. eom

[Jeffersons Ghost]

15. there are no "chemical weapons! IT'S A LIE! WHEN ARE WE PROTESTING!

I'LL DRAG THIS RIGHT LEG ALONG AND MEET YOU IN DC! HOW'S THAT?

[Postman]

17. "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" - it was nukes

they used to scare people to accept their war in Iraq.

[themonster]

18. Unusable

The question should be: How do unusable chemical weapons cause mass destruction?

[sandnsea]

21. Have we forgotten the anthrax poisonings??

That was a miniscule amount of anthrax and look what it did. I swear I don't know why the left thinks it helps anything to deny the real dangers that are in this world.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

22. Yeah, I remember them.

Not exactly mass destruction either.

But it's all pretty irrelevant. Since "Weapons of Mass Destruction" is a Bush sound bite. And there weren't WMDs in Iraq anyway.

[rinsd]

23. 7 envelopes killed 5 people and panicked a whole country.

Imagine if that shit had been dumped by someone into Times Square.

That's not to give you the FEAR but to claim it isn't a terrible weapon in terms of destructive force is wrong.

[philb]

24. Gee

lemme go ask my japanese granny

[sandnsea]

25. No, you're wrong

Here's the Proliferation: Threat and Response report from 1996 that refers to Weapons of Mass Destruction. It is not a creation of the Bush administration. Some people have been working for years to get the American people to pay attention to weapons proliferation and international crime.

http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/prolif96/index.html

And no there wasn't mass destruction from the anthrax, but it wasn't distributed in large quantities in a way that would harm hundreds of people. Has absolutely nothing to do with Iraq, it has to do with a very real threat that we'd be stupid to ignore. Dismissing it is exactly the kind of thing that causes Democrats to not be trusted on defense. Not that any actual Democrats dimiss it, just that we get tarnished with the idiocy of those on the far left who spout that stupid shit.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

26. I didn't say he invented the term.

I just said it's a misnomer exploited by Bush to get a bunch of cowardly babies to support his war.

[sandnsea]

27. No, it's not a misnomer

Did you click the link? This is the definition and has been for years. It has absolutely nothing to do with cowardly babies, it has to do with needing a smart policy to deal with a very real and dangerous GLOBAL threat. Bush sure doesn't have it, but we shouldn't compound his stupidity by pretending we don't need smart defense policy at all. "I don't have the answers so I'll just pretend there's no problem" is not even a good political strategy, let alone international security strategy.

"..reports on the military threat posed by the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons -- weapons of mass destruction (WMD) -- and their delivery systems."

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

28. It ain't a global threat.

It's a disease that sheep get, and sometimes people.

Now white phosphorous- there's a weapon of mass destruction.

[sandnsea]

29. Yeah, only the US has WMD

Only the US is evil. Yeah yeah yeah, bla bla bla. There's a place for you - Ignore.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

30. Ah, score another one for Bornaginhooligan.

Everytime somebody puts me on ignore, that means I've won the argument.

I'll state, since you might not actually have me on ignore, that I didn't mention the United States.

I simply stated that white phosphorous is a weapon of mass destruction. And it certainly is.

But you obviously seem aware that the United States is using weapons of mass destruction in, ironically, Iraq. And you're content with ignoring it.

So you're not actually worried about weapons of mass destruction. Are you?

[Euphen]

No, but anthrax is not a chemical weapon. n/t

[frustrated_lefty]

32. If they're aerosolized? Seems like a pointless argument.