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Flame » in reply to re: re:Imprecisions and trust

re:Imprecisions and trust
gbaikie — (archived)

"From the start, I thought WMD's were nuclear weapons and only that. After all, chemical and biological weapons don't necessarily destroy. They kill, but don't destroy."
Well we agree that nukes are definitely WMD. Though Chemical and biological can destroy an environment- esp radioactive bombs (dirty bombs) can make an area unliveable unless it's cleaned up.

"It's interesting to see how conservatives are quick in dismissing this or that weapon as belonging to the WMD definition.
That's part of the trust issue, actually.
WMD is a convenient way to describe something ast it precisely LACKS a definition."
I think people simply like to shorten words- WMD is less word than: nuclear [fission & fusion], dirty bombs, chemical, and biological- plus medium to long range ballastic missiles.

There is also a thing called attention span- I would guess the general public prefers "WMD" to some laundry list.
I don't think you can attach blame on the conservatives- unless you believe Clinton was a conservative. And I think if you dig around you will probably find this was a term that Lefties promoted.

"It's the same with the purpose for war, actually. There have been many purposes and they have changed with time and circumstances.
Lack of clear and straightforward purpose for war and lack of clear definition for the kind of weapons that are searched, greatly undermine the US war in and occupation of iraq..
That's why the US wasn't able to convince the world."

Well, just for the record, the purpose of the Iraq war was to change the regime (despite the fact of 100% of Iraqis voting for Saddam:). Now, the job is to transform Iraq into regime which won't attack it's neigbors, nor support terrorism. It would be nice to have Iraq not be a 3rd world country, but rather be forward looking and prosperous, with free press, with even robust tourism and other types of trade and have a world class educational system. That would be nice, but we will be done if we can get them to simply form a stable govt.

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