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To: Darksheare
Well, let's see... a WMD would kill alotta people. Use the right radioactive substance in a dirty bomb, and you kill alotta people with cancer later, or radiation sickness quickly.

Airplanes killed three thousand people on 9/11, and could have killed a lot more if the towers had fallen sooner before most people were evacuated. The effects of the 9/11 attacks were likened in their consequences to (very small) tactical nukes. But I don't class airplanes as Weapons of Mass Destruction, nor do I consider the fact that Saddam possessed airplanes as proof that he possessed WMDs.

Unless a radiological bomb contains large quantities of highly radioactive substances (which means they have very short half-lives and can't be stored for long periods after their production and prior to their use), and unless the wind patterns and weather conditions are just right, and unless countermeasures are not promptly undertaken, very few if any people will die immediately from the radioactivity. And by the time anyone gets around to developing cancer many years from now, we could easily have a cure for cancer.

I'd be far more afraid of an ammonia nitrate truck bomb set off in front of a crowded office building to kill a couple of hundred people than I would a "dirty bomb". Just because a weapon contains some radioactive substances doesn't automatically make it a WMD. And trying to pretend otherwise is not a very persuasive method of convincing people that Saddam really, really did have WMDs.

29 posted on 06/09/2003 1:17:32 PM PDT by dpwiener
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To: dpwiener
Cobalt60, strontium90.. cesium.
Which of those would you make a dirty bomb with?
Besides, flying a plane doesn't give you teh added bonus of killing people with thyroid cancer or other cancer later.
Nor do aircraft accidents.

Do try not to be more dense than needed.
31 posted on 06/09/2003 1:19:53 PM PDT by Darksheare (Nox aeternus en pax.)
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To: dpwiener
You seem to focus on the almost-purely-semantic issue of "what is a WMD and what isn't", which I find pretty uninteresting.

With regard to preemption of attacks and terror, it doesn't matter whether a dirty nuke "is a WMD" or some other kind of weapon. I am interested in preemption, not in Preventing Things That Are Technically WMDs But Allowing Things That Aren't.

With regard to the legalistic issue of whether Iraq was in violation of relevant UN resolutions, it doesn't matter. The UN resolutions banned Hussein from having certain things. The list was not "things that are technically WMD", after all, one thing on that listed was: unmanned air vehicles. (Which is also Not A WMD by itself.)

42 posted on 06/09/2003 1:38:01 PM PDT by Dr. Frank fan
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To: dpwiener
"I'd be far more afraid of an ammonia nitrate truck bomb set off in front of a crowded office building to kill a couple of hundred people than I would a "dirty bomb". Just because a weapon contains some radioactive substances doesn't automatically make it a WMD. And trying to pretend otherwise is not a very persuasive method of convincing people that Saddam really, really did have WMDs."

People are taking this too lightly. Saddam had maybe 20,000 litres of anthrax, enough to wipe out much of the world's population if he had the means of delivering it. And that's just one WMD.

I'm not so worried about a truck bomb in front of a building, as I am about a poison gas attack in a subway or other crowded public place. It's pretty easy to make poison gas from household kitchen chemicals that can kill hundreds. Saddam had his experts making the real toxic stuff. Be afraid and be vigilant.

110 posted on 06/09/2003 4:49:41 PM PDT by roadcat
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