been generally defined and accepted in the arms control and diplomatic community for the last several decades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_of_mass_destruction

Historic use of the term WMD

The first record of the term Weapon of Mass Destruction is from a December 28, 1937 Times article on the bombing of Guernica, Spain, by the German Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War:

"Who can think without horror of what another widespread war would mean, waged as it would be with all the new weapons of mass destruction?"

This was in reference to blanket bombing of Guernica, during which 70% of the town was destroyed. Nuclear weapons did not exist at this time, but biological weapons were being researched by Japan ([1]), (see Unit 731), and chemical weapons had seen wide use.

In 1946, soon after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United Nations issued its first resolution. It was to create the Atomic Energy Commission (predecessor of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)), and used the wording:

"...atomic weapons and of all other weapons adaptable to mass destruction".

Since then, "WMD" was used widely in the arms control community. The terms Atomic, Biological and Chemical (ABC) weapon, and then Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) weapon were introduced over time. The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972 explicitly includes biological and chemical weapons within the WMD framework:

"Convinced of the importance and urgency of eliminating from the arsenals of States, through effective measures, such dangerous weapons of mass destruction as those using chemical or bacteriological (biological) agents".

The expanded definition is also supported by UN Resolution 687, 1991, and the Chemical Weapons Convention, 1993.

End quote...

Note specifically that UN Resolution 687, 1991 (the "Gulf War Ceasefire") http://www.fas.org/news/un/iraq/sres/sres0687.htm specifically states:

"Conscious of the threat that all weapons of mass destruction pose to peace and security in the area and of the need to work towards the establishment in the Middle East of a zone free of such weapons,"

I think that it is fair to argue that WMD, especially when it relates to Iraq, encompasses Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear weapons.  

of the prevalence of the term WMD to refer to Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear weapons specifically regarding Iraq, let's look at a speech made in October of 02 during the debate on the resolution authorizing force against Iraq.  In this particular speech I count no less than 29 uses of the phrase Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Here are a few examples:

The Iraqi regime's record over the decade leaves little doubt that Saddam Hussein wants to retain his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and, obviously, as we have said, grow it. These weapons represent an unacceptable threat.

The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons.

The Senate worked to urge action in early 1998. I joined with Senator McCain, Senator Hagel, and other Senators, in a resolution urging the President to "take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end his weapons of mass destruction program." That was 1998 that we thought we needed a more serious response.

So, clearly the term WMD was in use well before the current administration took office and it referred to all non-conventional arms, not just Nuclear weapons.  

To now claim that WMD only meant Nuclear weapons when everyone in the debate was clearly using it to mean all non-conventional arms is an effort to rewrite history so it suits a current particular political agenda.

Link to the full speech cited above at:

http://www.independentsforkerry.org/uploads/media/kerry-iraq.html

Even if they get the date right they would be still wrong to say Caliphate was moved to Ottomans after Constantinople (Istanbul) was captured. It was Selim  I (Yavuz Sultan Selim/Selim the Grim) who brought the Caliphate to the Ottomans officially:

Cairo was captured on 24th January 1517, Selim entered Cairo on 4th February 1517. He put an end to the Caliphate of Mameluke Abbassids. ... On 6th of July 1516, the Holy Relics (Emanet-i Mukaddese) as Mohammed's robe, teeth, sword, flag; were sent to Selim from Hedjaz. The last Abbasid Caliph Al-Mutawakkel was deposed from his rank as the spiritual head of Islam, and Selim was invested with the dignity by the sheriff of Mecca on 29th August 1517. Selim consequently added to his other title that of servant of Mecca and Medina (the holy cities). Al-Mutawakkel himself gave his title to Selim and he had had dressed the Caliphate Robe himself in the ceremony in Ayasofya.

Sultan Selim was the first Ottoman Caliph and his successors took the title as well. From this period on the Ottoman Sultans began to be the Sultan of all the Islamic World.

http://www.osmanli700.gen.tr/english/sultans/09index.html

May be they were mistaken by Mehmed II's (Fatih Sultan Mehmet/Mehmed the Conqueror captured Istanbul) using the title of Caliph but he was also using the title Ceasar (seeing Ottomans as the heir of the Roman Empire) for the same political reasons during that time. Caliphate was not as powerful as it is thought as a title or instution. It wasn't something like the Vatican or being the Pope. It is also wrong to compare group's like Hizb-ut Tahrir's or Al Qaeda's use of the concept to what it was historically. See wikipedia for more info and links. Of course, I have no idea how they refer to it or what meaning they load to it in the book but I have seen a lot of examples where the current Islamic movements are analyzed by referring to history of Islam and they end up being bullshit since the reading of history is from an orientalist or clash of civilizations point of view.

where you been Ranger? We missed you round here.

putting together a dissertation proposal and writing up funding requests.

nice to see you around.

But the stress level is now reduced to the point that I can return to some of my old habits (such as hanging around here).

"So, clearly the term WMD was in use well before the current administration took office and it referred to all non-conventional arms, not just Nuclear weapons.  

To now claim that WMD only meant Nuclear weapons when everyone in the debate was clearly using it to mean all non-conventional arms is an effort to rewrite history so it suits a current particular political agenda."

The first paragraph I do not dispute at all. There is no question that it was and is common usage.

But the second graph is the main point: I think it is essential that we seperate the nuclear from the bio-chem. For starters, had the Bush Admin not gone around scaring the bejeezus out of folks with 'mushroom clouds' over American cities I seriously doubt Americans would have supported a war to rid Hussein of bio-chem weapons. After all, we did invade or threaten Libya up to that point, or Syria with all out war unless they got rid of all of said weapons.

Is it an attempt to serve a certain political agenda? Damn right it is. The agenda of the American people, who deserve to know the truth, and that truth is that there were no nukes, the Administration knew it at the time, and that links to terrorists was also a lie. No majority of Americans would have supported war against Iraq based on bio-chem weapons alone. And that it my main point: the WMD debate, at its core, was about nukes. And they knew there were none at the time. But they lied and pushed the WMD propoganda, all the while alluded to and insinuating nukes, nukes, mushroom clouds over and American city.

And now we know the difference. So, hell yeah, we should seperate the two. Bio-chem weapons don't cause mass destruction. Nukes do.

...the administration placed particular emphasis on the nuclear card, they clearly also used a non-nuclear definition of WMD programs and expected Iraq's supposed actions in that non-nuclear arena to carry weight in the justification for war. Colin Powell led off his speech to the UN talking about non-nuclear WMD programs, and it is non-nuclear programs that were the subject of the bulk of his speech. Link here.

As to the larger issue of whether bio-chem agents can cause mass destruction, absolutely they can. But only when present in quite large quantities, unless one's talking about quite exotic bioagents that are poor candidates for weaponization (in some ways, due to their "effectiveness").

as being (at least over my lifespan) that WMD were classed together morally/philosophically as a question of measured response.

Perhpas I was wrong, but I was under the impression that America maintained as policy that the use of any of the C/B/N weps were philosphically/morally identical so that deploying chem or biological weapons against American forces or populations would then logically trigger a response with the same class of weapon.

And thus America would respond to C/B weapons use with nuclear retaliation as that was the kind of the weapons of WMD class that America did maintain. In short - I was always told it arose from defensive policy as a deterrent, a tripwire that would invoke nuclear retaliation.

I never saw it as an effort to call them the same thing, merely historically a way of extending the nuclear deterrent to a class of equally abhorrent, albeit normally far less destructive, weapons.

When I say far less destructive, I speak of practical realities, not science fiction speculation - there are certainly those involved with C/B programs that have predicted that these weapons, whose behavior in mass populations is of necessity only theoretically modelled, would have much greater psychological than practical value, whereas the destructive potential of nuclear weapons is well known and amply demonstrated.

Still - yes, agreed 100%, deployment of C/B weapons would be ugly to say the least, and I thought - and still think - that it's good and wise policy to consider them WMD.

The problem to me is not the lumping together of these weapons; the problem is elsewhere, in the deliberate attempt to conflate "capability" with "intent" in the eye of the public to build political cover for a pre-determined war, and going even further into then manufacturing the illusion of "capability", as justification for predetermined action.

no nukes, no war?  If so, then explain this passage from the speech I linked to above:

As bad as he is, Saddam Hussein, the dictator, is not the cause of war. Saddam Hussein sitting in Baghdad with an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction is a different matter.  In the wake of September 11, who among us can say, with any certainty, to anybody, that those weapons might not be used against our troops or against allies in the region? Who can say that this master of miscalculation will not develop a weapon of mass destruction even greater--a nuclear weapon--then reinvade Kuwait, push the Kurds out, attack Israel, any number of scenarios to try to further his ambitions to be the pan-Arab leader or simply to confront in the region, and once again miscalculate the response, to believe he is stronger because he has those weapons?

And while the administration has failed to provide any direct link between Iraq and the events of September 11, can we afford to ignore the possibility that Saddam Hussein might accidentally, as well as purposely, allow those weapons to slide off to one group or other in a region where weapons are the currency of trade? How do we leave that to chance?

Sounds to me like Saddam with any WMDs was worth going to war to get rid of, and as you state, the general consensus was that he had at least one and probably two of the NBC trifecta.

To now say that it was only the Nuclear threat that convinced the population of the US to attack Iraq is not supported by the perceptions or the rhetoric of the time.

I would posit that if the current administration had not taken aggressive action against Iraq, the Dems would have run against it to the right saying that they were not doing enough to address a serious threat to the US population.  If you have an issue with that interpretation just take a look at the following passages, again from the same speech:

Later in the year[1998], Congress enacted legislation declaring Iraq in material, unacceptable breach of its disarmament obligations and urging the President to take appropriate action to bring Iraq into compliance. In fact, had we done so, President Bush could well have taken his office, backed by our sense of urgency about holding Saddam Hussein accountable and, with an international United Nations, backed a multilateral stamp of approval record on a clear demand for the disarmament of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. We could have had that and we would not be here debating this today. But the administration missed an opportunity 2 years ago and particularly a year ago after September 11. They regrettably, and even clumsily, complicated their own case. The events of September 11 created new understanding of the terrorist threat and the degree to which every nation is vulnerable. That understanding enabled the administration to form a broad and impressive coalition against terrorism. Had the administration tried then to capitalize on this unity of spirit to build a coalition to disarm Iraq, we would not be here in the pressing days before an election, late in this year, debating this now. The administration's decision to engage on this issue now, rather than a year ago or earlier, and the manner in which it has engaged, has politicized and complicated the national debate and raised questions about the credibility of their case.

Which is essentially saying (at least to my eye) that neither Clinton nor Bush took Iraq seriously enough and we should have gone after Iraq immediately after 9-11 rather than waiting a year.

I was very curious as to when the Ottoman's officially took on the Caliphate. I knew it wasn't in May of 1453 because Mehmed did't move in to Constantinyya for a few years after. But I also did know when the Ottoman's officially took on the Caliphate. Question: where was the Caliphate between Baghdad and Qonstantiniyya?  

reply. Thanks. Makes me think, use my brain.

...together in the modern calculus with an increased role for non-state actors, I think. I agree that in the Cold War context, things were as you state, but the crucial difference between then and now is that we were then talking about players that always had enough of the various compounds to make them true WMD. Chem and bio were less lethal on a gram per gram basis, but there was still enough of it to have mass effects. Now, that's not the case - even if al-Qaeda succeeds beyond its wildest expectations in the non-nuclear realm, it's still not a WMD cause they're just not going to have enough of it to have mass effects. It'll be an disproportionate effect, but without nukes they're unlikely to have a mass destruction effect - mass annoyance, yes, great expense, yes, but not mass destruction as classically defined.

The major problem as I see it is not so much the conflation of capability and intent, but a bit of a shell game when it comes to capability, in that any amount in the hands of the evildoer of the month = WMD threat. With chem and most bio, unless you've got significant quantities, it's not a threat with the same immediacy as the nuclear threat.

From Wikipedia:

1258 saw the conquest of Baghdad and the execution of Abassid caliph by Mongol forces under Hulagu Khan. Although members of the Abassid dynasty proclaimed a new Caliphate within three years, based in Cairo, various other Muslim rulers had also begun to claim the title of caliph and the Muslim empire became fractured. Eventually the caliphate of the Ottomans established primacy.

how you establish your definition.  Three years ago a field grade USAF officer told me that their definition was any weapon that could produce more than 100 casualties with a single attack.  The FBI considers any weapon that can produce effects that overwhelm local government's ability to respond.  Under those definitions I can point to one conventional WMD attack in the US in the 1990s (Oklahoma City) and one unconventional attack in Japan (Tokyo Subway).  Both produced more than 100 casualties and both overwhelmed local government's ability to respond.  In fact, the Tokyo attack might be considered several simultaneous WMD attacks:

Chiyoda line

Two people were killed and 231 suffered serious injuries.

Marunouchi line (Ogikubo-bound)

This attack resulted in one death and 358 serious injuries.

Marunouchi line (Ikebukuro-bound)

This attack resulted in approximately 200 serious injuries, though no fatalities.

Hibiya line (departing Naka-meguro)

One person died and 532 were seriously injured.

Hibiya line (Naka-meguro-bound)

This train made five stops after the gas was released; along the way, eight people died. 275 more were seriously injured.

And just try retaliating against a terrorist group hiding in an urban population - or one's own population - with nukes. Not the weapon of choice. Definitely time to rethink how that policy applies today.

...there's also a number of conventional attacks in Iraq that would qualify, as well as a moderate number in other localities (Moscow, Bali, etc.).

I can certainly see the point in using an arbitrary casualty number as one axis of the definition, but I think that there's usefulness in using other axes, as well. Chemical explosives scale such that I think we've seen the upper end of what they can produce, at least in terms of direct effects. Short of knocking down a structure or causing casualties through some scondary means, even the biggest truck bomb practicable is, I think (and I emphasize, I speculate), is probably not going to break into 4 figures for badly wounded/KIA. With unconventional attacks, I could see the top end going up one order of magnitude for chem/bio (10K - 50K? to pull a figure out of my butt) and two for nuclear (100K - 600K? similar source).

Another axis would, I think, be something along the likelihood of being able to produce/obtain/employ such weapons. As we've seen chemical explosives are pretty easy, primitive bio/chem weapons in small quantities are somewhat harder but still practicable, though much harder on significant scales, and nukes (thank goodness) are by far the hardest. Not unsurprisingly, controls on precursors, etc. follow these lines pretty closely (i.e., retty easy to make a chemical explosive from materials that need be readily available, not much point in having the tightest possible access controls).

This of course has enormous and far-reaching implications for US munitions like "daisy cutters", the MOAB or napalm if the US now considers them WMD.

is the public's perception of what WMDs are and how they are 'officially' defined are VASTLY different. When a US armed forces officer speaks of WMD he could be speaking of conventional or unconventional weapons based on your definition. The definition I was educated with is a very different. And I think it is the public's perception that needs to be taken into consideration when making the choice between war and peace, not a metric that is as limited as the one you describe. It may be helpful in the Armed Forces, but in politics, once again, it muddies the debate. And what we need now more than anything is clarity of thought and argument if we are to heal the wounds of this country.

But, that, that's them, you know, the evildoers, the freedom-haters...

Somehow, I don't anticipate a complete symmetry forthcoming in DoD policy.

clearly considers its own nukes weapons of mass destruction, and the MOAB and other fuel air bombs clearly fall into that category depending on how they are used (such as targeting of key enemy HQ instillations, as was done in the first Gulf War).  The question isn't the size of the bomb; it is the legitimacy of the target and the proportionality of the weapon used.

the answer was going to be in the Wikipedia, and was thus hoping to draw out some of your knowledge! Alas, you quoted Wikipedia, which is an excellent source, nonetheless. By the way, I'm going to email you my copy of my chapter on Turkey once I am done with it, if, of course, you are interested?  

that doctrine has changed fairly dramatically under the hood, and that the WMD designator is no longer an absolute as it was in the Cold War - context is now considered an important determining factor.

So... thinking from the opposition's side of the chess board... what would you say defines a legitimate target and a proportional attack?

had the equivalent to the MOAB you think war was justified?

It goes back to the entire counter force vs. counter value debates of the 1980s.  Understand that MAD is a fundamentally indefensible military doctrine in both theory and practice from the perspective of Law of War because it is based on using civilians as hostages (theory) and the deliberate targeting of civilians (practice).  The shifting from counter value (civilians) to counter force (missile silos and hardened HQ facilities) was an effort to convert nuclear weapons from weapons of mass murder to legitimate military tools.  

As to legitimate targets from the perspective of AQ, that is another subject entirely.

My own knowledge was the same. I didn't trust it

100% since it was from public school (not from reading on this topic afterwards) and thus may be biased.

I was also going to offer you any kind of help you may need on your Turkey chapter too. I'd very glad to read it and then comment on it if you want.

pembeci at cs*jhu*edu

Lots of countries have WMDs, yet we are relatively comfortable with them.  Why does it not bother us that India has nukes and it does bother us that Pakistan has them?  The answer is who they might be used on and how we would have to respond.  India might use them on either Pakistan or China, and we would not have to do anything about it.  Pakistan might use theirs on either India (in which case we do nothing) or Israel (in which case we have to do something).

The issue of Saddam and a MOAB (which is basically a 20 Kiloton bomb without nuclear fallout) is what he might have done with it and what our response would have had to be.

...correct issue is Saddam with MOABs, or even largish amounts of chemical weapons. These are tactical weapons, not strategic ones. A MOAB gets tossed out of the back of a cargo plane, meaning that one has to have air supremacy to use it, which just wasn't going to happen and anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of the military arts can make a half-assed terrestrial one. Similarly, chemical weapons aren't much of threat (at least in Iraqi hands) once you get beyond the distance that they can throw shells with the tubes they had (not to mention that large amounts are necessary to make a credible threat). Don't get me wrong, these aren't things that I'd like Saddam to get his hands on (particularly the chem - the Iraqis were actually pretty competent in using this stuff, and used it on a larger scale than just about everybody else since the time of the First World War), but they're not an immediate threat to US vital interests.

What I think one can legitimately have been worried about are two things: 1) a reconstituted nuclear weapons program (or indications that they had been successful in hiding relevant amounts of the program away - and remember that the bias would have been towards the alarmist on this item - the Iraqis proved to have gotten a lot further than we thought they had in the run-up to Desert Storm; that scared a lot of folks), and 2) unconvential biological weapons threats, specifically including the transmission of such materials to terrorists (the post mortems that I've read indicate that there's still a possibility that stuff was going on in this vein - not proof, but it can't be ruled out, and the capability would have been there).

Other than those two things - one of which the evidence doesn't seem to have supported very well and the other of which is still speculative, I can't see much that tells me that we needed to cap the guy as an immediate threat, unless they thought that the situation was going to go immediately to hell as containment began to slip. All that said, as I've mentioned before, I can't think of a nicer guy to kill. You sell the operation as a directed effort to slot the guy because he's such a prick, I might even be convinced. My opposition to the operation has always been on the basis of what happens after you put down the Iraqi army, rather than some belief that it's morally wrong. If the world worked the way that it should, guys like him would be having dirt naps a lot more frequently than they seem to.

as to what Saddam could have done with a MOAB?

For example - how might he have delivered it against America using the technology he had available?

around a particular weapon and a particular delivery system.  The bottom line issue is; was Saddam a threat with any particular WMD system because he had already breached the WMD barrier before?

You could say: just because he used chemical weapons against the Iranians and the Kurds doesn't mean he would use WMDs again.  Or, you could say that because he had used chemical weapons against the Iranians and the Kurds we have no guarantee that he wouldn't use WMDs against us or anyone else in the future.

My assumption in answsering the question was that just that he had a MOAB, but a means of delivery as well.  Bottom line, it all comes down to intentions of those who own the weapons.

...whether Saddam was an immediate threat or not depends greatly on the particular WMD that he possessed / was seeking to possess, and how close he was to actually obtaining it / them. You can certainly logically say that any WMD = threat, but in my mind that would be because he was in breach of existing international resolutions (i.e., it's a political issue). From a threat perspective, I think we get a lot out of trying to draw distinctions between the various WMD and from separating develolpment programmes from possession of stuff. Increased flexibility is a good thing, provided that the will to deal with the situation is there (i.e., no rationalizing the threat away). My view of the events of the last few years is that the will to deal with the situation was clearly there, but that a bit more flexibility would only be a good thing.

immediacy.  The issue with Saddam was his unpredictability, which meant that there was no way to determine how immediate the threat was.  Given that, combined with the post 9/11 sense of insecurity, unpredicability became enough to justify action.  Once again, take the Kerry speech I linked to above:

It would be naive to the point of grave danger not to believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world. He has as much as promised it. He has already created a stunning track record of miscalculation. He miscalculated an 8-year war with Iran. He miscalculated the invasion of Kuwait. He miscalculated America's responses to it. He miscalculated the result of setting oil rigs on fire. He miscalculated the impact of sending Scuds into Israel. He miscalculated his own military might. He miscalculated the Arab world's response to his plight. He miscalculated in attempting an assassination of a former President of the United States. And he is miscalculating now America's judgments about his miscalculations.

...relevant to any policy decision regarding the use of military force. Absolutely Saddam's as unpredictable a potential opponent as one is ever going to encounter, but if he doesn't have actual stuff on hand that can immediately threaten the vital interests of the United States, then that unpredictability, though real, isn't as dangerous. I can think of any number of folks that are as unpredictable as a  rabid wolverine and that would love to see the United States wiped off the map, but they don't have the capability - ergo, at this time they are not a credible threat to America's vital interests. The difference with Saddam is that he was that unpredictable and he did have a demonstrated track record of developing the capability - obviously, that puts him in a different category than the impotent nutters and ragers of the world, but it doesn't automatically make him a threat that no alternative other than immediate military action (unilateral, if necessary) is going to solve.

To be clear, I'm not sure what else other than military would ultimately have resolved the situation, but everything that I know about the use of military force in the context that it was used (i.e., in a situation that had a high probability of going from an occupation to an insurgency if not handled exactly right) suggests to me that the relentless pacing was wrong. The only justifiable military reason that I can see for that is if Saddam was perceived as an immediate threat to America's vital interests, and even the worst case scenario that was presented for that doesn't seem to me to add up to that. In consequence, I advocate more nuanced interpretations that give more flexibility, particularly in terms of timelines. In sum, I'm not hopping up on my soapbox and saying that this war was immoral, or what have you (frankly, I've little patience for that reasoning), but I do seek to advance arguments that I think allows one to sell policies that, if they devolve to warfare, will kill as few of our people (and preferably of the enemy) as possible and have the maximum chance of success - not rushing the job in response to an artificial immediacy of threat is key to that.

I think these guys [i.e., the highest political echelon] thought they'd be able to get away with war on the cheap, and reality just hasn't worked out that way, and I've read very little written by military professionals with experience at this sort of thing (occupying a country) that indicates that they thought it was going to. I mean, you've actually conducted these types of operations, did the picture for Phase IV operations that has gradually emerged seem credible as a plan, given forecastable realities on the ground?