The Vancouver Scrum

On the move!

Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.

Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.

Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!

—Ian King, December 13, 2004

Saturday, March 22, 2003

 
Just heard on CBC Newsworld: Steve Erwin reports from Washington that halfway to Baghdad, the American troops have found no sign of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or evidence of their use. Some pro-Bush spinners are trying to claim that the firing of Scud missiles by Iraq constitutes the use of WMD -- this seems a stretch to this observer. No evidence exists that any of those SS-1 Scuds were equipped with any sort of chemical, biological, or radiological weapons, and if they were, you can be sure that the folks at the White House would be quite happy to tell you that WMDs were used. No word yet.

However, it seems that the US Department of Defense's Dictionary of Military and Assorted Terms has another definition:

weapons of mass destruction — Weapons that are capable of a high order of destruction and/or of being used in such a manner as to destroy large numbers of people. Weapons of mass destruction can be high explosives or nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons, but exclude the means of transporting or propelling the weapon where such means is a
separable and divisible part of the weapon. Also called WMD.

By that same token, though, most if not all of the missiles and bombs -- especially the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) --being used by the US against Iraq would fall into that category. Further, the Scuds are a "means of transporting or propelling the weapon" as opposed to being the weapon themselves.
posted at 14:28 — new improved comments — 0 so far
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