I would say that the potential damage of a weapon is what defines a WMD.
E.g., a nuclear weapon is a WMD regardless of where it is unleashed- either on Hiroshima or testing over the ocean.
9-11 is sort of hard to fit, imo, because it was the unorthodox use of a non-weapon in a very strategic WMD way- but the civil defense definition below may be include it- since it was sort of an explosive rocket. Maybe calling it a Weapon of Terror would be better, as someone suggests in the following article.
I have always found the description of Saddam as being a WMD rather too clever. Cute, but not truly accurate, and so confusing the definition.
But the discussion did send me searching-- found this at Wikipedia-
Today, the term WMD means different things to different people. The most widely used definition is that of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons (NBC). state.gov]), although there is no treaty or customary international law that contains an authoritative definition. Instead, international law has been used with respect to the specific categories of weapons within WMD, and not to WMD as a whole.
The acronym NBC is used with regards to battlefield protection systems for armoured vehicles, because all 3 involve insidious toxins that can be carried through the air and can be protected against with vehicle air filtration systems. However, there is a persuasive argument that nuclear weapons do not belong in the same category as chemical, biological, or radiological weapons, which have limited destructive potential (and close to none, as far as property is concerned), whereas nuclear weapons are famously colossally destructive and belong in a class by themselves.
The NBC definition has also been used in official US documents, by the US President ([4], [5]), the US Central Intelligence Agency ([6]), the US Department of Defense ([7], [8]), and the US General Accounting Office ([9]).
Other documents expand the definition of WMD to include radiological or conventional weapons. The US military refers to WMD as:
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.([10])
While in US civil defense, the category is now Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosive (CBRNE), which defines WMD as:
(1) Any explosive, incendiary, poison gas, bomb, grenade, or rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces [113 g], missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce [7 g], or mine or device similar to the above. (2) Poison gas. (3) Any weapon involving a disease organism. (4) Any weapon that is designed to release radiation at a level dangerous to human life. (18 U.S.C. Section 2332a)
The US FBI also considers conventional weapons (i.e. bombs) as WMD: "A weapon crosses the WMD threshold when the consequences of its release overwhelm local responders". Gustavo Bell Lemus, the Vice President of Colombia, called small arms WMD because bullet fatalities "dwarf that of all other weapons systems - and in most years greatly exceed the toll of the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki".
Chemical weapons expert Gert G. Harigel considers only nuclear weapons true weapons of mass destruction, because "only nuclear weapons are completely indiscriminate by their explosive power, heat radiation and radioactivity, and only they should therefore be called a weapon of mass destruction". He prefers to call chemical and biological weapons "weapons of terror" when aimed against civilians and "weapons of intimidation" for soldiers. Testimony of one such soldier expresses the same viewpoint ([11]).
An additional condition often implicitly applied to WMD is that the use of the weapons must be strategic. In other words, they would be designed to "have consequences far outweighing the size and effectiveness of the weapons themselves" ([12]).
In US jurisprudence, the term has been expanded through use of 18 U.S.C. 2332a and the associated 18 U.S.C. 921 to include devices containing virtually any toxic agent or explosive in excess of a quarter of an ounce (7 grams). Indictments and convictions for possession and use of pipe bombs, shoe bombs, cactus needles coated with botulin toxin, etc. have obtained under the statute. |
