Syria and the myths of WMD
...Yet here’s the thing, the fly in the fearmongering ointment, the reason why we always ought to treat WMD claims, the bedrock of fear-assuaging foreign interventions, with caution: WMD are simply not what they are said to be. Yes, chemical or biological warheads are weapons, but weapons capable of mass destruction? No, not really. The brutal truth of the matter is that conventional weapons are far more destructive....

...There are still some today who are prepared to reveal the frightening truth: that chemical weapons are not weapons of mass destruction. A British army bomb disposal expert struck a particularly phlegmatic tone in a 2007 Register piece: ‘Far from possessing any special deadliness, chemical warheads are less potent than ordinary conventional-explosive ones. Calling them “WMD”, which suggests they are in some way equivalent to nuclear bombs, is simply ridiculous.’ He concluded: ‘So, if your aim is to kill and injure as many people as possible, you’d be a fool to use chemicals. And yet chemicals are rated as WMD, while ordinary explosives aren’t.’

As opposed to biological weapons, the odd anthrax or ricin case aside, chemical weapons have actually been used for terroristic purposes. Yet the examples merely prove how minimally destructive they are. For instance, al-Qaeda-related groups in Iraq detonated a series of 16 chlorine bombs in Iraq from late 2006 to mid-2007. Yet of the tens of Iraqis who died in the attacks, none did so because of the gas; they died because of the explosions. Even the infamous Tokyo subway sarin-gas attack in 1995, carried out by doomsday weirdoes Aum Shinryko, does not illustrate the potency of chemical weapons. The 12 who died did so because they came into contact with the liquid, not through inhaling the gas. As a means of killing hundreds of people, chemical weapons have consistently proved themselves extremely ineffective.

So, as the heat is turned up over chemical weapons in Syria, it’s worth treating the ensuing claims with extreme caution. The fact remains that such weapons are, in almost all cases, less destructive than conventional weapons. WMD is a misnomer born not of any tangibly apocalyptic threat, but of today’s politics of fear....