Although a formidable phrase now, uttered ten years ago weapons of mass destruction may have sounded more like a Jeopardy! category than an actual, present danger. Although many politicians were using the term in the 1990's to describe the world's need to disarm Iraq by the UN and the United States government, the phrase itself had yet to permeate the colloquial language.
However, since the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the invasion of
Iraq in 2003 by the
United States, the phrase has held a more common and frightening place in the American household. On a national and global level, it has become almost synonymous with the current controversy surrounding the war in
Iraq.
The origin of the phrase dates back to 1937 when it was first used in the London Times to describe the aerial bombardment of
Guernica, Spain by the German Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War. Since 70 percent of
Guernica had been destroyed, the phrase was used to indicate that the weapons being used were capable of destruction on a massive scale. Following WWII and the atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, the term grew in popularity among world leaders, although use had not spread to the general public. It began to indicate specifically nuclear weapons, especially at the height of the Cold War. Nuclear weapons are the most lethal of all weapons of mass destruction utilizing radioactivity to annihilate most everything within a missile or bomb's explosion range.
In an effort to curb the production and proliferation, the NPT or the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was signed by almost 200 countries in 1970. However, the definition of weapons of mass destruction has moved beyond just nuclear war now and seems almost as elusive as the weapons in
Iraq. The
United States' government currently offers twenty different categories of weapons that range from nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological.
However, it seems as though most anything can be considered a weapon of mass destruction if it is capable of killing large groups of people. In the case of the war in
Iraq, UN officials and President George W. Bush suspected Saddam Hussein of concealing biological weapons such as disease-producing agents as well as chemical weapons such as mustard gas.
It is specifically the war in
Iraq that has popularized the term weapons of mass destruction. President Bush's decision to invade
Iraq was pre-emptive and founded on the assumption that Saddam Hussein was proliferating and hiding biological and chemical weapons capable of widespread destruction. Bush used the term in many of his speeches as a way to convey the immediate threat to global peace and the urgency of such an invasion. Due in part to an exceedingly unpopular war that has left 2,500 American soldiers dead as well as countless
Iraq citizens, critics have lambasted the Bush administration for not finding any significant evidence pointing to weapons of mass destruction.
With the media and the
United States' government current propagation of the term, it is no secret why it has come to signify controversy in addition to warfare. A phrase once used only by world leaders and historians, weapons of mass destruction has penetrated the mind of every American. Whether or not it conjures up images of the war in
Iraq, September 11, 2001, or nuclear mushroom clouds, the term carries far more weight in the everyday American vernacular than ever before.
