Sarin Wrap

I hit this topic briefly last week right here at KN@PPSTER. Expanded version now up at the Center for a Stateless Society. Teaser:

The definition of "chemical weapon" and "weapon of mass destruction" gets inflated or deflated as necessary to serve the purposes of a regime’s ruling class, both at home and abroad.

When a US drone fires a Hellfire II missile with an 8-pound fragmentation/anti-personnel warhead into a wedding party in Pakistan, that's just cricket. When Dzhokhar Tsarnaev allegedly sets off two pressure cookers filled with black powder and ball bearings at the Boston Marathon, that's "using a weapon of mass destruction."

When the US government uses tanks to pump CS into an American church, sets the building on fire and machine-guns the fleeing residents, that's "law enforcement." When Bashar al-Assad allegedly uses sarin on armed opponents trying to overthrow him, that's "murdering his own people."