Re weapons of mass destruction, the standard Cold War thinking was that you responded to an attack in kind. So if someone shot at you then you shot back, but you didn't nuke them and their family unto the 10th generation, kind of thing.

Then someone twigged that you had problems with all these new ways to kill ppl. If someone drops a chemical or a virus on your city, and you don't happen to have any handy chemicals or viruses, what do you do? So the US invented the concept of a "weapon of mass destruction", which means "any chemical, biological or nuclear weapon", and said "If anyone uses any of these weapons on us, we'll use that type or any of the other types on them". In practical terms, it means that the response to a chemical or biological attack on the US would be a nuke, bcos the US has lots more nukes than anything else.

Re the country concerned, ie. Iraq, it's just a shame that Reagan put him in power and gave him his money and weapons. And did the same for the Taliban too. And Carter did the same for Khomeini. "The enemy of our enemy is...well, our enemy in about 5 years time." Nice work guys.

Graham.