I must defer, here, a discussion of those phrases, save to cite the lovely Bruce Robinson film How to Get Ahead in Advertising [1988] on the subject of our weapons of mass destruction versus the enemy’s: Our weapons – specifically, hydrogen bombs– have a magic ingredient, lacking in other bombs, which makes them good. They’re jam-packed with peace. An example of how peace-packed our weapons are may be found in the plans for a new generation of nuclear weapons, now in development to support the US’s no-‘no-first-use’ posture. The use of teensy nuclear weapons, the thinking goes, will be necessary if “we” wish to burrow down to where their WMDs are thought to be stored, in order to explode and disseminate whatever radioactive, chemical or biological nasties may be stored there…

I leave it to the reader to deconstruct the logic of this plan. But let me give the last word to Noam Chomsky, from an article in The Guardian, dated 4^th February 2003. He’s talking about the differential treatment of Iraq and North Korea, and highlighting the fact that whereas the former has no military worth mentioning, the latter presents a distinct threat of biting back:

What they are demonstrating to the world with great clarity is that if you want to deter US aggression you better have weapons of mass destruction, or else a credible threat of terror. That's a terrible lesson to teach, but it's exactly what's being taught.