Is the thermobaric bomb worse than the Daisy Cutter? The Weekly Standard’s Victorino Matus thinks so. And he thinks he knows where we’ll be dropping it next, too:

The significance of the thermobaric bomb cannot be underestimated. The Pentagon is hoping that this weapon will be useful not only against elusive enemies in cave complexes, but also on underground facilities, like, say, a chemical or biological plant in Iraq. ‘The United States didn’t need to use the thermobaric bomb,’ Hewson argues. ‘The overriding reason for using it was to see how it worked.’ Against rogue states like Iraq, the bomb could penetrate underground targets where weapons of mass destruction are believed to be in development. Hewson mentions the anthrax scenario to best illustrate the BLU-118/B’s usefulness: ‘Dropping a conventional bomb on a possible anthrax site will have limited damage and the anthrax could then escape into the air. With a thermobaric bomb, the underground facility is not only destroyed, it’s incinerated. It’ll kill everything inside.’

Years from now, Afghanistan may be looked back on as a testing site for a new generation of weapons. That certainly seems to be the case with thermobaric weapons–deployed against the Taliban now, then improved and enhanced, and made ready for the next war. One guesses with Saddam Hussein’s name written all over them.

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