HR in the News: Times Square car bomb criminal charged with "attempting to use a WMD"

This article from the Guardian casually states that Faisal Shahzad, the man who confessed to constructing the bomb in a 1993 Nissan Pathfinder in the middle of Times Square, was “charged yesterday with terrorism and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.” I have no problem with the United States government charging Shahzad with terrorism, attempted murder, attempted MASS murder, anything you want to call his attempt at the killing of a large number of Americans in the middle of New York on Saturday. However, am I the only person to have found the charge of “attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction to be shocking, if not problematic?

I feel as though this story is an example of the United States again giving other nations, particularly our enemies, something to hold against the United States. This is because the bomb inside the car, according to experts, could have only produced a very small explosion, potentially only killing the nearest passersby. If every explosive of this same size or potential killing capacity is now considered a WMD, it seems as though the United States has been supplying WMDs to countries all over the world for many years.

I am still hopeful that this charge is erroneous, not because I want Shahzad to have a lesser sentence, but because I do not want other countries to begin exploiting the “new” definition of WMDs as related to this case.