these are not atomic weapons per se but instead the equally ugly conventional bomb wrapped in something on the order of plutonium. makes for a very nasty situation, in that it poisons everyone and renders the surroundings uninhabitable.
dep
A "nuclear" device would change the equation entirely, wouldn't it?
I'm thinking Baghdad, for starters.
I think they call those "dirty bombs" or something. Just a regular bomb that disperses plutonium rather than ball bearings or something.