(pyro)
"Da Rat Bastard seems to think (please correct me if I'm wrong) that limiting the choices of weapons is being used as a 'get out of moral responsibility free' card."
No, you're not wrong. That's a big part of it.
This is all, of course, nothing more than my personal opinion, but once people have accepted the waging of war at all, what's the point in squabbling over which weapons are too inhumane, or which interrogation techniques are too brutal? In war, there IS no more "moral high ground" to occupy, so any claims of being more civilized simply by taking "only" a few steps over the Moral Event Horizon instead of a massive leap are laughable to me.
(louis)
"(...) if all gloves came off and every nation did whatever it took to win, you'd run the risk of nuclear war."
*sighs and nods* Yeah, there is that, isn't there? In no-limit poker (which many tournaments use, since the entry fee has already been paid and the chips are merely a way of keeping score), a player can go all-in repeatedly, as long as each of his/her previous all-in attempts were successful. With real-life warfare, though, the existence of nuclear weapons pretty much ensures that countries can "go all-in" only once.
