- THE COMING WAR with Iraq could give U.S. troops a chance
to try out the chemical and biological weapons the Pentagon has been secretly
developing.
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- Using the Freedom of Information Act, the Sunshine Project,
a respected international bioweapons watchdog group, has obtained documents
indicating that multiple branches of the U.S. military have been quietly
working on chemical and biological armaments for years. Here's a glimpse
at a few of these nasty new weapons.
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- Bio-attack bugs
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- In 1997 the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington,
D.C., sought approval for a $296,000 program to create microorganisms that
could "degrade" enemy equipment, including "fuels, replacement
parts and other supplies that support a war effort."
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- As one might imagine, breeding and deploying a living
attack organism is a treacherous endeavor. According to the seven-page
Navy proposal, the first concern is that scientists could accidentally
unleash deadly or dangerous bugs in the laboratory. The second potential
problem is that the bioweapons could mutate into something seriously frightening
when released on the battlefield. "Field robustness is a concern because
of the wide variety of environmental conditions that could be encountered
by the microbial products when employed in different warfighting scenarios,"
the Navy document reads.
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- So whatever happened to this project? Well, that's classified.
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- Evidently the attack-bug concept is popular in military
circles. Also in 1997, researchers at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas asked
for $400,000 to develop "genetically engineered catalysts made by
bacteria," according to recently declassified Air Force documents.
Those "biocatalysts" would be programmed to destroy "fuels,
explosives, bio/chem weapons, etc." And in 1995 the Idaho National
Engineering Laboratory was seeking to study "biofouling and biocorrosion."
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- Again, it's not clear what became of these "black"
operations.
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- "From an environmental standpoint these things are
a potential disaster," Sunshine Project codirector Edward Hammond
says. "From a weapons standpoint, they're biological weapons; there's
no question about it."
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- The return of MK-ULTRA
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- Some at the Pentagon think the next wave of weapons will
be pharmaceutical. At the behest of the U.S. Defense Department, scientists
at Penn State's Applied Research Laboratory have looked into the use of
tranquilizing drugs to temporarily incapacitate enemy combatants.
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- "The main application the military is interested
in is 'peacekeeping' in third world countries," Hammond says. "They're
talking about using Valium on crowds in Mogadishu."
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- The ideal "calmative" drug, according to the
Penn State researchers whose findings are summarized in a 49-page report
dated October 2000, would produce an array of reactions "ranging from
a less agitated, groggy, sleepy-like state to a stunned state of consciousness."
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- Among the candidate psychotropics are Valium, Prozac,
Zoloft, and Ketamine. "The choice of administration route, whether
application to drinking water, topical administration to the skin, an aerosol
spray inhalation route, or a drug-filled rubber bullet, among others, will
depend on the environment," the drug warriors write. Also mentioned
in the report is the idea of using a calmative in conjunction with pepper
spray or tear gas, and Hammond claims the Department of Justice is now
brewing up a drug-pepper spray cocktail.
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- Unfortunately, as the researchers note, there are a few
problems with pharmaweapons, including the inconvenient fact that they
may violate the international treaties banning biological and chemical
warfare.
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- The sham ban
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- Luckily for the Pentagon, the ban on bioweapons is a
joke.
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- No arms-control inspectors are ever going to make unannounced
visits to U.S. labs, whether private or public. We'll never know exactly
what kind of R&D is being bankrolled by our tax dollars or whether
it's legal. That's because the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention,
adopted in 1972 by most of the world's countries, including the United
States, has no real enforcement mechanism. The 107 signatories to the treaty
have never been able to agree on an inspection protocol, a way of proving
conclusively that no member country is covertly producing deadly germs
for battlefield use.
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- In the view of bioweapons expert Amy Sands, George W.
Bush is just making things worse. She says the president's State Department
appointees have played a key role in derailing the inspection program.
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- "The whole effort has been called to a halt because
the Bush administration said last summer, 'We're not interested in being
involved in those negotiations anymore,' " says Sands, the deputy
director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute
of International Studies.
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- Big Pharma is probably one reason why Dubya isn't hot
for inspections. The biotech and drug industries are not enthused about
opening up their operations to the world, and they've made their feelings
well known in Washington.
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- Sands, a former federal arms-control official, isn't
a true believer in the inspection program as it's currently envisioned,
but she faults Bush for "not putting out alternative ideas."
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- Onward to Baghdad!
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- Sands might be an expert, but she's wrong about this.
Dubya's got an alternative idea for stopping the spread of weapons of mass
destruction. It's called "Invade Iraq." And once again, hypocrisy
rules the day in D.C.
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- As for me, well, today's payday, and I think I'm going
to buy myself a gas mask.
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- Email A.C. Thompson at ac_thompson@sfbg.com.
- http://www.sfbg.com/36/51/x_news_war.html
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