In article <bjpae9$2t38$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>, barbara gaines says...

WMD: America can be its own worst enemy

Weapons of Mass Destruction in Our Midst
America can be its own worst enemy

By Scott Ritter

Monday, September 8, 2003
)2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback
www.sfgate.com

URL:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2
003/09/08/ED302243.DTL

In February, Secretary of State Colin Powell displayed for the
U.N. Security Council detailed drawings of truck- and
train-mounted mobile biological weapons laboratories alleged
to be in the possession of Iraq. The basis for this analysis was
an Iraqi defector whose credibility was certified not by the quality
or accuracy of the provided data, but rather the political
environment of post-Sept. 11, which automatically upgraded the
status of any intelligence information, no matter how sketchy,
that sustained the charges that Iraq possessed weapons of
mass destruction.

The discovery by U.S. forces in Iraq of two mobile "biological
weapons laboratories" was touted by President Bush as clear
evidence that Iraq possessed illegal weapons capabilities.
However, it now is clear that these so- called labs were nothing
more than hydrogen generation units based upon British
technology acquired by Iraq in the 1980s, used to fill weather
balloons in support of conventional artillery operations, and have
absolutely no application for the production of biological agents.

While Iraq has not been shown to possess the alleged mobile
biological labs (or any other weapon of mass destruction, for that
matter), fear within the U. S. national security community over the
potential existence of such labs in Iraq led the United States to
order mobile biological laboratories to be constructed in
America, ostensibly for training elite U.S. special operations
forces on how to disable the Iraqi labs once discovered.

It now appears that the only place in the world where labs similar
to those described by Powell actually exist is here, in the United
States. Worse, according to the New York Times, the scientist
responsible for the design and construction of the U.S. mobile
biological lab is under suspicion by the FBI of using this
technology to produce the dry powder anthrax used in the
October 2001 letter attack that killed seven Americans. This
same scientist was allegedly behind similar "defensive"
research that identified anthrax- impregnated letters as an ideal
platform for delivering the deadly biological agent.

So, when it comes to the only major biological attack conducted
against the United States, the available information points to the
likelihood that the attack originated in the United States, using
technology and techniques developed as part of a defensive
biological weapons program that was a product of bad
intelligence about Iraq's biological weapons program.

The Bush administration is getting ready to compound this
problem by expanding similar "defensive" biological weapons
research programs. For example, the Department of Energy is
fast-tracking the construction at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory of a Biosafety Level-3 facility to conduct defensive
biological research that would entail, according to the draft
environmental assessment submitted in support of the project,
the production of ". . . small amounts of biological material
(enzymes, DNA, ribonucleic acid [RNA], etc.) using infectious
agents and genetically modified agents . . . which may cause
serious or potentially lethal or debilitating effects on humans,
plants and animal hosts."

The Lawrence Livermore Lab is but one of several bio-defense
projects that have sprung up in response to the requirements of
both the Department of Homeland Security and Department of
Defense to protect Americans from biological threats, real or
imagined, that have emerged in the national psyche since
Sept. 11.

Why do we need these labs? Is there a threat to American
security requiring the development of facilities that, given the
high possibility of accident or compromise, actually put the
United States at greater risk from the work being carried out
inside than the threats they are designed to protect us from?

The hyped-up threat assessments used by the Bush
administration in the build-up to the war in Iraq, combined with
similar statements made about the biological weapons
capabilities of other nations (witness Undersecretary of State
John Bolton's now discredited remarks concerning Cuba's
alleged bioweapons program), show there is a great deal to be
concerned about when it comes to trusting the intelligence that
serves as the basis of our legitimate national defense.

Congress needs to carry out assiduously its oversight
responsibilities to ensure that legitimate national security, and
not partisan politics, drives the intelligence our nation depends
on for its defense. While the United States must reserve the right
to do that which is necessary to defend itself from all threats, the
fact is that a sound nonproliferation policy that embraces true
multilateral disarmament agreements uniformly implemented
and enforced (including the United States) would far better serve
the national interest than the current Bush post-Sept. 11 policy of
knee-jerk response to unsustained or nonexistent threats (which
actually accelerates the proliferation of the very threats we are
trying to shield ourselves from). Such policies, if left unchecked,
make the United States, in regards to the possibility of attack

>from WMD, its own worst enemy.

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Scott Ritter is a former U.N. weapons inspector and author of
""Frontier Justice: WMD and the Bushwhacking of America''
(Context Books, 2003).
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