Posted on 04/14/2002 12:45:22 AM PDT by knak
BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered 16 million doses of the smallpox vaccine after US Vice-President Dick Cheney warned Iraq could counter military action with a biological terror onslaught.
The two leaders met at Downing Street on March 12 and exchanged intelligence about the possible threat from Iraq.
Cheney told Blair that intelligence experts had warned that the US and Britain would be the two main targets of biological warfare in the event of a conflict, London's Sunday Telegraph said.
US reports, according to the paper, suggested that Saddam Hussein would use all the weapons at his disposal if he was attacked.
Unlike the Gulf War, where he showed some restraint, this time he would know that the military action is intended to end in his death or capture, it added.
Two days after Cheney and Blair met, six government health officials, including Health Secretary Alan Milburn, met in London and decided to order inoculations against smallpox.
The Sunday Telegraph said that in the event of a war being launched against the West, Iraqi special agents would try to smuggle smallpox into Britain and release it in confined spaces such as the Tube (underground system) or cinemas.
The worst case would be suicide terrorists infected with smallpox, the paper added.
Earlier this year US scientists projected how smallpox infections would spread after a single terrorist strike, according to the paper.
They found that an attack on a train on April 1 would result in 15,000 cases of smallpox, including 2000 deaths, by June. The disease would also spread to four foreign countries, they calculated. BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered 16 million doses of the smallpox vaccine after US Vice-President Dick Cheney warned Iraq could counter military action with a biological terror onslaught.
The two leaders met at Downing Street on March 12 and exchanged intelligence about the possible threat from Iraq.
Cheney told Blair that intelligence experts had warned that the US and Britain would be the two main targets of biological warfare in the event of a conflict, London's Sunday Telegraph said.
US reports, according to the paper, suggested that Saddam Hussein would use all the weapons at his disposal if he was attacked.
Unlike the Gulf War, where he showed some restraint, this time he would know that the military action is intended to end in his death or capture, it added.
Two days after Cheney and Blair met, six government health officials, including Health Secretary Alan Milburn, met in London and decided to order inoculations against smallpox.
The Sunday Telegraph said that in the event of a war being launched against the West, Iraqi special agents would try to smuggle smallpox into Britain and release it in confined spaces such as the Tube (underground system) or cinemas.
The worst case would be suicide terrorists infected with smallpox, the paper added.
Earlier this year US scientists projected how smallpox infections would spread after a single terrorist strike, according to the paper.
They found that an attack on a train on April 1 would result in 15,000 cases of smallpox, including 2000 deaths, by June. The disease would also spread to four foreign countries, they calculated.
Do you think that a country that has nobel-prize winning scientists,
that has many scientists who have trained in the west,
that has nuclear technology and missile technology
can't make anthrax of this quality??
Come on now.
1. Let’s hope Saddam has the anthrax and not al-Qaeda.
...If they have it, they’ll use it.
2. Assuming Saddam has it and Bush knows it
...(and I am no where near believing this is a certainty)
...then lots of people know it, both in the USA and in Great Britain
...in which case these governments have done a remarkable job
...of hushing up the facts.
That Bush knows much more than has publicly released, and has known for months, is not open to serious question. The story in Newsweek makes that quite clear. Bush has always known that the anthrax was (a) not from a mountain stream, (b) not from a pissed-off celebrity, (c) not from a militiaman's bathtub, and (d) not stolen from US inventory. So, that the government has successfuly kept the lid on this thing for six months is a given and should be stipulated as a precondition in any attempt to analyze the situation.
Step 1: Bush, Rice, Ridge, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Tenet and Mueller get everything in place to respond to a biochem WMD attack and to isolate all domestic MEs either to prevent a backlash or to isolate those who fit a certain profile to preempt a strike.
Step 2: Bush, Blair, Sharon, Rice, Powell and Rumsfeld condition the international field to withstand the Iraqi counter-offensive.
Step 3: Bush, Rice, Powell, Tenet prepare a replacement government to materialize quickly in Iraq post-Saddam.
Step 4: Bush, Rice, Ridge, Ashcroft slowly prepare the American public for the probability of biochem WMD attacks.
Step 5: Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld remove Saddam in one strike of overwhelming force.
Step 6: Bush, Blair, Powell, Annan bring U.N. sponsored international support to establish the new Iraqi regime.
Step 7: Bush, Blair, Powell, Sharon, U.N., E.U., Arafat's successor, Mubarak, Arab League etc. negotiate for peace in the ME. (The "whip" would be the rapid defeat of Saddam with overwhelming force.)
So it looks like he might not get people to obey him at the crunch time, not to mention the 9mm resignation notice.
The danger time is not, IMO, in the last few weeks of the period before we go in after him. It will be in the months before then. And Bowden's article indicates that Saddam's ability to command extends only inside his own territory, i.e., he might be able to get off a few pre-emptive SCUD's with effective nerve gas warheads at Israel (special warheads needed to change trajectories at low altitude after an extreme range shot to permit specialized spraying) but those will be vulnerable to Israel's current anti-missile systems.
But use of anthrax and smallpox requires that Saddam have reliable people operating beyond his control. He doesn't have enough reliable people operating within his control.
As I've stated elsewhere, I don't think we are going to try and take out Saddam in a single blow, because his sleepers probably have been given orders to disperse the anthrax in that eventuality -- Saddam ain't stupid.
Here's a scenario, off the top of my head:
The preparation phase, which we are still in, involved bringing our closest allies -- Britain and Israel -- into the loop. That happened months ago. It also involves building up our civil defenses and massively ramping up biodefense expenditure. That is all under way, but it is a work-in-progress.
The public, having been bamboozled for six months on the true meaning of the anthrax letters, is gradually being conditioned for the truth to be revealed. That process has stepped up dramatically in the last 2-3 weeks, but I doubt things will click for the average person in the street for a while yet. More realistic appraisals of the situation will appear with increasing frequency in places like The New Republic and The Weekly Standard, gradually fanning out to the broadsheets, and only reaching USA Today and the networks after weeks or months.
Once the situation is broadly understood, there will be broad consensus that Saddam needs to go -- except in die-hard leftist and islamic circles, where a state of denial and self-delusion will persist (as per usual) and, of course, at Antiwar.com (but nobody cares what they think). At the same time, people will be afraid of Saddam's retaliation. Saddam will be completely isolated economically, while, at the same time, civil defense will become a national (and international) obsession. Mass anthrax and smallpox vaccination programs will be in full swing. Everybody will learn the drill for an attack -- it will be like the fifties.
As the economic situation in Iraq goes from bad to disastrous and Saddam finds himself unable to pay off his apparatchiks, he will find himself increasingly boxed in. We will offer him an out. Or rather, to save face, we will get some whackjob muslim "ally" to offer him an out -- perhaps Saudi Arabia, which took Idi Amin.
Then we will find out whether he is truly a "survivor," driven by rational calculus, or whether he prefers "martyrdom," as so many of these arab types claim to do. Better hope it's the former.
I expect them to rely heavily on the recommendations of the career military. If that means Special Forces, then I imagine they will be heavily involved.
Truly, I think the Chinese will be as shocked this time as they were in the Gulf War to see what the U.S. is actually capable of doing when our back is against the wall.
BTW, I truly believe that all of the intrusive measures that have caused such fear even on this forum, were necessary to identify and be prepared to detain potential biochem terrorists at the very moment the offense begins.
I doubt if there has ever been such surveillance or dossier building in the history of the U.S. or the preparation for a mass detention that might be necessary to protect us or them.
I'm still thinking overwhelming force because of the larger need for peace in the region and to create fear in North Korea, Iran and of course, China.
Anthrax whodunit: Conflicting theories on source
By MATT CRENSON The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Bioterrorism experts say the teaspoonful of powdered anthrax spores sent to Sen. Tom Daschle’s office could have come from an Iraqi weapons laboratory or a New Jersey basement.
They say it could have been made by experienced biological weapons scientists or educated amateurs with access to special equipment, techniques and advice. More than six weeks after anthrax-tainted letters began arriving, federal authorities say they still know almost nothing about where the deadly powder comes from or who cooked it up.
“We don’t know its origin,” Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said Wednesday. “We have not ruled out whether this was an act of an individual or a collective act, whether it was a domestic source or a foreign source.” And the experts offer competing theories about the attacker — someone who did an excellent job of covering the tracks.
Terrorists have mailed at least six anthrax-laced letters since the Sept. 11 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon. But the one received by Daschle on Oct. 15 has attracted the most attention from biowarfare experts.
Stunned officials used words like “weaponized” and “potent” to describe the powder in the hours after it wafted out of an envelope addressed to Daschle in crude block letters. Later, a rigorous analysis by the U.S. Army Research Institute of Infectious Disease at Fort Detrick, Md., found that the powdered anthrax in the Daschle letter was the perfect size to float in the air and lodge in the lungs. The powder had also been mixed with silica, a mineral that keeps the particles from clumping together.
Because of those characteristics Army scientists settled on “professionally done” rather than “weaponized” as the best way to describe the powder, Gen. John S. Parker told a Senate subcommittee Oct. 31.
“From what we know about this powder it could have been made by anybody,” said Richard H. Ebright, a microbiologist and bioterrorism expert at Rutgers University. Still, whoever did make it knew more than a little bit about germ weapons, said Jonathan B. Tucker, a biowarfare expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Washington, D.C.
“You’re talking invisibly small particles,” Tucker said. “It does require specialized equipment and know-how.” The terrorists were smart enough to use a common but deadly strain of anthrax, the Ames strain. That strain has never been turned into a weapon by a major state-sponsored biological weapons program, although Iraq reportedly sought to obtain it in the late 1980s.
Iraq has used a strain known as Vollum in its anthrax weapons; the United States used a derivative of the same strain. The Soviet Union created its own genetically engineered anthrax strain far deadlier than any natural form.
Whoever made the weapon sent to Daschle and the news media did not genetically endow the strain with exceptional virulence or resistance to antibiotics, which would have been strong evidence of involvement by a sophisticated state-sponsored weapons program.
In addition to knowledge, it probably took a well-constructed laboratory to produce the high-quality powder that was sent to Daschle’s office, said former United Nations weapons inspector Richard Spertzel. “I would not envision it being done in somebody’s garage or basement,” said Spertzel, who visited Iraq 40 times during his career as a weapons inspector. “You would need a small laboratory and you would have to know exactly what you’re doing.”
If it were set up in a populated area, a clandestine anthrax factory would have to be outfitted with sophisticated containment systems. Without them, the spores would dissipate through the neighborhood just as easily as they did the nation’s mail system, causing an anthrax outbreak.
“The quality of that powder, you start messing around with that without the appropriate safety conditions, you’re going to contaminate everything,” Spertzel said. He believes a foreign country is the source of the anthrax in the Daschle letter, most likely Iraq. But Ebright thinks the powder was produced much closer to its target.
After stealing or purchasing anthrax bacteria from any of hundreds of labs worldwide, Ebright said, the attacker could have outfitted a bioweapons laboratory without straying more than a few miles from the Trenton location where the letters to Daschle, NBC and the New York Post were mailed.
The equipment needed to create a liquid broth of anthrax spores can be purchased by mail from any laboratory supply house, and the process is straightforward enough to be performed by anybody with minimal microbiology training. But to dry that brew into a fine powder of pure spores requires knowledge that few people in the world possess and specialized processing equipment, including spray dryers and grinders. In New Jersey, a region crowded with pharmaceutical and food processing plants, at least the equipment is easy to find.
During the heyday of its biological weapons program, Iraq bought two spray dryers, commonly used in food processing. A scaled-down version of the spray dryers Iraq purchased could be bought used for about $30,000, according to a New Jersey dealer. Grinding equipment to mill the dried anthrax powder into smaller, more deadly grains would cost another $10,000 to $15,000.
“I continue to believe the most likely prospect is that it was produced by a single person or a small group of people locally,” Ebright said. “By locally I mean New Jersey.” Ebright argues that one or two biological weapons experts could have visited New Jersey long before Sept. 11, imparted their rarified knowledge to a few local operatives, then left without ever being noticed. Public health investigators may be thinking along the same lines. They are probing every person and place that Kathy Nguyen, the most recent person to die from inhalation anthrax, encountered in the days before she got sick. Nguyen began to feel ill 16 days after the last known anthrax letter — the one stamped Oct. 9 and sent to Daschle — was postmarked. But most other victims got sick about a week after their exposures. That discrepancy has led investigators to suspect that Nguyen was not infected by tainted mail, but by some other source that she encountered in her daily routine. “She may have been walking by the wrong place at the wrong time,” Spertzel said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody was filling the letters and she walked by outside.”
Ridiculous.
Filling those letters would have left contamination for miles around.
Those letters were not filled in the USA.
But filling the envelopes without contaminating the environment
(or the outside of the envelopes themselves)
would require a lab and a technology as sophisticated
as those required to make the anthrax securely
in the first place.
Thus it is logical and most reasonable to assume
that the envelopes were filled in the same place as
and by the same people who
made the anthrax.
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