How badly might they want a B61 or two?
Posted on 04/29/2002 8:35:59 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
Anthrax: Experts fear a widespread attack A single biological attack on the US could cause 10 times more deaths than a nuclear strike, claims a report from an influential think-tank.
The Brookings Institution is advising President Bush to concentrate anti-terrorist efforts on thwarting "doomsday" scenarios such as these.
The report, "Protecting the American Homeland", to be published on Tuesday, estimated that the greatest threat is posed by widely dispersed smallpox, anthrax or ebola.
Doctors expert in the lethal nature and potential spread of such infections helped compile it.
It suggests that a nuclear device exploded in a major US city would kill 100,000 people - but that a million could die if large areas were exposed to lethal bacteria and viruses.
In addition to the death toll, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of economic damage could be caused by biological attack, says the report.
Tightened defences
Michael O'Hanlon, from the Brookings Institution, said: "There are an unlimited number of potential vulnerabilities.
"We're going to have to spend some time prioritising and organising our thinking.
"We really should be focusing on potentially catastrophic attacks, meaning large number of casualties or large damage to the economy."
The report urges the government to increase spending on air defences, food safety and cyber-security.
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the US appointed a Homeland Security Director working to tighten defences against terrorist attacks on American soil.
Shipping attack
The White House is seeking a budget of $38bn for homeland security measures in the 2003 budget - a sum described as insufficient by the Brookings report.
Other "vulnerabilities" identified by the report include the possibility of nuclear attacks on the maritime industry using devices concealed in a shipping container.
Attacks of this kind could cost the economy as much as a trillion dollars in losses.
A successful attack on a nuclear or toxic chemical plant could potentially cause 10,000 casualties, said the analysts.
They stressed that biological attack, particularly with Ebola, was a remote possibility.
How badly might they want a B61 or two?
Do I think they are stupid enough to do it anyway? Of course I do. America, with it's wide open spaces, modern medical facilities, sanitation etc. would recover. That wouldn't be the case in most places on this earth where people live practically on top of each other.
That is exactly what I wonder all the time. Instead most people are more worried about hurting the feelings Arabs and the French and hate Jews worse than Osama.
One million deaths would entail monetary costs in the TRILLIONS----totally unimaginable---destabilizing the entire world economy, sending the world into a global depression like it has never known, leading to a second dark age and the end of Western civilization as we know it.
That's why anthrax is the weapon-of-choice for Saddam Hussein. It's non-infectious. Casualties from a major dispersal of the "Daschle brand" anthrax would be in the tens of thousands to millions; economic damage in the trillions -- but the effects would still be limited to a small area. It's like a nuke, but it can easily be delivered by hand, has an indefinite shelf-life, and is completely undetectable prior to use.
No, too much PC here, and unfortunately, PC wins every time.
Anthrax is different. Since it's not infectious, it could be used on U.S. cities without fear of it spreading to the rest of the world. This is precisely why anthrax is the biological weapon to worry most about.
Remember, however, that we're already living with countries that have arsenals of hydrogen bombs. The solution to an anthrax threat is the same as the solution to a nuclear threat: the certainty of massive retaliation. Ultimately, this is the only solution.
This is the main reason that the U.S. cannot acknowledge that the anthrax mailings were from a foreign military power. We do not want to respond with nuclear weapons to an action that killed a few people only. But once it's determined that we won't respond to small biological attacks with nuclear retaliation, the certainty of retaliation has disappeared.
With nuclear weapons, the dividing line was clear: "Was the attack nuclear or non-nuclear?" Our policy was that we would respond to any nuclear attack with nuclear retaliation.
But if the policy is that we will respond only to "large" biological attacks with nuclear retaliation, there's no sharp dividing line any more. The other side can ratchet things up, staging bigger and bigger attacks, slowly but surely. The certainty of retaliation is gone.
The answer is to maintain a policy of responding to any biological attack with nuclear retaliation, but to pretend that an attack didn't take place if it's judged too small to warrant a response.
In fact, the same problem can occur with nuclear weapons. What if somebody sets off a nuclear weapon, but it's a dud, and it kills no one or very few people? Would we really destroy the entire civilian population of a city with a nuclear weapon over an incident like this? I don't think so, but this is definitely a hard-to-solve problem.
But, the real question remains: where do we strike? Even if Iraq supplied the anthrax, Saudi Arabia will remain the largest sponsor of OBL.
Why not hit both?
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