“France Calls For Global Watchdog on Bio-Warfare Risk,” Reuters, March 2, 2005
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/29797/newsDate/2-Mar-2005/story.htm
After the head of Interpol weighed in on this issue of a biological attack, France called for a global watchdog on the bio-warfare risk. This article mentions the possibility of an attack targeting livestock. Such an attack would violate the express prohibition under the hadiths of a nonconventional weapon targeting livestock or crops. Salafi-jihadis would not be in the game if they were not able to argue that they were playing by the book. It is Ed who has a bogeyman view of the Salafi-Jihadis not to appreciate the restrictions posed by the absence of a fatwa in 2001 permitting mass casualties using a poison.
Most of what I’ve read about the threat of biological attack by Al Qaeda seems to have increased the threat, rather than diminish it, by giving Al Qaeda ideas it would not otherwise have had. From today’s news:
“The WMD Notebook: Staphylococcal Enterotoxin B: A lesser known inhalation or ingestion agent,” June 8, 2008
http://cms.firehouse.com/web/online/Hazardous-Materials/The-WMD-Notebook—Staphylococcal-Enterotoxin-B-/18$59778
Ayman became determined to weaponize anthrax, he told Atef, because the US folks kept telling him how easy it was. A picture of Cohen holding up the 5 lb. bag of sugar was found in Afghanistan in Fall 2001 at a seminar on how anthrax might be used.
At the same time, short-sighted pork-fueled profit-making priorities have caused governments, industry and academia to proliferate the opportunities to infiltrate or gain access to know-how. Ayman’s supporters clipped an article in which Dr. Alibek sounded the alarm.
Consider “an episode of Get Smart, the late-1960s sitcom about bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart. The plotline concerned a plague sweeping the nation’s potato crop— potatoes look fine on the outside but .... are empty inside their jackets. Smart discovers that Siegfried, head of the evil enemy agency Kaos, is using a bioengineered bacterium to attack our potatoes [see “Biological Warfare against Crops,” by Paul Rogers, Simon Whitby and Malcolm Dando; Scientific American, June 1999]. Siegfried explains that the bacterium enters the potato, eats the insides, burps and dies, leaving no trace. Now for the really frightening part— Siegfried is spreading the potato-destroying bacteria using crop dusters.”
http://www.parapundit.com/archives/000255.html
The Scientific American article might have usefully quoted the religious proscription against attacking crops. There are at least a dozen books on jihad and the islamic jurisprudence on the principles of warfare at many good university libraries — but none of the books discuss the express prohibition on attacking livestock or crops. Future such books or articles should.
Intellectuals should help the young hotheads find the wisdom of the companions of the prophet hidden from them by their anger and hurt. Ayman and his friends from Cairo should follow the lead of Dr. Fadl.
http://www.jumpcut.com/view/?id=8243F6BE317411DD9656000423CF385C