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U.S. Army To Ramp Up Anthrax Purchasing
An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist reports that the U.S. Army wants to purchase a large supply of an anthrax strain." From the article: "A series of contracts have been uncovered that relate to the US army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. They ask companies to tender for the production of bulk quantities of a non-virulent strain of anthrax, and for equipment to produce significant volumes of other biological agents ... Although the Sterne strain is not thought to be harmful to humans and is used for vaccination, the contracts have caused major concern. 'It raises a serious question over how the US is going to demonstrate its compliance with obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention if it brings these tanks online,'"
that the US of A don't like playing by the rules they so violently impose on the rest of the world...
It's not going to be used for weaponry, and the US has enough nuclear firepower to not need biological weaponry, which are much more unpredictable in effect, and less reliable.
Bad journalism, coming straight from NewScientist.
We've upped our standards. Up yours.
The fact that Anthrax got loose in Washington, and the way the investigation was stonewalled seems to indicate that the US has not been adhering very stringently to the spirit of any convention. On the other hand testing your weapons on your own population does not infringe on any treaty AFAIK.
This is not a signature.
Except Saddam signed a treaty saying he wouldn't have them...
Sorta've like how a convicted felon can't own guns legally.
As always, who can police the police.
Iraq, North Korea, Iran, etc... all of them are demonised for even thinking about developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. There's outrage if they hint that it's okay to have them.
On the other hand, the USA, which is the only country to ever use nuclear bombs against another country (civilians, no less), who has invaded two countries in the past few years, who is the only western nation to not ratify the treaty that agrees not to send kids into battle, who don't believe their prisoners of war should have the protections of the Geneva conventions, is actively buying and developing these kinds of weapons.
Once you stop thinking of the USA as "us, the good guys", and everyone else as "them, the bad guys", and look at things objectively, the USA's record is incredibly poor. Perhaps then you will see why the rest of the world fears the USA.
This isn't so much a problem because people think the US will do this, but because the US has signed international treaties that might be in conflict with what the US military is doing.
I don't disagree with your general point, but the above sentence stood out. I think most citizens of the US think the rest of the World sees them the same way that they see themselves, but this isn't the case. Much of the World [i]does[/i] think the US is capable of deploying biological weapons. They see a nation that has previously sold chemical weapons to others to use, that has previously dropped not one but two nuclear bombs on concentrated population centres and sees none of the idealism of the invasion of Iraq that the US populace has been sold (it's about "freedom and democracy"), but only the US claiming the oil supply for themselves.
Whose point of view is right is open to debate, but unless the american people at least understand how their country's actions appear when stripped of their own justifications, then they'll never understand how their actions are recieved.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
They could just want all that anthrax strain, which is used for vaccinations, to do just that. Vaccinate all the armed forces people first and then the whole of the US population. It is realistically possible that for just once this is on the straight. Now, as my previous postings show, I'm not Uncle Sam's lover, but don't ascribe to malice ...
how much screwed this country became.
What the DoD is doing here is making some anthrax vaccine, because we're out. We used a lot of it with our second Iraq deployment, and the fear is very real that someone will use an anthrax weapon in a terrorist attack. The army wants to get some vaccine, and start making their own so they aren't reliant on outside contractors to produce it. It's always been a weak point in our policy I think to rely upon civilan companies to produce vaccines for biological agents (and checmical for that matter).
A crop duster full of anthrax would cause some serious mayhem in the US, or anywhere else for that matter, think about it.
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The tanks (think fermentation) used to maintain a non-harmful strain can also be used to breed a nasty harmful strain. It's not about the anthrax strain, but the equipment that exists (since anthrax breeds best in rotting carcasses of animals killed by anthrax in the wild, forming spores in the liquids that flow off the carcass into the soil to be scuffed up and inhaled by animals when the soil dries out, the tanks are quite complicated).
And the equipment such as tanks large enough to deal with the amount of anthrax the USA apparently wants isn't supposed to exist under international treaty.
To a non-USA nation, EVEN IF the USA just wants large amounts of non-harmful anthrax strains for vaccination FOR NOW, once their population is vaccinated, it means they can just preparelots of harmful anthrax and kill the rest of us, because if WE were to violate the international treaties enabling us to vaccinate our entire population (and incidentally breed harmful anthrax), the USA would probably nuke us. And the way things are going in the USA, given WWII history, it's not difficult to imagine the USA deciding it just needed a little "breathing space" and deciding to kill us.
If you are going to use a bioagent in war, you have to make sure that your own tropus are protected.
Vaccination would be a good way of doing that as various kinds of protective suits will limit the
soldiers ability to fight. This is why this kind of news gets reacted on.
Not that I really think bio warfare would be something the US would do. It would simply be too much
bad publisity. After all they have strong enough army to succesfully fight most countries without resorting
to such methods.
My guess is that they do this to make sure they are protected from all the terrorists that under the Bush administration seam to have grown just as common as communists were in the 1950s.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
This is very inconsistent with the claim, "we went in it for the oil."
It's entirely consistent. The people behind the war didn't start it to reduce fuel costs for ordinary Americans. They started it to control the production of oil in order to increase their own wealth.
It's about oil producers. They don't give a rats arse about oil consumers. Look at the price gouging that's happening right now.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Sorta've like how a convicted felon can't own guns legally.
Except that he didn't have them.
Fearmongering?! Are you for real? Only morons trust their government. I'd go so far as to say that people who trust the government are traitors to their nation.
Anthrax for peacefull purposes. Innoculation. Sure.
Remmeber that post 9/11 anthrax scare, which turned out to be of the Ames strain (ie american)?
Considering the small amount of people involved with peacefull research of anthrax, and the legitemate amount of the agent needed for same, the purchase and deployment of these amounts is rather suspicious.
's like fsckiung for virginity, really.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
FUD
FUD
FUD
FUD
anthrax!
FUD
FUD
USA sucks
FUD
Let's see if we can explain this.
The US is concerned about terrorists or rogue states using bioweapons.
How do you work on any defenses against bioweapons? You need to develop systems, vaccines, and procedures. Would you develop these entirely by theorizing? To some degree, that's inevitable. But whatever you CAN test, say against a NON LETHAL VARIANT OF THE BIOWEAPON YOU FEAR for example, you probably would.
Nah, that's too reasonable and doesn't engender enough irrational hatred of the US. Mod this +1 troll.
-Styopa
Gas prices have more than doubled since the US declared an end to major conflict in Iraq, mirroring trends in the world economy. This is very inconsistent with the claim, "we went in it for the oil."
You're right to note that I wasn't arguing that the US went in for oil, but that the world percieves it that way. I've already picked up one Troll mod, but I'm glad someone read my post correctly.
However, I don't think what I've quoted above is evidence that the US didn't go in for the sake of oil. Firstly, lets agree that the US has seized control of the oil. The first things the US army did when ground troops went in was to secure the oil facilities. Likewise, major US oil companies are setting up in Iraq and there is a system of reparations in place under which Iraq must pay for damages caused ("you made us invade, now compensate us!"). Naturally Iraq will be paying this in oil. The figures are in the hundreds of billions of dollars worth.
It's also worth considering for whose benefit the US seized the oil. Not primarily for the US public, but for the corporations. It's hard to deny that US oil companies have made a killing out of this. It's also worth trying to isolate the factors that affect the oil price. You picked a date just after hurricane Katarina that disrupted major oil production facilities off your East coast and jacked up prices by upto $0.70 - quite a lot of the rise you quote.
Secondly, there is a strategic aim in capturing Iraq's oil, which is that it denies the same oil to others (China). It also provides a land route for an oil pipeline to the Eastern European oil-fields, allowing the US to get access to that oil supply and deny it to others (China) as well.
Finally, we shouldn't ascribe competence where it isn't due. A failure does not indicate that no attempt was made. The US is currently up to its neck in shit in Iraq right now and I'd swear this isn't what they intended to happen. Nevertheless, the clearest motivation for the US invasion was oil, with sending a warning to the muslim world and distracting people at home from domestic problems tied for second place.
IMHO, naturally.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Except that he didn't have them.
1. He did have them in the past.
2. He actually used them in attacks on civillians.
3. He refused to allow a vigorous inspection to prove he didn't have them.
And anyway, he likely had them up 'til the day of the invasion, when they were trucked to Syria.
resigned
We're not children. If you have a significant amount of something as deadly as anthrax (remember Colin Powell in the UN?), there MUST be some trace. No matter what you do with it, truck it to Syria, sell it to the Martians, burn it, put in a rocket and shoot in space -- there must be some trace, some papers, some empty cans, some people. If after 2 years of free inspections in Iraq, the Americans did not discover a SINGLE TRACE -- the answer is obvious. There were no such weapons in the first place.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
We had complete, unfettered access to Iraq way before we invaded. Hans Blix kept saying, (approximately) "We don't see anything here, we need you to be clearer about the intelligence you're trumpeting. We see nothing here on the ground" And, of course, we couldn't be any more clear, because the little intelligence we DID have was deliberately misinterpreted and used as an excuse to whip the country into a war frenzy. The White House KNEW this. They were claiming that Iraq was trying to build nuclear weapons when that was clearly and demonstrably false, well before we invaded.
In other words, they knowingly and purposely lied to get us to go to war. The reason we didn't find any WMDs is because they were never there. UN Inspectors had full access to anything they wanted, without delay.
1) Yes, he had them in the past. Which was before he agreed not to have them anymore.
This would be like convicting someone of cracking, and setting the terms of their release from jail as being "you shall not touch a computer for 4 years". Then as soon as they step outside, you pick them up and say "Well, you did touch a computer years back, so we're picking you up on that".
Sorry, it just doesn't make any sense.
2)Yes, he used them on civilians. The US used nukes on civilians. And napalm on civilians. Your point in this is what? He's a bad man? This, again, has nothing to do with having WMD when the invasion force struck. As there were no weapons there.
3) He didn't refuse to allow a vigorous inspection. In fact, he'd agreed to open everything up. The inspectors were a little miffed about having to follow a beaurocratic trail, but explicitly stated that they did not believe (after spending years in situ) that anything was being hidden from them.
I just find it a little bit nuts that someone who has obviously not even read the public reports on the matter makes such blatant "The evidence says something, but I'll still bullheadedly believe something completely different" statements.The report at the time was basically that everyone inspecting on the ground didn't believe that there were any WMD. They just required a couple more months to check the last parts out, then they could, with a great degree of certainty, declare that there were no WMD hidden.
Odds on, you didn't bother reading the further progression of things, when the 'evidence' that Tony Blair presented to GW, on which they decided to start the invasion, was proved to be a forgery. Due diligence inside the intelligence agencies was not performed until after the invasion. Basically everyone BUT G.W. admitted there were no WMD.
Maybe, as I'm kicking one of your illusions over, I should tell you that there was no cheese on the moon until the little green men shipped it all away and replaced it with rock, just before the original moon landings.
Wrong. Hundreds of gallons of weaponized agents don't just diappear. Anthrax and smallpox strains, both of which were known to be under forced mutation by Iraqi scientists, would fit ina test tube. A single scab of highly virulent smallpox could be the size of a small pill and be more than enough to wipe out any major city. Saddam Hussein's regime had used chemical and biological weapons before and was known to have them. Wether or not YOU have access to real information, compared to what the news media tells you, or chose to acknowledge suck things as pox incubators and such, are another issue.
Iraw most certainly was trying to build nuclear weapons. The attempts to purchase yellow cake have been documented, Israel had bombed an enrichment facility before and enrichment equipment has been found.
What proof do you have that WMD material has never been found? Video of searches by troops with embedded journalists were all faked? You have access to all pertinent classified information? Chemical shells found and reported in the open press came from where?
Your claims are like the attempts in the 80s to excuse chem residue as bee droppings.
In other words, you don't know what you're talking about or your purposefully lying.
You're spouting misinformation. Rush Limbaugh is not a news source. They WERE NOT trying to build nukes. That is absolutely, unequivocally, a LIE. They had been trying in the 1980s... you're citing evidence from back then as evidence of them being a current threat. The yellowcake thing, by the way, was shown to be a forgery.. completely untrue.
Read this article for a very long and detailed analysis of some of the lies told to the American public. They were deliberate and knowing in doing so. This article mostly deals with the claims of nuclear weapons, but where there's smoke, there's fire. If they were willing to just blatantly make shit up (which is EXACTLY what they did about the nukes), then why should their claims of chem/bioweapons be trusted?
Read that article. Read every word. And then think about it. Maybe, just maybe, the fact that you're being fed a line of shit by Hannity, Limbaugh, and the administration might penetrate.
BTW, most chemical weapons only last a few years, particularly in the desert, so large stockpiles of them would indeed disappear. Even if Saddam HAD hidden them, they'd be entirely useless after twenty years. Chemical weapons require constant remanufacturing... a whole chemical industry behind them. They're not something you just make and have forever.
Mustard gas can last quite some time, but it's not suited for use as a terrorist weapon. It requires really large amounts of the stuff to do much. It's more of an area interdiction thing, and a method to wound enemy soldiers and slow down enemy armies. Terrorists want stuff like sarin or VX. Even if Saddam had had a million tons of mustard gas, it would have been no significant threat to the US.
As far your question about proof... you do realize how ridiculous it is, right? I hereby demand that you prove that there are no little green men on the Moon. If you can't disprove it, then they must exist.
WMDs in Iraq were pretty much exactly that: little green men.
Well.. not anthrax... but anyway, it was no secret that Saddam had WMDs during 1980's -- the amounts and types the US supplied to him are well documented.
The question was were they destroyed between 1991 and 2003? Today, there's still no significant amount of WMD found in Iraq that would disprove the UN weapons inspectors who were confident that Iraq did not have nuclear capability nor credible chemical weapons systems to threaten neighbouring countries.
What about the list of WMDs he GAVE THE UN INSPECTORS?
Not sure what your point is here. Yes he was doing as asked, so the inspectors could go on destroying the WMDs. Again, it was no secret these weapons existed before the 1991 war.
Now maybe ... And maybe
Do you think maybes are good enough an excuse to cause the death of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians?
Personally, I think that Saddam Hussein wanted to have his cake and eat it too. That is, I think he disposed of his weapons in a highly dubious and possibly illegal fashion to satiate the sanctions, but acted as if he still had them "hidden somewhere" so he could act intimidating to his more local enemies who weren't quite as powerful as the United States.
Your theory isn't too bad, but it just doesn't make sense that Saddam Hussein wouldn't have used his WMDs while being invaded. I mean, if you're not going to use WMDs when your dictatorship is being overthrown, when the fuck do you use it?
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor