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Deceit,
Danger Mark US Pursuit of New WMD
by
Heather Wokusch
Illegal
biological and nuclear weapons production is on the rise - in the United
States.
Ignoring
the internationally-recognized Biological Weapons Convention, the US
Army has patented a new grenade capable of delivering biological and chemical
agents. Irony wasn't lost on the watchdog group Sunshine Project which
observed, "Hans Blix might have an easier time finding illegal weapons if
he were inspecting near Baltimore [site of the Army's Edgewood Arsenal
facility, where two of the inventors work] instead of Baghdad."
The
Pentagon's bid to resume biological weapons research hinges on misleading
language: developing deadly biological weapons is illegal, so the grenade and
other potential biowarfare devices are labeled "non-lethal."
Similarly
misleading language is being used to beef up the nation's nuclear weapons
program. The House and Senate recently ditched the ban on researching low-yield
nuclear devices, and OK'd funding for the Robust Nuclear Earth
Penetrator, a weapon ten times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. The
justification? Nuclear weapons will only be researched, not tested or deployed.
Small
coincidence that the House and Senate simultaneously called for accelerated
resumption of stateside underground nuclear testing. The message is clear;
research nuclear weapons today, test and deploy them tomorrow.
The
Bush administration's race to get back into the biological and nuclear weapons
business is alarming in a world struggling with WMD overload. The secrecy and
downright sloppiness of the US weapons program, however, raises red flags.
Case
in point: a whopping $6 billion has been earmarked to expand the US biodefense
program, and contenders have already begun to abuse public trust to get their
hands on the cash. Last February for example, the University of California at
Davis (UCD) took a full ten days to inform nearby communities that a rhesus monkey had
escaped from its primate-breeding facility. Coincidentally, UCD has been
vying for government funds to set up its own "hot zone" biodefense
lab, which in the future could use primates for biological weapons testing.
What if that monkey had been infected with ebola, or some other virus? Would
the public have been informed?
Back
in Maryland, home of the biowarfare grenade, the Pentagon
recently unearthed over 2,000 tons of hazardous biological waste, much of
it undocumented leftovers of an abandoned germ warfare program. Nearby, the FBI
is draining a pond for clues into 2001's anthrax attacks which killed five
people.
None
of this does much to inspire trust in the US biological weapons program;
unfortunately, the situation is equally grim with the nation's nukes.
America's
most reputable nuclear weapons facility recently announced it had "lost"
two vials of plutonium; officials at New Mexico's Los Alamos National
Laboratory have said the plutonium was probably mislabeled then accidentally
discarded.
The
missing plutonium doesn't bode well. According to Peter Stockton, senior
investigator with the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), "We have
virtually hundreds of tons of plutonium and enriched uranium in the system.
This raises questions about the reliability of that system."
Meanwhile,
thousands of radioactive materials have been lost or stolen worldwide and the
International Atomic Energy Agency estimates over 100 countries have inadequate
controls over their radioactive devices.
The
bottom line: in such a dubious environment, do we really need to invest in more
homegrown WMD?
Apart
from the ethical implications of using biological and nuclear weapons on
civilian populations abroad, we should consider the stateside risks these
weapons programs create. Taxpayer dollars would be better spent cleaning up
past bioweapon excesses and tracking loose nukes.
Heather Wokusch is a free-lance writer with
a background in clinical psychology. Her work as been featured in publications
and websites internationally. Heather can be contacted via her website: http://www.heatherwokusch.com