In the name of protecting the world from the threat of weapons of mass destruction, President George W. Bush is on the verge of ordering the action which is most likely to cause these terrible weapons to be used. Rather than pursue a policy which could keep Hussein’s arsenal hemmed in and contained, Bush is heading toward a war that could unleash these weapons on defenseless civilians both in America and Iraq.
The Bush administration is rationalizing a pre-emptive strike as necessary in order to prevent a “future” threat to U.S. civilians, ignoring the fact that Hussein is capable right now of orchestrating such attacks. Bush himself admitted in his State of the Union speech that there are bioweapons against which the United States has no protection. This is why he proposed “Project Bioshield” to develop antidotes.
According to the American Medical Association, botulinum toxin is the “most poisonous substance known.” An extremely tiny amount can kill in six to 24 hours, usually through respiratory collapse. Iraq has already admitted to previous inspectors the production of large quantities. The U.S. Army’s “top biological defense expert” — Col. Erik Henchal — recently reaffirmed U.S. vulnerability to several bioweapons when he described “serious holes in the U.S. military’s defenses against weapons such as the nerve poison botulinum toxin, plague bacteria and viruses that cause brain infections” (New York Times, Jan. 8).
Despite such lack of protection, Bush still presses for the destruction of Hussein’s regime, which even the CIA has advised would cause Hussein to “become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions … a WMD (weapons of mass destruction) attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.”
President Bush is poking an exceedingly venomous cobra. Hussein has had ample time to set up a retaliatory plan. With his brutal history, does anyone really expect him to “go quietly?” It is not only Bush’s fingers that may get bitten. Bush is gambling with the lives of large numbers of American and Iraqi civilians.
A huge story is not getting out. Lack of media investigation has led the public to believe that the war will be “over there.” In the little time left, this state of denial must be overcome and hard questions asked, such as “what remedy will be offered to people in Portland exposed to botulinum?”
America is faced with a momentous choice. Will it choose the path almost guaranteed to unleash these demonic weapons, or one that can keep these weapons bottled up? The return of inspectors has already been a remarkable success. Hussein’s weapons are under a microscope, his arsenal essentially hemmed in. To keep it pinned down indefinitely, the temporary inspection process could be expanded into an ongoing, long-term weapons monitoring program administered by the United Nations. The world can choose to “contain” Hussein. There is still time to step back from this abyss.