America's bioterror
Bush has pledged to eliminate weapons of mass
destruction. He should start at home
George Monbiot
Tuesday March 19, 2002
The Guardian
Dear President Bush,
In commemorating the victims of the attacks on New York and
Washington last week, you called for disputes to be "settled
within the bounds of reason". You insisted that "every nation in
our coalition must take seriously the growing threat" of biological
and chemical weapons. You assured us that on this issue
"there is no margin for error, and no chance to learn from
mistakes... inaction is not an option". These are sentiments with
which most of the world's people would agree. While many of us
believe that attacking Iraq would enhance rather than reduce the
possibility that weapons of mass destruction will be used, few
would dispute that chemical and biological agents present a
grave danger to the world.
So those of us in other nations who have followed this issue are
puzzled. Why should you, who claim to want to build "a
peaceful world beyond the war on terror" have done all you can
to undermine efforts to control these deadly weapons? Why
should the congressmen in your party have repeatedly
sabotaged attempts to ensure that biological and chemical
agents are eliminated?
In December, your negotiators tore the biological weapons
convention to shreds. The 1972 convention, as you know, was
impossible to implement. While the treaty banned the
development and production of bioweapons, it contained no
mechanism for ensuring that its rules were enforced. So for six
years, the 144 signatories had been developing a "verification
protocol", which would permit the United Nations to examine
suspected bioweapons facilities. In July, your government
refused to sign the protocol. In December, you deliberately
scuttled the negotiations by insisting, at the last minute, that
the resolution be rewritten. One European delegate, referring to
the commitments your delegation had made before the meeting,
observed, "they are liars. In decades of multilateral negotiations,
we've never experienced this kind of insulting behaviour." Your
actions have rendered the convention useless, leaving the world
unprotected from the very weapons you say you want to
eliminate.
Four years ago, Republican members of Congress, working
alongside the Clinton government, voted to inflict similar damage
to the chemical weapons convention. This treaty already
possessed the means to force nations to open their laboratories
to inspection, which is the key determinant of effective weapons
control. But in 1998, your party decided that the United States
should not be subject to these provisions. By passing legislation
banning the removal of chemical samples from the US by
international weapons inspectors; limiting the number of
laboratories which the US needs to declare and permitting the
United States president to refuse "challenge inspections" of its
chemical plants, Republican congressmen effectively hobbled
the convention worldwide. Under your presidency, even routine
verification has been vitiated, as government officials have told
the inspectors which parts of a site they can and cannot visit,
just as Saddam Hussein has done in Iraq. Other countries have
used your intransigence as an excuse for undermining the
convention themselves.
The United States has also withheld both the money required by
the chemicals weapons inspectorate, and the funds needed to
remove and disable the vast arsenal of warheads loaded with
nerve agents in western Siberia, some of which are lying in
warehouses secured only by bicycle padlocks on the doors. It
was your own senator, Pat Roberts, who argued that the
promised funding should not be issued, on the grounds that
these weapons "pose more of an environmental threat to Russia
than a security threat to the United States". Yet security at the
dumps is so lax that no one even knows how many warheads
they contain.
You should not be surprised to learn that many of us have been
wondering why your professed intentions and your policies
diverge so widely. Nor should you be surprised to discover that
some of us suspect that the US might have some deadly
secrets of its own, which your government hopes to shield from
public view.
In September last year, the New York Times reported that "the
Pentagon has built a germ factory that could make enough
lethal microbes to wipe out entire cities". The factory's purpose
was defensive: your employees wanted to see how easy it would
be for terrorists to do the same thing. But it was constructed
without either congressional oversight or a declaration to the
biological weapons convention, in direct contravention of
international law. We could, perhaps, agree that if the US had
discovered a similar undisclosed plant in a poor nation, then that
country's government, if it survived your initial response, would
have a good deal of explaining to do.
But of still more concern is the recent discovery that your
government has been planning to test warheads containing live
microbes in large aerosol chambers at the US Army's
Edgewood Chemical Biological Centre in Maryland. Experts in
this field say that the scale of the experiments suggests that
they are not defensive, but designed to help develop new
biological weapons.
It is also clear that some elements of your existing defence
programme contravene both of the treaties your government and
your party have sabotaged. The genetically engineered fungus
you have developed for aerial spraying in Colombia plainly
qualifies as a non-lethal biological weapon. And, because your
strategic aims in that country extend beyond the simple
eradication of drugs to the elimination of the leftwing rebel
forces, the chemical sprays you have been using in the regions
they control have also clearly been deployed as weapons, much
as Agent Orange was in Vietnam. Your military laboratories
have been developing a new range of genetically engineered
"materials-eating bacteria", designed to destroy runways,
engines and the radar-blocking coatings of warplanes. Though
they do not directly affect humans, you would be hard-put to
deny that these are biological weapons.
Your government has also refused to destroy its stocks of
smallpox, and has insisted on developing new and more lethal
varieties of anthrax. You say that this is purely for defensive
purposes: to study how they might be used by enemy forces, or
to develop new kinds of vaccine. But the Federation of American
Scientists warns that some of the new research you are funding
could be categorised as "dual use": it could lead just as easily
to attack as to defence. Even if we were to accept your
government's assurances that these programmes are solely
defensive in nature, it is surely plain that they are generating the
very hazards they claim to be confronting. The anthrax attacks
in October appear to have been launched by a scientist from
within your own biological warfare laboratories, making use of a
strain developed by the US Army's medical research institute.
Mr President, you say you want to save the world from biological
and chemical weapons. With or without the help of our own
leaders, you seem prepared to go to war in pursuit of that aim.
But surely the first step towards dealing with weapons of mass
destruction is the mass destruction of weapons? And surely
your campaign for world peace would be more convincing if you
respected the conventions designed to destroy them?
Yours sincerely, George Monbiot
www.monbiot.com
guardian.co.uk |
