Iraqi Trailers Are Re-Examined
U.S. weapons hunters are re-examining the only discovery the Bush administration has cited as evidence of an illicit Iraqi weapons program — a pair of trailers the CIA (news - web sites) said were laboratories for making biological weapons, senior military officers involved in the hunt told The Associated Press.
Last month, Vice President Dick Cheney repeated the claim that the two trailers were "mobile biological facilities" that could have been used to make several biological agents, including smallpox.
"There's no way that these particular labs could have been used to make smallpox," said Jonathan Tucker, a weapons expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies who authored "Scourge," a recent book on smallpox.
"Smallpox can only replicate inside cells, so you need a bioreactor, not a fermenter, which is a much more sophisticated piece of equipment."
In addition, he said, smallpox would need to be grown in a maximum containment laboratory, "not in a trailer with canvas siding. If there had been a leak, it would have spread smallpox all over the country."
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