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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Just_Observing who wrote (20039)	3/12/2003 9:40:14 PM
From: Just_Observing	Respond to of 25898

10M IRAQIS WILL STARVE IN WAR Mar 12 2003 AID AGENCIES' DIRE WARNING By Paul Gilfeather Whitehall Editor MORE than 10 million Iraqis will starve if war goes ahead, aid agencies warned yesterday. Experts fear military action would hit power supplies and transport routes, disrupting the flow of vital food supplies. Care International, Christian Aid and Save the Children said a war without UN backing would make delivering aid even harder. Raja Jarrah from Care International said: "Up to 10 million people will need feeding if the food ration system is disrupted. "Upwards of 60 per cent of people face hunger, if not starvation. "About 90 per cent of Iraq's sewage treatment stations are vulnerable if the electricity goes down, leading to polluted drinking water and dire public health consequences." And he warned: "If a war does not have a United Nations mandate then it's going to be even harder for the United Nations humanitarian agencies to have access to the resources they need for the scale of the response required." Mr Jarrah said there was "no evidence" that the international community is "prepared for that scale of disaster". He said experts predict at least half a million Iraqis will be affected as a direct result of war - with up to 80,000 deaths. He said: "Whilst we can't predict the exact consequences of war, we can predict they will be dire and, for many households, catastrophic." The charities estimate there will be two million refugees with one million Iraqis displaced inside Iraq. Lewis Sida, from Save the Children UK, said: "We find ourselves ill-prepared for a large scale humanitarian crisis." He said the aims of the military in war would be "desperately incompatible" with those of aid workers. He said: "It would be difficult for a British or American soldier to get into enemy territory to distribute aid." mirror.co.uk

To: Just_Observing who wrote (20039)	3/12/2003 10:30:25 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 25898

Just, The inspectors cannot go where they want at high speed. They have to set an itinerary and that gives Saddam time to move it. They do not need to move artillery and machine guns. he is allowed to have those, but the truck type portable anthrax tanks and nerve gas reactors can be kept moving. Remember, 1 standard 48" square skid can hold a 250 gallon Anthrax fermentation tank. It will be about 4 feet high and 4 feet on a side. At the extinction of the growth it will be about 4% dry spores. 250 gallons is about 1600 pounds so 4% of that is54 pounds per batch. You can do 1 batch per week, A tractor trailer with a 40 fot box can probably maintain 4 of those in operation and they will make that much per week. It then must be weaponised. This consists of filtering it and replacing the blood media in grew in with saline water with less and less nutrients so the anthrax bacillus is forced by this harsh starvation into forming tough shelled spores. These are they sprayed through a high shear nozzle into a lightly heated dry air drying column and this high shear separates the spores and the dry air dries them and harden the coat. The silica makes them like dust, non sticky. A little silica or other material is added to stop the spores from clumping together. The end result is a very fine dust of spores that look like a liquid in a container and can be sprayed into the air. Typically 5 microns and a human hair is 50-100 microns in diameter. So 64 pounds is about 4 cubic feet of light powder. 30 cubic feet is a cubic meter or about 2 weeks production of a mobile unit. at 5 microns a cubic meter holds 8 x 1015 spores. SInce it takes 50,000 spores to make a critical infection of all people exposed(some will die when they get 1 spore that breeds well, 50,000 each is 100% death rate). So 1 cubic meter 8 x 1015/5 x 104 =1.6 x 1011 people it will kill if it all gets into people at 50,000 spores each. That 1 cubic meter of spores will kill everyone on earth, and then some under those conditions. Of course with airborn dispersal 99.99% gets wasted, so he make a lot more to make sure he gets coverage. Rain will drag it down to the earth and it will be eaten by earth bacteria and microworms and make it harmless very soon. In dry desert areas it will last for 20 years or more if no rain or soil bacteria get at it. Now he may also have small pox. Now small pox can spread from person to person, like a cold. Anthrax cannot, but that's another production scenario. I am not up on virus propagation. I used to work at Connaught Laboratories, who made penicillin and have direct experience with propagating assorted bacteria and making spores of non anthrax bacteria. Never made anthrax, but I read the literature, it is real easy. Just make some blood media(that is a growth liquid for Anthrax that looks like blood to the anthrax spores and they reproduce very rapidly. Anthrax is very small and is one of the fastest growing bacteria known. Cows die after less than 24 hours after infection because their blood gets too thick for the cows heart to pump). So any fool can make anthrax, it is common in nature, easy to weaponize etc. Do I want him invaded.....you betcha I do. Yes I am a pacifist....but we cannot afford the risk. Bill