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19.03.02, 05:57
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
