- There is a Biological Weapons Convention. Most of the
signatories want to establish a protocol for international inspections.
Guess who blocked it? The United States of America.
-
- It is interesting to note that while President Bush now
claims to want inspections in Iraq to succeed, his administration argued
at a recent meeting that inspections were useless. Take careful note of
what the U.S. spokesman said:
-
- Formal arms-control inspections to determine biological
weapons activities could not be effective because the components can be
found in the everyday environment and can simultaneously have legitimate
and illegitimate uses. "They are," the United States continued,
"used for many peaceful purposes, such as routine studies against
disease, the creation of vaccines and the study of defensive measures against
a biological attack. Detecting violations is nearly impossible. Proving
a violation is impossible."
-
- Let's hope the United States remembers its own words
in addressing the situation in Iraq. Saddam Hussein should be happy to
hear that the United States admits in an international forum that it cannot
prove that Iraq or any other country is violation of the prohibition against
biological weapons.
-
- The fact is, of course, that it is the United States
that does not wish to be inspected. Is that because we have our own biological
weapons programs still being conducted clandestinely? One can only wonder.
About the only conclusion halfway drawn from our inept investigation of
the anthrax attacks is that the anthrax spores appear to be of American
origin.
-
- Despite the baloney pouring out of Washington these days
about homeland security, there really is no defense against an attack by
biological weapons. Reacting to an attack is not a defense any more than
cleaning up the mess left by an explosion is a defense against a bomb attack.
Nor are vaccines a good defense, since it is so easy to switch from one
virus or bacteria to another. Also keep in mind that most viruses are always
mutating, and that today they can be genetically altered to resist existing
vaccines.
-
- The best hope would be inspections in an effort to discourage
all countries from developing these things ó not to mention, naturally,
a broad policy to eliminate conflicts in the world. Every act of terror
proceeds from a political cause. Every act of war proceeds from a political
cause. In my lifetime, the United States has done damned little to pursue
peace, except on all-too-frequent occasions resorting to war. You will
notice that President Bush, in the finest tradition of Orwellian newspeak,
always prefaces talk of war with the phrase "In the name of peace
..."
-
- Bull. You don't make peace by making war.
-
- Unless we find ways to settle political and economic
disputes without resorting to war, our grandchildren are going to live
in a miserable, dangerous world, and they don't deserve that. Americans
ought to be outraged at incompetent leaders around the world who are endangering
the lives and future of all of us. The technology of death today far exceeds
the IQ of the political leaders who have the power to unleash it.
-
- It's interesting to note that in 1914, a German writer
predicted that by the year 2000 the world would be transitioning from what
he called the Age of Money into the Age of Caesar. That writer was Oswald
Spengler in his book "The Decline of the West." He meant the
West would replace rule by money with rule by authoritarian leaders, and
you can see it in every democracy in the world, including ours: the slow
slide toward authoritarianism. Democracy has always had a short life span.
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- © 2002 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
- http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20021213/index.php
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