From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Feb 26 2003 - 10:05:46 MST
On Wed, 26 Feb 2003 Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 2/26/2003 2:19:12 AM Central Standard Time,
> kmb@kai-m-becker.de writes: Yes, we should start to think about invading the
> USA and establish a government that obeys international law. There's even
> enough evidence (i.e. evidence of Mr. Powell's standards) that the US still
> has biological WMDs (which they are not allowed to have) and they are
> actively developing new weapons - land mines - that are forbidden IIRC. Hey,
> how much cheap oil would _that_ give :-)
>
> Hey Kai, why don't you volunteer to bell the cat?
> Ron h.
Ron, I don't understand your comment, but my sense of it encourages
me to encorage you to play nicely.
Now, with respect to biological WMDs I do have a bit of expertise
(more than I really want) so I'll offer a couple of concrete
comments based on my most recent knowledge.
The U.S. (and Russia) are allowed by international agreements
to retain samples of the Smallpox virus. This is rather
irrelevant since its genome sequence is known (I even have
a copy of it in case the "thought police" have removed it
from public access). Therefore anyone with sufficient
financial resources (and molecular biology talent) could
recreate it from scratch.
With respect to other potential biological WMD -- at this
time it is generally true that anyone who wants to vaccinate
people against such agents has to be able to grow them
(or at least significant fractions of them).
So Kai is likely to be correct -- the U.S. most likely does have
the ability to grow relatively large quantities of biological
WMD and certainly has the knowledge of how to weaponize them
(since this was developed several decades ago and such knowledge
once gained doesn't "go away").
But, I strongly question the statement "that the US still has
biological WMDs (which they are not allowed to have)".
The US helped to initiate the treaties against chemical and
biological weapons precisely because they are very imprecise
weapons. I am relatively confident that we have destroyed
any large quantities of such weapons because they do not
have the benefit-to-risk ratio the U.S. military desires.
Now -- it is however well documented that Russia still has
*tons* of biological WMD (many of which were much more
dangerous than any the U.S. developed) that they have not
yet destroyed.
If you want to point a finger at "risks to humanity" it
should be pointed at a location roughly completely opposite
of the U.S. on a global map.
Robert
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