The Bush administration says weapons of mass destruction are an an affront to our American way of life. However, the reality is, the "American way of life" is selling weapons of mass destruction to anyone who can pay for them.

Arms are for Hugging

The U.S. is the biggest arms dealer in the world.
The U.S. sold $21 billion worth of arms to Iran.
The U.S. sold the Shah any weapon he wanted.

But, we do not sell everyone nuclear weapons. It isn't because nuclear arms are too ghastly. It is because nuclear weapons would give someone else an inappropriate advantage. Nuclear bombs are the most terrifying weapons in our arsenal and it is our
BIG STICK.

We sold Iran destroyers and the latest U.S. aircraft for it's air force. It was reported that we even sold them more advanced military hardware than we had in our own arsenals. But we didn't stop with Iran. We did the same for Israel and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and for Iraq. In fact we hold the world's record for selling advanced military hardware to anyone who will pay for them. To get WMD from the U.S. show us the green. That has been the policy of the U.S. government for years and we hold the record for being most willing to sell these weapons to oppressive dictators.

The Military Industrial Congressional Complex

Weapons are not the kind of arms you hug your children with. They are for killing people and we sell more weapons of wholesale destruction than all the rest of the world combined.

The arms industry and the psychopaths in congressional get rich off the blood and pain of others as merchants and purveyors of death and destruction.

The Saudis, the Iranians, the Iraqis, and other oil rich dictators in the Middle-East pay for military technology and advanced weapons systems with money they get from oil.

Biological and Chemical Warfare

Senator Nunn (of GA), who co-chaired the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an organization addressing nuclear, biological and chemical warfare threats, warned that biochemical weapons may have fallen into the wrong hands. John Ashcroft, who was at the time the Attorney General told a Senate panel that Islamists linked to the hijackers had obtained licenses to transport hazardous materials and an alert, which no one now remembers, was issued by the AG to be aware of trucks carrying biohazardous products.

Senator Nunn, when asked if al-Qaida had bioweapons, said there is a danger of it because "It does not take a huge amount of expertise to make chemical and biological weapons."

If the U.S. could not use greater restraint in supplying military weaponry to those nations who we considered our puppets in the Middle East, how can we now expect other nations there to respect us or not to use whatever means or weapons, even bioweapons, if they can get them, against us? Aren't we being just a little bit disingenuous when we do?

In 1990 George W. Bush's father sold Saddam Hussein U.S. "dual use" technology, which is advanced equipment with both civilian and military applications. He sold them a BILLION dollars worth and also in 1990 George HW Bush announced a multi-billion dollar arms deal to Saudi Arabia - which congress authorized at 7.5 billion dollars which wasthe largest arms deal in history. George W. Bush is as reckless about using arms as his father was about selling them and they both are enthralled with "shock and awe" pyrotechnics that kill.

In 91, Bush's Secretary of Defense, Dick Chaney, who is Dubya's Vice President announced even more arms sales to the Middle East which enabled Iraq and Iran to have a whopper of a war with shiny new F-15 fighters and other latest weapons systems.

And HW Bush not to be outdone by anyone else stockpiled enough weapons of conventional and mass destruction in the U.S. to kill every single human being on the face of the earth.

The bush family, like other power crazed rulers are not the first to be overly attracted to so many ways to kill people and to make killing them even more horrendous that the monsters who preceeded them. In the 5th century the Spartans used sulphur fumes to overcome their opposition and in 1336 it was the Tartars who catapulted bodies of plague victims into the walled city of Caffa, but you can see what other serial killers they can be compared to. And Not to be outdone by Bush, Clinton did his share of killing by bombing Iraq, the Sudan and Kosovo and continued with massive arms sales to oppressive regimes. There is no one political party or organization with a monopoly on killing.

Little known or forgotten is the successful biological terrorism germ warfare attack in 1984 in Oregon where several hundred people became sick to keep them from voting. Those terrorists spread Salmonella bacteria on a salad bar and the people who ate the salad became sick and they spread the disease.

A problem with biowarfare is the delay between the time the attack takes place and the time it takes (incubation) for the outbreak. It may at first manifest vague symptoms and by the time it is realized that there has been a biowarfare attack, it may by then already affect large numbers of people and some of the stages of infestation may be highly advanced beyond the time of onset.

The U.S. experimented with bacteria in the 50s and 60s to determine disbursement and the time it took to spread this bacteria. The CIA carried out this experiment unbeknownst to the public. This was CIA sponsored terrorism.

Biowarfare was frequently used during WWI even though all the major powers signed the 1907 Hague Convention outlawing the use of chemical projectiles in combat, that is except for the United States, which refused to sign the treaty. During WWI the war there were a million casualties from biowarfare and 10% of them were fatal.

In ancient times they also used biowarfare. They would dip their arrows in manure or in rotting corpses to make these projectiles more deadly.

After WWI Winston Churchill ordered the use of gas warfare against the Iraqis and he stated:

"I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes. The moral affect should be good..and it would spread a lively terror.. We cannot in any circumstances acquiesce in the non-use of any weapons which are available to procure a speedy termination of the disorder that prevails."

• "Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force 1919-1939 - and quotes of Winston Churchill - 1990

Biowar is nothing new. However, in 1925 the Geneva Protocol prohibited the use in war of "asphyxiating, poisonous, or other gases and of all analogous liquids, materials, and devices" including all "bacteriological" methods. All countries ratified the treaty by the 50s. It took a long time for all of them but it took a lot longer for the United States. Only two did ratified and sign this protocol by the 50s. They were Japan and you guessed it, the United States. Finally in 1970 the Japanese did ratify and not until 1974 did the U.S. sign - but this has not prevented it's use.

"There's always been a concern about biochemical weapons.... The concern now is deeper because the country is dealing with terrorists. The terrorists are not concerned with public opinion and want to kill as many people as possible.."

• Political science professor, Stephen Sloan, University of Oklahoma

In 1995, a "doomsday" cult, calling itself "Aum Supreme Truth" released sarin gas in a crowded subway as it neared a station and beneath government offices. 12 died and 6,000 became ill. What is the difference if a government uses it or a cult or an organization? How is it all right for one and not for the other? How is it not terrorism when a government, like England uses it on Iraqis but it is terrorism when it is used by anti-U.S. or anti-government organizations use it in the U.S.?

There has been a proliferation in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. Labs in Russia and 50,000 Russian scientists have worked on the BioWarfare Weapons project. And we also have tens of thousands of capsules full of biowarfare agents stored in the United States. Why would we have it if we would never use it?

"At its height, 70,000 people worked on the Soviet germ warfare programme, including 9,000 scientists and engineers who turned anthrax, the plague and smallpox into weapons of mass destruction, U.S.-based experts say."

• Reuters - Jon Boyle

Some have called bio weapons the "poor man's atom bomb", implying that it is just another form of horrendous warfare. How much less horrendous would it be to explode a nuclear weapon in Afghanistan?

According to Jane's Intelligence Review there are now 17 nation states which have biological weapons and many organizations, like Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda, which has an interest in developing BT (bio-terrorism) weapons.

All this leads in only one direction. (1) Use it first and (2) the tightening up of security and an erosion of civil-liberties. Some, including some right wing congressmen, are suggesting that we use weapons of mass destruction now - which is probably why so many do not also get too worked up over the use of depleted uranium, which kills and just keeps on killing after the war.

There are some who are willing to sacrifice civil-liberties for what they perceive to be more security, but when it really comes down to giving up free speech and the right to object who really becomes the victims and the real casualties of a war on rights? We all do. But first it will be those of us who complain. The victims of restraint and totalitarianism will always be those who are independent of mind and seek some redress for economic disparity; the first victims will be those of us who challenge the abuse of power.

If we are to assume the threat of biowar is from outside (though it increasingly appears the current Anthrax attacks may be from within) we need a sensible foreign policy and respect for other cultures. It was only a matter of time before they got fed up with our Christian missionaries and our exploitation of their resources and pushing our culture on them. It is easy to sit in judgment when people are different than we are. We have often done that. It is the foundation and basis of our racist U.S. foreign policy.

"Evildoers"

George W. Bush demonizes his enemies. He thinks in terms of an "axis of evil" and "Armageddon," an apocalyptic, faith-based "end of times" scenario and some would say that kind of delusionary thinking is pathological. He labels everyone who he perceives as the enemy, i.e. the Taliban and Osama bin Laden "evil" and they are thus considered something less than human and because they are his demons, he can use that justification to order the "Crusade" against them, and there is no remorse about the wholesale slaughter of anyone who gets in the way of the bombs.

The so-called "war on terrorism" and the sanctions against Iraq which cost as many as a million innocent Iraqis and the war against Iraqis which killed another million people and American lives wasted fighting these pseudo wars of aggressive. There is no remorse, no apologies for the barbaric murder of entire families attending a wedding party in Afghanistan (and other mistakes), calling them the enemy. They are not our enemies. Our enemy sits in Washington. Our enemy is a policy which considers money more important and more precious than lives. We are not safer. The killing hasn't eliminated terrorism but it has created many more insurgents.

Hank Roth

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for educational and discussion purposes pursuant to
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