Bush "Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons" for Offensive Use

[Jcrowley]

Bush "Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons" for Offensive Use
    By Sherwood Ross


    In violation of the US Code and international law, the Bush administration is spending more money (in inflation-adjusted dollars) to develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2 billion spent in World War II on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb.

    So says Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress. He states the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and 'win' biological warfare" pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted "without public knowledge and review" in 2002.

    The Pentagon's Chemical and Biological Defense Program was revised in 2003 to implement those directives, endorsing "first-use" strike of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) in war, says Boyle, who teaches at the University of Illinois, Champaign.

    Terming the action "the proverbial smoking gun," Boyle said the mission of the controversial CBW program "has been altered to permit development of offensive capability in chemical and biological weapons!"

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122006R.shtml

[seemslikeadream]

1. U.S. Middle East Policy OUT OF CONTROL AND DANGEROUS ?

"In international legal terms, the Bush Jr. administration should be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international criminal law in violation of the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, due to its formulation and undertaking of war policies which are legally akin to those perpetrated by the Nazi regime in pre-World War II Germany."

Francis A. Boyle, Destroying World Order




Synopsis

Since the war in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom, Americans have been surprised to learn that much of the world now views the United States itself as a major threat to global peace. American international legal expert Francis A. Boyle examines the imperial dimensions of U.S. policy in the Middle East, past and present, which may help to account for these views.

In a hard-hitting commentary well-grounded in fact and in law, Boyle addresses the train of U.S. transgressions of international law, leading to havoc in the region, and destabilization of the world system as a whole. By the presidency of George W. Bush, U.S. policy had evolved to a public assertion of the right to preemptive war, and its actual implementation.

This book discusses U.S. assistance to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war, U.S. conduct of the 1990 Gulf War, and the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in relation to their violation of the laws of neutrality, humanitarian law, the laws of war--and the law of the U.S. Constitution.

The concluding chapter provides a guide to impeaching President George W. Bush for lying in leading the nation to war.



Francis A. Boyle is a leading American professor, practitioner and advocate of international law. He was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. He served as Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations from 1991 to 1993, served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia-Herzegovina at the World Court. Professor Boyle teaches international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign and is author of, inter alia, Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, Defending Civil Resistance Under International Law, The Future of International Law and American Foreign Policy, Foundations of World Order: The Legalist Approach to International Relations 1898-1921, and The Bosnian People Charge Genocide.

Francis A. Boyle holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University.

[Morgana LaFey]

4. This should be its own thread nt

[Hoping4Change]

6. Thanks for posting this.

K & R

[rodeodance]

2. 750 US biologists signed a letter protesting what they saw as the excessive study of bioterror threa

The 1972 treaty, which the US signed, forbids developing weapons that spread disease, such as anthrax, regarded as "ideal" for germ warfare.

According to an article in the Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel of last September 28, Milton Leitenberg, a veteran arms-control advocate at the University of Maryland, said the government was spending billions on germ warfare with almost no analysis of threat. He said claims terrorists will use the weapons have been "deliberately exaggerated."

In March of the previous year, 750 US biologists signed a letter protesting what they saw as the excessive study of bioterror threats.

The Pentagon has not responded to the charges made by Boyle in this article.

[OneBlueSky]

3. impeach the bastard . . . now . . . n/t

.

[Marie26]

5. Is this it?

National Security Presidential Directive 33 - Biodefense for the 21st Century

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/index.html

White House press release on NSPD 33 -

PRESIDENTIAL ACTION

President Bush has made strengthening the nation's defenses against biological weapons a critical national priority from the outset of the administration -- investing over $10 billion since 2001. While significant progress has been made to protect America, President Bush instructed Federal departments and agencies to review their efforts and find new and better ways to secure America from bioattacks.

The result of this review is Biodefense for the 21st Century, a presidential directive that provides a comprehensive framework for our nation's biodefense. Biodefense for the 21st Century builds on past accomplishments, specifies roles and responsibilities, and integrates the programs and efforts of various communities -- national security, medical, public health, intelligence, diplomatic, agricultural and law enforcement -- into a sustained and focused national effort against biological weapons threats.

BIODEFENSE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Many new programs have been launched to assure the development of vastly improved capabilities over the mid- and long-term. For example:

- Biodefense medical research and development at the National Institutes of Health has been funded at over $1.5 billion per year since fiscal year 2003, 30 times the investment in fiscal year 2001; and
- The new National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasure Center at the Department of Homeland Security is applying cutting-edge science to the study of biological agents and providing a world-class forensics center.

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/biodef.html

I've never heard of this "National Biodefense Center" before, but it's huge.

"As of 2004, a "national biodefense campus" is under construction at Ft. Detrick, MD. With start-up costs conservatively pegged at over $1 billion, this cluster of three laboratories (under the control of DHS, the US Army, and National Institutes of Health), joins existing or planned federally subsidized labs at Boston University, (etc.) to create what Rutgers University biochemist Richard H. Ebright calls an "enormous overcapacity" in biodefense research. The DHS piece of this unholy trinity is the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasure Center. ... In any event, the proposal for the Ft. Detrick campus struck many reasearchers as so profligate and unwise an expenditure of $1 billion dollars that several spoke out in opposition."

Homeland Security Scams, James Bennett

http://books.google.com/books?id=zW9LLWKGW34C&pg=RA1-PA192&lpg=RA1-PA192&dq=%22national+biodefense+analysis+and+countermeasure+center%22&source=web&ots=8bucHHql7Q&sig=aKpyk9V__o7Fx01E03WuAiCjds4#PRA1-PA192,M1

Also, wasn't Ft. Detrick where the anthrax that was used in the 2002 attacks was traced to? Hmmm.

Article from today:

DHS picks Battelle to run biodefense lab

WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security named the Battelle National Biodefense Institute as operators of a new biological-threat analysis lab in Maryland.

Battelle received a five-year contract from the department to carry out both operations and scientific programs at the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center currently under construction at Fort Detrick, Md.

Battelle's initial five-year contract is valued at $250 million. It includes provisions for five one-year extensions that would bring the total potential value of the pact to $500 million.

http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20061220-033042-3767r

Someone's making a ton of money from this. Has anyone heard of Battelle before? I wonder if they're connected to one of the other Bush crony companies.

ETA:

Wow - Battelle is actually involved in anthrax vaccine research, and one one of only five laboratories that had the Ames strain of anthrax that was used in the 2001 anthrax terrorist attacks.

Ames Strain Of Anthrax Limited to Few Labs

Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, November 30, 2001; Page A01

"Since the mid-1980s, the U.S. Army laboratory that is the main custodian of the virulent strain of anthrax used in the recent terrorist attacks distributed the bacteria to just five labs in the United States, Canada and England, according to government documents and interviews.

Two of the labs -- both in the private sector -- received the strain this spring, only a few months before letters tainted with anthrax spores were mailed to New York and Washington, the records show.

"Transfer records obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act show that USAMRIID, which is located in Frederick, shared the Ames strain last March with scientists at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, an Albuquerque research institute, and in May and June with the Battelle Memorial Institute, a Columbus, Ohio, corporation involved in anthrax vaccine research.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36408-2001Nov29

Anyone seeing a pattern here? Anthrax mailings in 2002 create sudden demand for biodefense technology & anthrax vaccines. Battelle was one of only 2 private companies that had this strain of anthrax, and months after Battelle received it, the Ames-strain anthrax mailings began. Batelle reaps the benefits of the millions of dollars of DHS pork spent on anthrax/biological weapons research, and two years later, Battelle gets a $500 million dollar contract for new biodefense institute. Means, motive, and opportunity. Battelle isn't building anthrax vaccines, they're building better, deadlier forms of anthrax for use as bioweapons.

U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits

Sept. 4, 2001 -

NY TIMES - "Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons that, some officials say, tests the limits of the global treaty banning such weapons. ...

Earlier this year, administration officials said, the Pentagon drew up plans to engineer genetically a potentially more potent variant of the bacterium that causes anthrax, a deadly disease ideal for germ warfare.

Among the facilities likely to be open to inspection under the draft agreement would be the West Jefferson, Ohio, laboratory of the Battelle Memorial Institute, a military contractor that has been selected to create the genetically altered anthrax. ."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E1D71639F937A3575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=health

[PATRICK]

10. "Smart" germs

Openly they gleefully(Wolfowitz, you moron) look forward to being able to have DNA specific bugs, hunter killers of bloodlines and possibly races and ethnic groups at the fingertip control of our new Imperial Dictatorship. I was amazed that Wolfowitz himself could be so openly enthusiastic. They still HATE Jews, all those twit brained plutocrats he fronts for.

These uses, of course, are not primarily for defense or foreign conflicts at all, but can be another invisible tool in the already invisible arsenal aimed at our own citizenry and rivals to the kleptocrat dynasties. And, of course, only idiots could dream that techno-marvels create "perfect" controls and utility on such things as turn even the most unsophisticated and wild terrorist's hair white. The failures of Star Wars bio crop security, smart weapons, infallible spaceship technonolgy, the anthrax internal attack, means absolutely(Repreat it one million times, absolutely)NOTHING compared to the immediate profits being made in the boondoggle leading up to this dark dream.

[DoYouEverWonder]

11. Guys like Wolfowitz

never seem to realize that what they would like to do to others, can just has easily be used against themselves.

[PATRICK]

13. I heard this on TV

as he was talking down to receptive students. One can only wonder what cabinet meeting or briefing filled him with such info that he felt free to share with the public as a cool thing for national defense. The other topics those lunatics poss about as opposed to sane policy include space war follies and every conceivable misapplication of technology these dinosaurs are borrowing from the future in order to kill it.

[nam78_two]

7. K&R.nt

[Javaman]

8. Well, got to give him* this, he* doesn't go half way...

when he decides to wipe his* ass with the Geneva convention, he* spares no paper.

Can we NOW call him a war criminal?

And can't someone invade us to take away our WMD's?

[central scrutinizer]

9. nothing new here

The US has been waging covert biological warfare against Cuba for at least forty years.

http://www.poptel.org.uk/cuba-solidarity/CubaSi-January/Bio.html

http://santacruz.indymedia.org/mod/comments/display/13455/index.php

[Hubert Flottz]

12. God tells Bush to do some crazy assed shit!

[Danascot]

14. The Sunshine Project

is an organization dedicated to shedding light on govt activities related to biological warfare, labs, programs, etc and has been active for many years. The site is a great resource if you are looking for information on this topic. You can sign up for their mailing lists and get up to the minute news and info on new developments in this field.

http://www.sunshine-project.org/