Bioterrorism, the WMD Hoax and the Real Threat of the U.S. Bioweapons Program

Over ten years ago, President Clinton cited the thriller novel “Cobra Event” in proposing a multi-billion dollar bioterrorism preparedness program. Although no one had ever died from a biological terrorism incident, bioterrorism was being listed by the federal government as among the four top areas of global health concern along with polio eradication, infectious diseases (including HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria), and food and blood safety. While the 2001 mailed anthrax attack in which 5 died seemed to validate concern about bioterrorism, evidence later emerged linking the mailed spores to a U.S. government funded laboratory doing defense research..

In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Bush and Cheney promoted rumors, known to be false, that Iraq had smallpox weapons. This was an important part of the Iraqi WMD hoax, which led to an absurd “pre-event” smallpox inoculation campaign and soon after to the disastrous invasion of Iraq. Bush is already raising similar WMD arguments in a propaganda campaign against Iran which may be the prelude for military attacks on Iran by the U.S and its allies.

So-called “biodefense” may increase rather than decrease the risk of biological warfare. Fear of “blow-back” and retaliation has been the main deterrent against using biological and chemical weapons and “biodefense” has the goal of eliminating those deterrents. Just as “missile defense” has been described as a necessary part of a nuclear first-strike strategy, “biodefense” could make possible the first-strike use of biological and chemical weapons that continue to be in the U.S. arsenal.