The big news that’s not getting near the coverage it deserves is that we just can’t seem to find any trace of WMDs in Iraq. U.S. military teams searching for them are quietly pulling out under a depressing cloud of failure. D’oh. Rather than go on a political rant here like I probably could, I’ll leave it to my favorite political columnist Molly Ivins to eloquently say what needs to be said and then say it again. She recommends careful reading of articles like this one by Pulitzer Prize winner Sy Hersh in the New Yorker for the true scoop on the WMD witchhunt.
While we may not be able to find WMD in Iraq, we’re having better luck in Maryland. The FBI has announced finding objects contaminated with anthrax in a Maryland pond close to the U.S. Army Fort Detrick germ warfare facility. Hopefully, the find will reinvigorate the stalled Fall 2001 anthrax letter-attack investigation and perhaps provide new insight on Stephen Hatfill, the former Army scientist who had once worked at Ft. Detrick, lived near both the base and the pond,
and has been a prime suspect in the anthrax terrorist attacks.
With Iraq emasculated, other Axis Of Evil members besides Maryland who have WMD include North Korea and Iran. Administration policy towards these two budding nuclear powers has apparently taken a sharp turn from previous pronouncements. Rather than the decade-old United States declared policy that North Korea would be prevented, by any means necessary, from producing plutonium or highly enriched uranium, reluctant acceptance of a nuclear North Korea is apparently comptemplated. And with 200,000+ U.S. troops right next door in Iraq, Bush officials are publically calling for the UN’s nuclear agency to take a stand against Iranian nuclear efforts. These U.S. foreign policy actions are taking place against a backdrop of behind-the-scenes dissention about where to go from here to control WMDs by other countries.
Given that North Korea and Iran may currently be the only counties in the world actually manufacturing nuclear weapons right now, American WMD efforts are about to take an upswing. The U.S. has not manufactured, tested nor produced fissile material for nuclear weapons in more than a decade; it has dismantled more than 13,000 nuclear weapons since 1992 under various disarmament treaties and agreements with the Russians. Within the 2004 fiscal budget are funding requests to begin preliminary efforts to prepare for a restart of nuclear weapons testing in Nevada and to begin development of a new “low-yield” 5 kiloton “bunker-buster” nuke that could take out hardened underground targets.
Meanwhile, the five day “Topoff 2” homeland security exercise kicks off today in Seattle and Chicago, testing emergency response capabilities against simulated attacks by a radioactive “dirty bomb” and a bio-attack with plague. In this training exercise, a fictitious terror group will detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in Seattle on Monday at noon local time (3 p.m. EDT/1900 GMT) then spread pneumonic plague in another city, with flu-like symptoms to be reported in Chicago on Tuesday.
Finally, Bruce Simpson has begun his much-touted $5000 civilian cruise missile project. Stay tuned for more details right here on Sci-Fi Today / Sciscoop on this one…
Update [2003-5-13 6:20:59 by rickyjames]:: Interesting article on just this topic (tho on page 11) in the Tuesday May 13 issue of USA Today…