CORONA VIRUS

(PART IV)

It is common knowledge throughout its history, that plague has been used as an offensive weapon against populations. The Mongols would catapult plague-infested corpses over the walls of besieged cities.

Thousands would die as the disease spread through the walled-in population.

During World War II, Japan dropped plague-infested fleas on China. American research growing out of the war experience led to a decades-long research project at Fort Detrick, Maryland, proving that biological warfare was a feasible method of waging war.

In 1969 U.S. President Richard Nixon ordered the research stopped, and in 1972 the United States signed a treaty with 70 other nations outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of biological weapons as a means of war. Despite this treaty, it is known that many nations, rich and poor alike, have developed biological weapons.

The former Soviet Union conducted a sophisticated effort to manufacture biological weapons during the Cold War years. For years scientists researched ways to genetically alter bubonic plague so as to make it resistant to many forms of modern treatment.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, the tracking and inventory of all this work has been a great concern. The United States and its allies fear that some of it could have fallen into the hands of terrorist groups and could one day be used against them.

After the first Gulf War in 1991, weapons inspectors confirmed that Iraq had developed biological weapons and had even equipped some warheads with germs to use against Saddam Hussein’s enemies. The location of these weapons since that time is part of the unsolved mystery of that regime. Could some of them be in the hands of al-Qaeda or some other radical Islamic group, waiting to be used on the West?

Are nations prepared?

Today America and the West brace themselves for further attacks from terrorist groups. What is perhaps feared most is a biological attack with smallpox or some other widely communicable germ. Experts know that the West is woefully under prepared for such an attack.

In June 2001, the Center for Strategic and International Studies hosted a senior-level war game examining the security challenges of a biological attack on the American homeland.

The premise was the appearance of a case of smallpox in Oklahoma City, rapidly spreading throughout the country. Among the lessons learned from the exercise: “An attack on the United States with biological weapons could threaten vital national security interests.

Massive civilian casualties, breakdown in essential institutions, violation of democratic processes, civil disorder, loss of confidence in government and reduced U.S. strategic flexibility abroad are among the ways a biological attack might compromise U.S. security".

Other estimates say that within days a million people would be dead and two to three times that many infected. No one knows what lies out there waiting to be used by groups wishing other nations harm. We only know that it could happen.(TO BE CONTINUED)