USA Response To Biological Terrorism

Great Debates
41

Apparently, a lot of people did. The Geneva conventions were updated in 1948 - that’s lightning speed for this sort of work - to make area/saturation bombing of cities a war crime. Which, btw, it still is. The necessity (and morality) of the bombing campaigns were indeed questioned. Or, perhaps more correctly, the necessity was questioned because the morality of incinerating civilians in firestorms was so problematic.

Returning to the OP: I can’t fit this recent attack, as scary as it is, in with the WTC bombings. The timing is wrong - why fire this gun now, when everybody is alert and networks are unravelled left and right, and not before ?

And where the perpetrators of the WTC crime were extremely competent, this attack really smacks of rank amateurism - if not in procuring the spores, then in the way they’re distributed. I really can’t see those two attacks as coming from the same organization.

If this indeed is the much-vaunted “second wave”, well, flip a big bird to Al Queda. You’ve lost, idiots.

S. Norman

42

Don’t be so quick to judge how ‘stupid’ this is. We don’t have all the facts yet. This could be a feint, or a way of tying up CDC and FBI assets while the real bio attack takes place quietly somewhere else. Maybe we’ll find out in a week that Smallpox is breaking out all over the country. Who knows?

But even if this is *one of their attacks, it seems pretty damned effective if the motive is to keep us feeling unsafe, slow down our mail system, spend a zillion dollars on investigation, etc.

This is another ‘classic’ asymmetric threat. They spend $20 on stamps, and we have to spent hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars on detection and cleanup. Also, hitting the news media was smart - it ensured disproportionate coverage of the danger, and if they get ‘lucky’ and someone like Tom Brokaw or Jay Leno actually develops anthrax, the effect on the psyche of the nation will be a lot greater than if they blew up a hundred people in a building somewhere.

The main problem these guys have is that they STILL don’t understand us at all. They are operating from the assumption that if they can just scare us enough we’ll capitulate. They are arrogant, seeing themselves as tough, focused, righteous people, and us as decadent and weak. They equate freedom with weakness. What they can’t seem to understand is that Americans have the strength of their moral conviction that they are on the right side of this conflict, and whenever Americans have felt that way they have proven themselves to be amazingly courageous and resourceful.

They aren’t the first people to make that mistake, and they probably won’t be the last. It seems like every few decades the U.S. has to demonstrate its willingness to stand up and fight against tyrants.

43

ruadh, my apologies on two counts: 1) I was, indeed, confused by your use of ‘technologically advanced form’. I’m still confused! But there’s a heck of a lot of confusion everywhere due to incorrect or inaccurate terms/information/descriptions being used in most of the news articles. I’m not a working professional, but do have an educational background that includes a lot of microbiology and other life sciences, so I make distinctions where those with different backgrounds do not.

  1. It’s not that I missed your point - it’s that I failed to address it. :o During some editing and rewriting I apparently deleted my response and didn’t notice it before hitting ‘submit’. Yeah, it’s becoming more and more obvious that some people are trying to prematurely point the finger at Iraq and talk war talk. It’s certainly possible that the anthrax spores came from Iraq, but they could have come from a LOT of places. And we may never know where it came from - it could be a common laboratory strain. And what if turns out to be a strain from, say, South America? More unanswered questions.

Weaponized/Aerosoled: The fact that the two people in FL contracted inhalation anthrax does not mean that the spores were ‘specially prepared’ in any way in a multi-million dollar weapons laboratory. ‘Aerosoled’ simply means ‘particles floating in air’ - you could ‘aerosol’ anthrax spores by throwing a handful up in the air. Or putting some in one of those hand-held plant-duster gadgets and spraying it. Please note: cases of inhalation anthrax have occurred for centuries, long before modern biological weapons were developed.

‘Weaponizing’ anthrax spores as an aerosol-type weapon basically involves producing huge amounts ground up into a fine enough powder that, when sprayed into the air, the particles will float on the air currents for a very long time before falling to the ground. So far, there is no indication that anything like this has occurred - the infections all seem to be connected to powder from envelopes. Anyone who stuck their nose in the envelope and took a good sniff to see what it smelled like could have inhaled enough spores to cause the disease. The source of the attacks could be anybody. :frowning:

A possibility I’ve not seen mentioned - what if the infected people in FL were snorting cocaine or something, and the spores were in the drugs? It doesn’t seem likely, since one of the victims is what? 70 years old? but it’s possible.

Something else I find interesting - the anthrax-positive powder with the NBC envelope has been said to be brown, while that sent to Daschle was described as white. Different sources for the anthrax? Different group of people? And supposedly the NBC letter pretty much said that the letter was contaminated - something about the recipient had better start taking medication, which sounds more like the ‘this letter contains anthrax’ threats of 1998.

I have some doubts about tracing this back to Iraq, or any country that produces anthrax as a weapon, at least by determining the ‘genetic fingerprint’. It would be incredibly foolish for any country to give the terrorists anthrax samples that could be positively identified as coming their weapons laboratories. OTOH, considering how bin Laden’s mind seems to work, this would be a good way to frame another country - like Iraq - and both widen the war and create more controversy among the Muslim countries. Who knows? I’ve heard some pretty stupid statements from American ‘sources’, ‘officials’, and ‘intelligence officers’ - maybe someone in Iraq WAS stupid enough to hand Atta a smoking gun.

If this is Al Quaida’s doing, it’s possible they had originally intended to use cropdusters to spray anthrax spores over Washington, D.C. or some other large city. Then they either could not get hold of a large enough amount, or found that the anthrax they had access to was not ‘weapons grade’ and so probably wouldn’t do much harm, so they settled for creating fear and panic by the powdered-envelope method, and, as Sam Stone pointed out, wasting valuable time and resources.

::throws hands in air:: The whole thing is terribly confusing, and I doubt we are being given enough information right now to make an informed judgement. There are a lot of things that are NOT being said that I have questions about, but I don’t expect any official answers anytime soon.

44

[quote]
Kalt: If citizens really hate their government’s actions, they will rise up and make changes.

There are many fallacies more famous than the “either-or” :slight_smile:

Historically, bad governments have been replaced. I cannot name one horrible government in the history of the world that has been able to quell rebellion indefinitely. Of course, by horrible I mean in reference to its own citizens, not other countries. Sure, all governments will try to stop a coup… nobody wants to lose power - but it will happen if the peoples’ lives are so bad they have nothing to lose by rising up.

Some things are black and white - and this is one of them, presuming we are “at war.” Our goal should never be to hurt foreign citizens, but a war cannot be waged without doing so, and we can’t “save America” without waging this war. If we don’t get rid of the Taliban, capture bin laden, and get rid of Saddam, and prevent any similar creatures from rising up to replace them, america will not be safe.

45

Man, Kalt. There are times when you sound so reasonable. I wish your positions were more well thought out more often. I am not trying to be insulting, rather that our own views contact at points every so often but the departures in between those points of contact are just too radical for me to be able to give you my support.

46

Well, here’s a quote from that article:

I was referring to the powder form.

47

Two people who worked in the DC post office are dead, and two others hospitalized in serious condition, with the most deadly form of anthrax, the inhalation variety.

Postal workers were told to stay at work, not wear protective clothing and not take antibiotics long after officials suspected there might be anthrax in their work environment.

From the MSNBC story:

And…

I’m not in favor of panic. But in light of these developments, I think it would be honest for those posters who pooh-poohed the idea of this being anywhere near serious to take a second look at their comments.

Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor: I’m curious what, in your view, the threshhold of infected and dead people is before this becomes an effective attack.

Duck Duck Goose: as it’s now clear that the anthrax attacks that you suggested might not be true were, in large measure, true… I guess I’m wondering what you have to say.

And so forth.

  • Rick
  • Rick
48

Thanks, Bricker. I’m sort of curious myself. I found the timing and nature of these attacks far too conspicuous to write off as mere coincidence.

49

In fact, I’d like to see this thread assume its original purpose.

Assuming we can identify the originator of this bioterrorism, what should our response be?

As I mentioned in another thread, I am a hair’s breadth away from advocating nuclear retaliation against any nation that sponsored this vile assault. That said, I still find it difficult to condone such a gruesome form of retribution. Not that the perpetrators are undeserving of such treatment, but that it is a threshhold I am not yet willing to traverse.

Because of a past pattern of conduct, I have extreme difficulty believing that Iraq does not have a hand in this. If this proves to be the case, what should be done?

I advocate a complete takeover of the nation by an international military alliance. However difficult it will be to restabilize the power vacuum this would create, it would neither be prudent nor in the interests of global security to allow the current government to remain in power. In the interests of local peacekeeping, Israel would once again be requested to warm the bench, but all NATO partners would be called upon for this mopping up. Does anyone envision another possible avenue of response?

50

Here’s what I don’t understand - when the government said that this variety of Anthrax was not ‘weaponized’, they meant two things - first, that the strain was natural, and not genetically engineered to be resistant to antibiotics. And second, that it was not ‘ground’ into spores small enough to make it into the mucous membranes of the lungs. Apparently, regular anthrax has a real hard time getting through those linings even if inhaled, because the spores are too big. So they will stick in the throat, or be coughed out without lodging where they can do damage.

Okay fine. So then maybe the first inhalation case was a fluke. But now I count at least five such cases, including the two dead postal workers. Does this mean that this is in fact highly processed Anthrax? If so, that pretty much puts the responsibility for this onto a state weapons lab, somewhere.

Now here’s the interesting part. If Iraq is involved, the administration has a seriously vested interest in keeping that quiet for the time being, for two reasons. First, if Saddam knows that we know he’s responsible, he’ll know that he’s going to be attacked and can start taking precautions (like destroying the anthrax he still has so we can’t do a genetic match and prove it), and building up his defenses to make it tougher for us to take military action.

And second, if Iraq’s responsibility becomes public knowledge, there will be immense pressure within the U.S. to do something about it, and immense pressure outside of the U.S. to not escalate the military campaign outside of Afghanistan. It could cause the coalition to collapse, which would put a serious crimp in the current military campaign.

So, the $64,000 question is - is the government engaging in a little wartime deception here? In other words, is there a temporary coverup of the nature of this Anthrax going on?

51

I think the difficulty our understaffed and underequipped demobilized military faces in prosecuting two separate theaters of war may dictate this.

52

I’d like to think that this extremely valid question merited answers from the parties mentioned.

53

For what it’s worth, here’s an update on what the authorities are thinking – in public, anyway – about where the attack is coming from.

54

We now have a woman dead in New York from anthrax. She was not a postal worker or a media employee. For the moment, public health officials are “baffled” at the source of her infection.

Again I’d like to ask Duck Duck Goose and Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor to reply to my questions above.

Without meaning to sound accusatory, both of you made some strong statements and predictions in this thread. If you no longer believe them, it’d be nice if you publicly acknowledged that maybe you made a little error.

  • Rick
55

Bump. Still waiting.

56

Once again the smooth manners & panache of you and Zenster have paid off. :rolleyes:

Leaving aside you suave insolence to your betters–i.e. myself; I shall answer you both.

Question: When does a biological warfare attack become effective?

Answer: When it does a whole hell of a lot more than this did.

Biological weapons are weapons of mass destruction–if used properly. The term “weapon of mass destruction” loosly means “kills lots of people”.

Bioweapons are intended to be sprayed into crowded areas to kill hundreds or thousands of people. As an Atomic Bomb would kill vast numbers, if it was used. That’s why people first made them.

These weapons are being used for individual murder, or at best, assassination. As another poster pointed out, this is like building an Atom Bomb solely for the purpose of beating a man over the head with it until his skull is crushed.

This is not an effective use.

***Here is the Rule Of Thumb For Effectiveness–

If a Weapon Of Mass Destruction takes more lives than the ammount of ordinary dynamite that could be purchased for the cost (in dollars $) of making the Weapon Of Mass Destruction takes, then the Weapon is effective.***

That is if A=the $ cost of making the Weapon

And B= the $ cost of buying the dynamite
And C= # of lives lost to the Weapon

And D= # of lives lost to dynamite described in B

Therefore

if C>D
And A<B then
then Weapon would be effective.

And don’t come snotting off to me about my “Cold Hearted Formula” either! YOU ASKED FOR A CLEAR DEFINITION OF WHEN THE STUFF BECOMES EFFECTIVE! WELL, HERE IT IS!!! :mad:

The Anthrax is not effective.

The majority of this substance has not harmed anybody. Most of the letters have been stopped cold. Most people exposed have recieved their antibiotics, and are fine.

While I’m here (and I haven’t logged on to this thread for a while, hence the delay in posting), I’ve got a beef.

Two posters in this thread have clearly given way to panic & an overt display of personal cowardness in the face of this crisis.

I will not name them.

But they should be ashamed.

We have all felt fear since 9/11, but pull yourselves together, dammit! Panic helps nothing.

57

Bosda - perhaps you mean “personal cowardice - I’m not sure Webster’s has heard of ‘cowardness.’”

I will disagree with your formula - although I’ll also give you a grudging thumbs-up for providing one.

Efficiency in a weapon is not a matter solely of cost graphed against kill ratio. Snipers are clearly less effective than carpet-bombing, yet military forces employ both large bombers are sharpshooters. Why? Because sometimes the key is delivering the weapon in a more specific manner.

If, for example, you only have a few ounces of anthrax, you can’t “effectively” use it on a crowd. It might also be prohbitive to get into a position to do so. But a few envelopes and stamps will get you on to the front pages of newspapers and the lead stories of network news everywhere.

I think, in other words, your formula needs more variables. How many people’s workdays are disrupted because the decontamination crew is called in? How many manhours of work are lost because a building is closed? How many people’s lives are disrupted as a result of the fear, or of the reality, that they need ‘preventative’ antibiotics?

Aren’t these factors in the enemy’s calculations, as much or more important than the number of deaths caused?

  • Rick
58

Suggesting that because the weapon was not used properly, the bio-terrorist/weapon of mass distruction labels should not be applied?

Just because the weapon’s full potential wasn’t realized does not mean we should all sigh with relief and proclaim that the attack was ineffective. How many people have to be instilled with the paranoid fear of anthrax infection, and how many millions of dollars have to be spent combing through haystacks looking for spores before we can say that an attack was effective?

59

“Your betters”

There’s a choice bit of “you suave insolence” if ever I saw any.

Get a fricking clue!

Regardless of the kill ratio you so glowingly speak of, how about the “asymmetric threat ratio”? No, there has not been a big “mass kill” that you might speak of. No, there has not been the “crop duster over Yankee Stadium” you seem to regard as a specific parameter for measurement.

How about the fact that these so-called minor attacks on our populace will now cost us billions of dollars that could have fought crime, fed starving children, furthered education, promoted employment and made the world a better place? How many will have died early because of less spending in that sector because of the reduced funds available? What shall now be cut back, breast cancer research? AIDS reasearch? Why don’t you feel free to select where the now diminished funds shall not go!

Do you not think that just maybe, this is a terror attack no matter the cost in human life? Do you not think that just maybe we had better ways of spending billions of dollars instead of pissing them away on whatever group saw fit to level a so-called minor threat against the US with this lethal and calculated assault upon our freedom? Do you not think that our nation’s security is precious enough to merit a full scale retaliation against those who would perpetrate such a heinous crime?

GET A CLUE!