Also another recent news story here in America called ‘Able Danger’ was a group of super secret intelligence operatives (Spies) that bypassed the government to a certain extent so in fact evidence shows they likely knew enough information to stop 9/11 the U.S.S. Cole attacks etc. but where paper-worked into submission by the higher ups.
They are getting enough votes in congress today to start a commission on this subject that will possibly change the way we Americans and the world conduct overall governance. This might be a bigger story then even Deep Throat, BushyGate etc.
There are too many legalisms that inhibit our ability to conduct business still.

To Mark: 'Wars are similar to sports where usually there are ethics involved etc.' is a deeply dangerous illusion.

The fundamental fact of war has been this: usually, when an actor -- tribe, group or state -- goes to war, they've committed themselves to accept the possibility of violent death and maiming for numbers -- sometimes great numbers -- of their individual members, rather than bear some other consequence (end of their social order, defeat of their ambitions, however interpreted).

To be sure, group ethics may be involved in an actor's motivations for going to war. But more often than not ethics of martial conduct go by the wayside: wars are fought to be won. Certainly, at a war's beginning the majority of individuals in a society/group often hold what becomes an unreasonably optimistic assessment of the cost their side will pay. As they get further 'committed' - pay a higher cost - ethics of conduct tend to dissipate: wars - again - are fought to be won.

A couple of obvious examples:-

[1] The American Civil War. At its start, the Northern public confidently expected this conflict to last six months before the South folded with minimum bloodshed. As the Civil War proceeded, Northern generals like McKinley consistently flinched from the cost in blood and burning that full engagement with the South would entail. Consequently, it became clear to the Union side that it could actually lose. There was much squalling in the North before Lincoln found U.S. Grant and Sherman, generals who fought to win. Grant was once asked when the war would end. He answered in very specific, literal, clear-eyed terms: when we have killed 270,000 Confederate males. He meant that there were precisly that number of Southern males who, in many cases, had never labored, saw slave-ownership as their god-given right, and would die rather than accept the abolition of the true and proper (as they saw it) order of their society. And so it was: they died.

[2} The U.S. in World War II. Briefly, imagine if Americans had been told at the war's start that by its end they would be dropping from the air historically unprecedented bombs that killed many hundreds of thousands of civilians at a time. Most Americans, I think, would have refused to accept that U.S. conduct would have 'descended' to such 'monstrous' conduct.

Note that both the above instances werre 'good wars' and the winning side that undertook such savage war-ending measures was the 'ethically superior' one. Because the North really did fight to end slavery; a peaceful U.S. was struck first at Pearl Harbor by a savagely militaristic Japan

Edited by author 11-17-2005 04:35 PM
To Charlie:

Having said below what 'the fundamental fact of war has been' through history, let me also note that this may no longer hold in the 21st century. We face an unprecedented prospect.

Specifically, you write: 'The requirements for a terrorist CB weapon are almost the opposite of those for a military one.... The military uses of CB weapons broadly encompass three goals: Area denial; Incapacitating or killing enemy troop; Terrorising civilians.'

You make the conventional assumptions, in other words. And since you believe the military aims of CB weapons must be the conventional ones that you cite above and (specifically) biological weapons generally don't produce immediate destruction etcetera, you assume that the military uses of bioweapons are very limited -- really, limited to functioning as a deterrent.

You could not be more wrong. I'm afraid that bioweapons have immense military applications in the 21st century precisely because they don't do the conventional military things.

Sun Tzu, in the Art of War, writes: "To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. Therefore, the skilful general subdues the enemy's troops without fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field." In more contemporary terms, today's military habitually uses the phrase "changing the enemy's behavior" to describe their
core aim.

Thanks to pioneers like Serguei Popov, former division head in charge of genetically engineered bioweaponeering at the Vector and then the Obolensk facilities of Biopreparat, we now know that in principle designer pathogens that target a very broad range of specific biological effects in the central nervous system - memory, cognition, the capacity for terror, joy, etcetera - are possible.

For a few technical hints on designer pathogens designed for behavior modification of target populations, here's an interview with Popov from right after he surfaced in 1999.

http://www.homelandsecurity.org/newjournal...ew2.asp?interview=3

Here's another piece with a more general approach I did in 2003 where I interview Alibek, former Biopreparat chief scientist (basically, a glorified epidemiologist) and Popov (one of the most lucid and nicest scientists I have met -- and let that be a lesson to us all).

http://www.gmu.edu/centers/biodefense/pdf/The_looming_threat.pdf

Mark: bioweapons and chemical weapons are Not The Same. Conflating the two is a category error. (Chemical weapons don't self-replicate and mutate ...)

I was talking specifically about chemical warfare. Bioweapons are a completely different can of worms.

I should also note that I'd take anything Popov or Alibek say with a pinch of salt -- they've got a vested interest in talking their field up. But yes, there's some weird shit out there.

Charlie;

[1] You write: 'I was talking specifically about chemical warfare. Bioweapons are a completely different can of worms.'

Dude, you did write CBW in your post. However, see below ...

[2]You write: "bioweapons and chemical weapons are Not The Same. Conflating the two is a category error. (Chemical weapons don't self-replicate and mutate ...)'

Agreed, chemical weapons don't self-replicate and mutate. Unfortunately, while I used to assume the same thing as you, I made no category error. There's a continuum: the revolution in TARGETING SPECIFICITY we are seeing in pharmaceuticals - chemicals - is absolutely portable to bioweapons.

For a good summation, see this paper by British scientist-arms control specialist Malcolm Dando, called "Scientific and Technological Change and the Future of CWC: the Problem of Non-Lethal Weapons."

http://www.unidir.ch/pdf/articles/pdf-art1824.pdf

Matt Meselson, who did the first experiments that proved DNA replicated as Watson-Crick said and who played a large role in persuading the US to sign the 1972 convention banning bioweapons, recently gave me a very nice quote. "We have a firebreak between chemical and biological weapons." That puts it in a nutshell.


[3] You write: 'I'd take anything Popov or Alibek say with a pinch of salt -- they've got a vested interest in talking their field up."

For sure. I have in fact spent a bunch of time trying to catch both gentlemen out, often by cross-referencing with other interviewers.

Alibek is obviously dubious and with a heavy vested interest; he's no genetic engineer and his claims on Ebola-smallpox chimeras just don't corrrelate with the available technology in 1992.

Popov is something else. Firstly, I've never caught him in an outright false claim or lie. But you have to listen carefully to what he says. He definitely can mislead by omission or the emphasis he places on certain things. Secondly -- and I don't know if you know this - he surfaced into the whole biodefense boom/business/scam having first created for himself a whole new career in Texas. Doesn't mean he's not vested in bioweapons/biodefense now. But he's a very different kind of guy than Alibek.

Well, no one imagined fertilizer bombs either used in the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995.

Whatever it is that terrorists use, it will be a common place item that has an obscure destructive use when combined with the right elements.

Having said that, these days I'm more worried about Bird Flu than Osama.

Respects,
Steve
Northtown, Missouri

No one outside Northern Ireland, and quite a few other terrorism hotspots. And the fertisliser/fuel mixtures are used as commercial explosives; I recall the process being shown on Blue Peter.

Another recollection: a book called The Bulletcatchers, about the bodyguard business, which included an account of the truck-bomb attack on the USMC in Beirut. Apparently, a senior British diplomat (the Ambassador?) was visiting the location, and his bodyguard, a British military policeman, recognised what was about to happen. What I recall is that the British Embassy was set up so that a truckload of anything couldn't easily drive in, but the USMC base was effectively wide open.

Of course, being in Britain, I expect I get the "stupid Yanks" versions of these stories; the officer commanding British naval forces in the Kuwait war had a few sharp comments about how the USN kept forgetting the minesweeping when they made their plans.

Which does make me wonder if there's something a bit more fundamental to the whole sorry mess than a few arrogant American politicians.

Anyway, while you can't reasonably plan for every possible attack, the US seems to have switched from "It can't happen here!" to standing on the kitchen chair, screaming "Thomas!", when the problem might be cochroaches rather than mice.

Edited by author 11-18-2005 11:21 AM
Mark Williams Pontin:

The Civil War was meant to dissuade the South from breaking from the Union thus creating the Republican party in the process. A Republic-nationalistic minded party under Lincoln. Actually the war was declared because of the succession of the South from the Union; although slavery was a mobilizing factor.

An overall 'Kill ?em all mentality' is reserved for the vanquished because, in the end, the evil always loose.
What is extremely disturbing to me, is most Republicans today sounding allot like their defeated counterparts from that war. War is not meant to break and destroy things it?s meant to stop the other side from breaking and destroying things. When did these people get the idea that one such object is evil over another. Even Jesus taught against this. Also we have the Army Core of Engineers that builds as much as they might destroy.
The Democrats do have a hint of, what I call, Reverse Imperialism though but I?m not sure.
In the end, extreme measures were taken, in those wars you described, not as a rational for the means, but a justification for the end. The end doesn't constitute a readiness of a complete slaughter/mind control of everyone on the face of the planet. Hitler Japan etc.
I am not a person who thinks warring is automatically evil. There are fun wars like in video games - books or wars that promote competition and growth or disable a disturbed enemy. Mental and physical.
I think it's called something like 'all means necessary' or something Wesley Clark was touting; but what was his plan??? That's what a good officer of the law or Knight does. Deterrence or preventive measures. Chivalry. The pen is mightier then the sword, sometimes.

That's fine if some Republicans think dancing in the dessert is a deterrent but they have categorically not proved it yet.

Also, couldn’t a nuclear weapon be considered a chemical weapon?
Slaughter of the last 100 years has never been scene throughout history. So there is a balancing error here. Plus we have so much more ability for preventative measures now with things like the Internet. By closing information we would be limiting our deterrent capability. Example: Not letting Iran use nuclear material for peaceful purposes. Another example of looking under the lamppost. Plus I think Iran should take over Iraq anyway. They’re pretty much the same and would cause more stability.

NOTE:
Ah, I think I am getting punctuation errors from my editor. I'm on a Linux box using OpenOffice.

Edited by author 11-18-2005 11:31 AM
the evil always loose. [sic]

Rubbish.

couldn’t a nuclear weapon be considered a chemical weapon?

Only to the same extent that a bow and arrow could be considered a biological weapon because the bow is made of wood.

(Which is to say, that's a really silly statement.)

Edited by author 11-18-2005 11:37 AM
In the end they always loosed or we wouldn't be here tooday. Society would never have evolved. So more "overall" (In the end). Good is better then Evil so Ha!

I'm talking about the nuclear fallout of radiation.

With fallout, it's radioactive decay which releases the energy that does the damage (which is a nuclear reaction, not a chemical one, obviously).

Chemical weapons use chemical reactions, nuclear ones use nuclear ones (whether it's the chain reaction of a fission bomb, or spontaneous decay of scattered material in the case of the hypothetical dirty bomb).

Also, it might be more true to say that winners have a habit of declaring losers to be evil, or morally or socially deficient, after the fact, in order to make their defeat seem like it was inevitable and justified. A kill'em'all mentality worked fine on aboriginals in the Americas, in terms of getting to be the ones still here today.

At a slight tangent to all this, you can just about sing "Bouncing the rubble" to the phrase "Waltzing Matilda".

You ought to get out and meet more different kinds of people. You talk like someone who thinks the world is full of smart, curious, literate, interesting, and competent people. People like you and your associates.
Security through obscurity does not work on your kind of people. Then there are the others. Security through obscurity works very well on most (99%) of humanity. I do not exaggerate. Most people in the world don't know what an LD50 is, or why mercury is more lethal in different forms, or well, basically anything outside their daily life.

My posting was contentious. I don't think I should post till half an hour after I've had something to eat and gotten my blood sugar up.

Edited by author 11-19-2005 12:12 PM
I deleted this message because I decided it was too useful to the bad guys.

The "bad guys" are a movable feast. (Who's bad? Osama bin Laden? The guys who are currently force-feeding two or three hundred hunger strikers in Gitmo and torturing prisoners for the CIA in Poland?) Anyway, the ones to worry about probably have enough imagination and expertise that they don't need to trawl the web for ideas.

Suffice to say, I wouldn't be talking about stuff like dimethyl mercury if I thought it remotely likely that I'd be giving ideas to someone who was competent to use it but wouldn't otherwise think of it.

The fact is, most people who turn to terrorism as a tactic are lazy -- lazy at a deep, existential level, lazy enough that scaring the shit out of people seems like an easier route to success than spending thirty years campaigning with a ballot box and a megaphone. But that's another rant ...