Biological Weapons

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton was at the top of his formidable game in his press conference after the Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty he had signed back in September 1996.He was presidential in argument, literally, invoking the names of Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy as the fathers of arms control treaties in the 1950s and 1960s.He also echoed the attacks of President Richard Nixon (without using that name) on "new isolationists" in the 1970s.There is irony to that, of course: Nixon was frustrated by liberal Democrats wanting America to come home from Vietnam; President Clinton's target was conservative Republicans who don't want passports or anything else that smacks of internationalism.

WASHINGTON -- The United States is ill-prepared to combat a growing and "grave" threat from proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons around the world, a high-level government commission concludes.Nightmare scenarios include a disgruntled Russian scientist selling nuclear-weapons fuel to Iran, or anthrax being released in a subway at rush hour, sending 6,000 people to emergency rooms."These events have not taken place. But they could," warns the panel, chaired by former director of Central Intelligence John M. Deutch.

WASHINGTON -- Warning that terrorists will increasingly try to target America with cyber viruses and chemical and biological weapons, President Clinton proposed a budget increase of $2.8 billion yesterday to protect computer networks, stockpile medicines and train emergency workers.His proposal represents a 40 percent increase in spending for computer security and a doubling of funding for chemical and biological defense from two years ago.Some experts say more should be spent on life-saving vaccines and less on training military and other emergency workers.

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration interrupted the momentum toward military action with Iraq last night to allow for an 11th-hour diplomatic gambit by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.Meeting late into the evening, the Security Council gave Annan the authority to send a letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein holding out the promise of an end to economic sanctions if he grants free rein to weapons inspectors.Although the United States continued to amass a force capable of inflicting significant damage on Iraq, the new diplomatic process seemed likely to delay the start of airstrikes for a few days at least.

THE CLOSEST to a time frame for concessions by Saddam Hussein was given yesterday by the U.S. commander in the Mideast region, Gen. Anthony Zinni, who said his forces would be in place to bomb Iraq in "a week or so." That's how much time there is to prevent this attack.President Clinton has responsibly stated the attainable purpose: The mission would be to reduce the rogue state's ability to create and deliver chemical and biological weapons. No promise of eradicating them. No talk about deposing the dictator.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton lifted the threat of imminent airstrikes against Iraq yesterday, and the United Nations announced that its weapons inspectors would return to Iraq tomorrow.Clinton canceled orders to attack Iraq after accepting Baghdad's pledge to let U.N. inspectors uncover its secrets for developing weapons of mass destruction. But he vowed "we remain ready to act" if President Saddam Hussein fails to give the inspectors unfettered access to sites and documents."Iraq has backed down, but that is not enough," Clinton said.

WASHINGTON -- Once President Clinton gives the order to attack Iraq, an Air Force pilot will roar off a runway at Al Jaber air base in Kuwait and head west, his F-16CJ fighter outfitted with anti-radar missiles designed to obliterate the air defense system around Baghdad.In the Persian Gulf, at about the same time, a Navy pilot will scramble aboard his F-14 Tomcat, screech off the USS George Washington and bank north toward Iraq, equipped with a new 2,000-pound laser-guided penetrating bomb destined for a chemical weapons facility.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton ordered a second aircraft carrier group to the Persian Gulf yesterday to prepare for possible military action if Iraq continues to block inspections of its chemical and biological weapons programs.Clinton called his dispatch of the carrier George Washington, with four accompanying ships and 54 planes, "a prudent measure to help assure that we have the forces we need for any contingency."The White House and Pentagon highlighted the move in an effort to increase psychological pressure on Iraq.

LONDON -- Imagine that the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France gave up all their nuclear weapons under international treaty. Next, imagine that a rogue nation secretly developed a nuclear arsenal and posed the risk of threatening a nuclear attack. Now imagine that the big powers quietly decided to overlook the situation and continue to live without the capacity to retaliate in kind.Actually, that is what has happened with another weapon of mass destruction, one that could, in the right conditions, kill 100,000 people in a city of 500,000.

The first name of Sgt. 1st Class David Isenberg was incorrectly reported in a photo caption accompanying an article Tuesday about the Army's Technical Escort Unit, the U.S. military's chemical bomb squad.The Sun regrets the error.Call them the chemical cowboys.On a moment's notice, these highly trained soldiers and civilians of the Army's Technical Escort Unit are dispatched from drab brick and block buildings at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County to remove old, unexploded chemical shells on U.S. military bases, to clean up forgotten caches of weapons endangering homes and businesses, or to dispose of enemy stockpiles of poison arms.

The impending closure of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax-laced mailings of 2001 has generated new interest in the question: Are we safer today than we were when anthrax was distributed up and down the Eastern seaboard, killing five people and sickening 17 others? Unfortunately, the answer is probably no - despite our government's best efforts to prevent a future bioterrorist incident. Bioterrorism is like no other national security threat. What makes defending against it so challenging is the blurred line between beneficial research and destructive intent.

Jan. 9 1861 Mississippi seceded from the Union. 2003 U.N. weapons inspectors said there was no "smoking gun" to prove Iraq had nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

Sealed in a small steel chamber at the Edgewood area of Aberdeen Proving Ground, Tim Blades drilled a hole in a 1980s-era nerve gas artillery shell recovered in Iraq. Insurgents there used chemical shells at least once in an improvised explosive, and the Army wanted to determine how big a threat similar aging weapons posed. As the drill pierced the metal skin, something unexpected happened. A mix of sarin and cyclosarin, two super-toxic nerve agents, shot out, spraying yellow poisons inside a protective box, which began to leak.

Peter Joseph Stopa, a civilian researcher with the Army who made important scientific and diplomatic contributions to biological defense technologies, died Tuesday at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, three weeks after he was diagnosed with lung cancer. The Freeland resident was 54. Since 1988, Mr. Stopa had worked at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground, where he helped develop tools that can detect chemical and biological weapons. He was also a lead liaison between the U.S. and Polish militaries in the two countries' coordination of biological defense efforts.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A group of high-ranking Iraqi officials from the previous regime, including two female biological weapons experts known as Dr. Germ and Mrs. Anthrax, have been released after almost three years in detention, American officials said yesterday. The releases came as violence again struck across the country and as an Islamic militant group released a videotape that it claimed showed the execution of an American hostage kidnapped earlier this month. Dubbed "Dr. Germ" for her involvement in Saddam Hussein's biological weapons, Rihab Taha was one of eight people released, according to the U.S. military.

CONFUSED ABOUT the war in Iraq? You're not the only one. More than two years after the fighting started, it's still going on and it's becoming harder and harder to remember what it was all supposed to be about. So today we're offering a Readers' Guide to the Road to War. We turn the clock back to the spring of 2003 and let the people who opened hostilities explain, in their own words, what they were shooting for. Compiled by Will Englund; artwork by KAL. So, why did we have to go to war in Iraq?

WASHINGTON - Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warned yesterday that they might not be prepared to vote on John R. Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations on May 12, as they had agreed to do. In a letter sent yesterday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asking for more documents, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the committee's ranking Democrat, wrote that when he agreed to the date he believed the administration would...

LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair gave his most explicit apology to date yesterday for the flawed intelligence assessments upon which he took Britain to war in Iraq, but he rejected opposition accusations that he had misrepresented that intelligence. "I take full responsibility and apologize for any information given in good faith that has subsequently turned out to be wrong," Blair told the House of Commons during a spirited exchange with opposition members. "What I do not in any way accept is that there was a deception of anyone," Blair said.

WASHINGTON - Insurgent networks across Iraq are increasingly trying to acquire and use toxic nerve gases, blister agents and germ weapons against U.S. and coalition forces, according to a CIA report, and investigators said one group recruited scientists and sought to prepare poisons over seven months before it was dismantled in June. U.S. officials say the threat is especially worrisome because leaders of the previously unknown group, which investigators dubbed the "Al-Abud network," were based in Fallujah in proximity to insurgents aligned with fugitive militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

WASHINGTON - In the heat of last night's debate, President Bush and Sen. John Kerry both stretched the truth and glossed over important details in discussing their own and their opponent's positions. Here are the candidates' statements that drifted furthest from the facts. Bush said, "Saddam Hussein had no intention of disarming. As a matter of fact, my opponent talks about inspectors. The facts are that he was systematically deceiving the inspectors." By the time United Nations inspectors returned to Iraq in late fall 2002, Iraq had been substantially disarmed.