[casi] WMD's found at last - in Maryland

["farbuthnot" <asceptic@DELETETHISfreenetname.co.uk>]

Hidden, no paperwork, undeclared, inspectors barred - sound familiar? Where
are the A10's, the Bradleys, the JDAMS, the Cruise missiles? By the way now
Rumsfeld has said there are unlikely to be wmd's in Iraq and that was the
reason for war (we are told) even that tenuos reason is further
illegitimate. So what is the legal status of the US/UK Squatters?

WMD's and all else reminds me of a childhood rhyme, mabe I'll send it to
Rumsfeld.

'When I was going up the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today -
I wish that he would go away.'

  
 Published on Wednesday, May 28, 2003 by the Guardian/UK
US Finds Evidence of WMD At Last - Buried in a Field Near Maryland
by Julian Borger in Washington
 
The good news for the Pentagon yesterday was that its investigators had
finally unearthed evidence of weapons of mass destruction, including 100
vials of anthrax and other dangerous bacteria.
The bad news was that the stash was found, not in Iraq, but fewer than 50
miles from Washington, near Fort Detrick in the Maryland countryside.

Crews looking for industrial waste at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland
have found more than 2,000 tons of hazardous waste and live bacteria. The
contaminated soil is being stored in red containers. Crews expected to find
industrial waste, but they did not realize how much dangerous material they
would find. Crews found 40 drums of chemicals and 113 vials, some with
samples of live bacteria like E. coli. Investigators also found a
non-disease-forming strain of anthrax. (Photo/nbc4.com)
The anthrax was a non-virulent strain, and the discoveries are apparently
remnants of an abandoned germ warfare program. They merited only a local
news item in the Washington Post.
But suspicious finds in Iraq have made front-page news (before later being
cleared), given the failure of US military inspection teams to find evidence
of the weapons that were the justification for the March invasion.
Even more embarrassing for the Pentagon, there was no documentation about
the various biological agents disposed of at the US bio-defense center at
Fort Detrick. Iraq's failure to come up with paperwork proving the
destruction of its biological arsenal was portrayed by the US as evidence of
deception in the run-up to the war.
In an effort to explain why no chemical or biological weapons had been found
in Iraq, the US defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said yesterday the
regime may have destroyed them before the war.
Speaking to the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations thinktank, he
said the speed of U.S. advance may have caught Iraq by surprise, but added:
"It is also possible that they decided that they would destroy them prior to
a conflict."
The US germ warfare program. at Fort Detrick was officially wound up in
1969, but the base has maintained a stock of nasty bugs to help maintain
America's defenses against biological attack.
The leading theory about the unsolved anthrax letter attacks in 2001 is that
they were carried out by a disgruntled former Fort Detrick employee;
equipment found dumped in a pond eight miles from the base has been linked
to the crimes.
The Fort Detrick clean-up has unearthed over 2,000 tonnes of hazardous
waste.
The sanitation crews were shocked to find vials containing live bacteria. As
well as the vaccine form of anthrax, the discarded biological agents
included Brucella melitensis, which causes the virulent flu-like disease
brucellosis, and klebsiella, a cause of pneumonia.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
###

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