Get your own Free Home PageBecause Emperor Billy J. is using Iraq's alleged biological warfare capability as an excuse to act presidential by ordering others to kill defenseless people, I thought you might want to know something about the stuff.
Biological warfare (BW to policy wonks) is one of those good news-bad news subjects. The good news is that daylight kills most established biological agents so they don't last as long as, say, mustard gas.
The bad news is that countries suspected of having clandestine, offensive, biological-warfare programs include China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Libya, North Korea, Russia, South Korea, Syria, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Somehow I doubt Billy J. will wish to bomb all of those countries, especially the ones in a position to bomb back.
The bad news is the germs are easy to obtain and reproduce. The good news is it is not so easy to ``weaponize'' them. That means preparing them in a form that can be delivered.
The bad news is facilities required for BW research, development and production are small enough (maybe 25 square meters) to be put inside a legitimate pharmaceutical, medical, agricultural, food or fermentation facility. All the equipment necessary is the same whether it's being used for civilian or military purposes. Makes detection tough.
The good news is that it is easier to detect the second phase -- testing, filling and stockpiling munitions, testing delivery systems, and conducting military training.
More good news is that delivering this stuff effectively is not easy, as there are many technical difficulties in delivering it with bombs or missiles, and the weather, assuming you can get it where you want it, can have a tremendous effect on its distribution. U.S. tests found at one time that BW agents delivered by bomb were rendered 98 percent ineffective.
It should be noted that Iraq, for example, has never used its BW capability, and much or all (depending on who you believe) was destroyed under U.N. supervision. But when he had it all, Saddam Hussein did not use it against the Iranians, Kurds, Israelis or Americans.
Which brings us to the point that deterrence is the best defense against its use. All of the above factual data is from the Strategic Survey 1996/1997 published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
What America is lacking in the post-Cold War world is a coherent foreign and strategic policy. The fault for this lies equally with Republicans and Democrats, both of whom seem to view national defense as nothing more than a pork-barrel project and foreign policy as nothing more than an opportunity to cater to domestic political interests.
This is dangerous. The United States has in recent years become fixated and obsessed with Third World countries -- Iraq, Haiti and Somalia -- that pose no strategic threat to us at all. It has become involved in a Balkan civil war, which likewise poses no strategic threat at all.
In the meantime, our defense posture is diminished and the two countries we ought to be giving the most attention to -- China and Russia -- are practically ignored. Both have the capability of posing a strategic threat to the United States. Russia, despite its economic problems, retains 10,000 or so nuclear warheads and the means of delivering them in addition to its huge chemical- and biological-warfare stockpiles. China is developing its intercontinental ballistic missiles and also has chemical- and biological-warfare capability.
Yet Billy J. seems to think that China is just a source of cheap labor for tennis shoes and that he can stick his finger in Russia's eye without any consequences. Russia, by the way, which already has deployed a mobile ICBM force, just successfully tested a new mobile ICBM.
You and BJ can worry about little countries if you like. I prefer to worry about the big ones.
Feb. 22 is the birthday of one of the greatest human beings ever to walk on the Earth -- George Washington.
It's amusing that some people do not want schools named after Washington, because he owned slaves. Such folks just reveal their ignorance of slavery and history in general. Suffice it to say that the slave, Cinque, the hero of the current movie Amistad, which is about a slave revolt, went back to Africa and became a slave trader himself (see The Oxford History of the American People). I suppose, therefore, that he is irrelevant and that no black person should go see the movie.
Washington owned slaves for the same reason he owned wigs and rode horses. It was part of the world into which he was born. He disapproved of the institution, urged its legal abolition and provided in his will that, upon his death, his own slaves would be freed. No man could have done more in his day.
But the rantings of post-modern ignoramuses aside, Americans owe their liberty (at least what's left of it) to Washington -- and not because he was a good general, though he was.
Most revolutions go bad and end up in dictatorships after they are successful militarily. The Puritan Revolution in England, the French Revolution and the communist revolutions of this century all ended up in dictatorships to one degree or another. Ours could have, too, but it didn't, because of Washington. The narcotic of power and fame and adulation had no effect on him.
It's hard to grasp today how popular Washington was. Some people wanted to make him king. Certainly, he could have led the American people in any direction he chose. He chose freedom and a republican form of government.
Opponents of the 1787 Constitution all agreed that its ratification was entirely attributable to Washington's support of it. It was Washington who set the precedent that a president would be called only Mr. President, that he would serve only two terms, that the Constitution must be strictly obeyed.
What distinguished Washington, aside from his courage and competence, was his integrity. A British historian said of him, ``In Washington, America found a leader who could be induced by no earthly motive to tell a falsehood, or to break an engagement, or to commit any dishonorable act.''
Thomas Jefferson said, ``He errs as other men do, but errs with integrity.''
An artist, Gilbert Stuart, remarked that Washington was even physically different from any other man.
``There are features in his face totally different from what I ever observed in that of any other human being; the sockets of the eyes, for instance, are larger, and the upper part of the nose broader. All his features are indicative of the strongest passions; yet his judgment and great self-command make him appear a man of a different cast in the eyes of the world,'' Gilbert said.
Few, if any, humans can be said to be indispensable, but Washington probably was. There were others who could have handled the political chores of the revolution, but they could not have held together the ragged army and ultimately defeated the British. No one else could have welded the Federalists and the Republicans into one administration. No one else could have assured ratification of the Constitution simply by endorsing it.
There are several good biographies of Washington, and people ought to read them. Might as well. There are few people today worth reading about, though it is commonplace for two-bit entertainers and other nonentities to write autobiographies and memoirs.
As Daniel Webster said, if nothing else, America can be proud of Washington.
I finally figured out why I'm so disgruntled by post-modern America. I'm a World War II kid.
Growing up during America's last total and constitutional war had a profound effect on me. Patriotism, for me, is a given. I once saw a bunch of high-priced journalists on one of those long-winded public-television shows in which they discuss hypothetical situations.
One of these scenarios was that you're a war correspondent with enemy forces and you learn that they plan to ambush an American unit. Would you reveal their plans to the Americans? I couldn't believe my ears. Some of the journalists had to wrestle with the idea, and others actually said they would not tip off the Americans, because it was their job to be neutral.
That is utterly inconceivable to me. If I were a war correspondent, I wouldn't be with the enemy in the first place. But, if I did learn of an attack, I not only would tell the American forces. I would, if necessary, toss away my notebook, pick up a rifle and fight with them. How any human beings can imagine that their jobs override their duties as a citizen is incomprehensible to me. But not to a lot of contemporary Americans, which is why I'm an anachronism and proud of it.
Another belief acquired from growing up during the war was that the duty of the federal government was to do important things, such as defend the country against armed aggression. I can't abide a federal government that frets and fumes about people smoking or putting too much salt on their french fries and wimps out on defending the borders against unarmed immigrants. Most contemporary politicians aren't fit to shine the shoes of Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman.
Nor do I care for or approve of unconstitutional wars (all since World War II) with the corollary that the military will fight them while the rest of the country sits back in comfort and either gets rich, ignores them or actually gives aid and comfort to the enemy.
I said 20 years ago that when the American people made Jane Fonda rich and famous after she had actively aided a foreign enemy that was killing Americans and torturing prisoners of war, I knew that the United States was down the tubes as a nation. Nothing has happened to change my mind.
Today we have a philandering draft dodger as commander in chief. He's posturing and blustering about bombing a virtually unarmed, small Third World country. If Bill Clinton had to face a Nazi Germany or an Imperial Japan, he'd wet his pants. And if some of these $50,000-a-speech generals had to fight an Erwin Rommel or Heinz Guederian or Yohji Yamamoto, they might not be worth so much on the fried-chicken circuit. In the meantime, many Americans are clearly more fond of myths and lies than they are of facts.
Finally, I grew up believing that journalism was about reporting serious matters. The way so much of the news media have gone the National Enquirer route annoys me. I guess, having grown up in an age of giants and heroes, I can't adjust to midgets, dwarfs and other variations of human spiritual, intellectual and moral deformity.
The generation that fought and won World War II set high standards not only on the battlefield but in politics and in journalism and in industry. It's hard to imagine today's pampered, ever-complaining multimillionaire athletes and entertainers voluntarily going off to war the way the Ted Williamses and Jimmy Stewarts did. If anyone had ever suggested to war correspondents such as Ernie Pyle and Edward R. Murrow that they stand neutral while American soldiers died, they would have punched his lights out.
Guess I know how Rhett Butler felt when he finally gave up on Scarlett O'Hara.
I hope that Americans realize how ridiculous and absurd it is for President Clinton to say that the dictator of a small, impoverished country is a threat to the world.
It is as grotesque as saying that the president of Paraguay, whoever that is, threatens world peace. Iraq, when it was a U.S. ally and at the height of its military power, could not defeat Iran. Yet Clinton says Europe, North America, China, Japan, Russia and Latin America must tremble in fear unless he, the great warrior, saves them all from Saddam Hussein, whose military and economic resources have been devastated.
Our country is sadly becoming a comic opera rather than a world leader. There is no evidence that Iraq has a stockpile of chemical or biological weapons or missiles. Even Clinton admits this if you read the lawyer-language in his mad-bomber propaganda closely.
Those ``suspected weapons sites'' are civilian facilities such as bakeries, breweries and pharmaceutical and fertilizer plants. True, any of them could be used to manufacture biological weapons. That's also true of any similar facilities in the United States. By the way, the biological agents were supplied to Iraq by the United States.
It is not true that Iraq has used chemical weapons on its own people. It used them against Iran, which was using them against Iraq. The famous video of dead villagers is being dragged out as proof that Hussein used chemical weapons on his own people. A U.S. military study of that incident, however, found that they died of a chemical weapon being used by Iranians and not even possessed by the Iraqis.
There has never been a U.S. administration with so many scandals, and there has never been an administration that so consistently and persistently has lied to the American people about everything.
Another example of the lying: The United States must kill innocent Iraqis to preserve the sanctity of United Nations Security Council resolutions. Question: Why is Israel able to defy 66 U.N. Security Council resolutions? Answer: Because the United States prevents the United Nations from taking any action at all to enforce them. The Arab world knows this even if most of the American public and pablum-peddling press don't.
The United States, by maintaining the most vicious economic blockade in history, has directly caused the deaths of a half-million Iraqi civilians, most of them children and the elderly. This is a crime against humanity and is far more people than Hussein has ever killed in putting down rebellions.
Bombing Iraq would prove disastrous to the United States. It would undermine every Arab government that is friendly to the United States. The Arab man in the street in every country except perhaps Kuwait has enormous sympathy for the Iraqi people. The Arabs are angry about the pain and suffering the United States has unjustly inflicted on them. To kill even more innocent people with bombing would set off a fire in their hearts that no Arab politician in the region would be able to put out.
Bombing would hurt relations with Russia. When the president of Russia devotes nearly a third of his equivalent of the state-of-the-union speech to preventing a U.S. attack on Iraq, you can be sure the Russians are serious about this. They can't stop us, but they can react in ways that would be unpleasant for U.S. interests.
It probably would kill what's left of the peace process. It would spawn terrorism. If you or your children get blown out of the sky by terrorists in the future, you can thank Mr. Clinton and his advisers for that.
It used to be said, perhaps unjustly, that lawyers who were no good at the lawyering trade would try to become judges. Now it seems that they become television talk-show hosts and guests.
One of these characters the other night read, with obvious glee, the salacious parts of Paula Jones' deposition taken in her suit against President Clinton. Then, with feigned indignation, he complained about the Supreme Court (it ruled the suit could continue) subjecting the poor president to such humiliation.
Excuse my logic, Mr. Lawyer, but it wasn't the Supreme Court that dropped its collective drawers in a hotel room and asked a state employee to perform a service not included in her job description. Seems clear to me that if any humiliating was done, the president did it to himself.
This bit of on-camera hypocrisy reminded me of the fellow who was taking an ink-blot test. As you probably know, the psychologist shows the patient a series of white cards with ink blots on them, and the patient is asked to describe the first images the blots suggest.
Well, no matter how many cards the psychologist produced, this particular fellow described graphically a sexual image or sexual act. The psychologist finally said, ``Well, sir, I have to say you have a very sick mind.''
The patient demanded, ``What do you mean I have a sick mind? You're the guy with all the dirty pictures.''
The first time I heard that the United States had 700,000 lawyers, I knew that was about 600,000 too many. But television was bad enough with actors and airheads yapping like a flock of magpies. Now we get a bunch of lawyers arguing about partisan and legal tactics and the finer points of obstructing justice and bamboozling gullible jurors.
Oh, I'm not pointing fingers. I freely confess to the numerous and copious sins of journalists, many of whom these days are parrots or lapdogs with a lust for the fat fee and the television lights themselves. The great Tom Fleming once remarked that the combination of corrupt politicians and stupid journalists did not bode well for the future of the American republic. To which I say, ``Amen!''
No, rather than pointing fingers, I'm suggesting a solution. I'm suggesting that all of us -- lawyers, journalists, citizens, etc. -- heed the wise words of an Asian sage who told a young Buddhist monk, ``If you cannot improve upon the silence, then keep your durn mouth shut, boy.''
What this country needs is definitely more silence and less information. I met the Southern novelist and agrarian Andrew Lytle. While we sipped bourbon on a mutual friend's patio, he said that he lived in the woods and had no television, no radio and no subscriptions to any magazines or newspapers.
``I figure,'' said Lytle on that long-ago afternoon, ``that if anything really important happens, I'll hear about it by rumor.''
It would be great if we picked up our morning newspapers one day and found a blank page with a small message in the center that stated, ``Nothing of any importance happened yesterday except for the births and deaths of some decent people. You will find the notices of these joyous and sad events on page 7.''
It's too much to expect that TV stations would broadcast blank screens, but could they not at least hire some people with soft and calm voices rather than those who fluctuate between sounding like a terminally cheerful car salesman and a pompous grave peddler?
It's ironic that, just when more and more people want to inform us about more and more stuff, there is less stuff worth knowing.
A Japanese samurai observed that in the average man or woman's life, only three or four big events will occur. That's true, if you think about it. Ninety-percent of what people are screaming to tell us amounts to trivia.
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