News Compass

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Found At Last by US Investigators

The following is an excerpt of the report filed by Julian Borger of the Guardian UK in Washington, May 28, 2003

" The good news for the Pentagon yesterday was that its investigators had finally unearthed evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) , including 100 vials of anthrax and other dangerous bacteria.

The bad news was that the WMD was found, not in Iraq, but in Maryland, less than 50 miles from Washington, near Fort Detrick.

The anthrax was a non-virulent strain, and the discoveries are apparently remnants of an abandoned germ warfare programme.

(1) This WMD find merited only a local news item in the Washington Post.

When it concerns Iraq : 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.

(2) Even more embarrassing for the Pentagon, there was no documentation about the various biological agents disposed of at the US bio-defence centre at Fort Detrick.

When it concerns Iraq : 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.

(3) The US germ warfare programme at Fort Detrick was officially wound up in 1969, but the base has maintained a stock of nasty bugs to help maintain America's defences against biological attack. 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.

When it concerns Iraq :Trying to explain why no chemical or biological weapons had been found in Iraq, the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said yesterday the regime may have destroyed them before the war. 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 leading theory about the unsolved anthrax letter attacks in 2001 is that they were carried out by a disgruntled former Fort Detrick employee.

The equipment found dumped in a pond eight miles from the base has been linked to the crimes. "