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U.S. forces overpowered the Iraqi Army in the Gulf War in 1991 they
found many valuable documents about Iraqi chemical and biological
weapons. These captured documents, plus interviews with POWs, made
it clear that Iraqi forces were well trained in the use of chemical
agents such as Sarin, a nerve gas. But they had almost no guidance
on how to handle or use biological weapons, although the documents
support that such weapons were available.
According to
declassified Gulf War intelligence reports, Iraq had trained teams
of chemical-weapons NCOs (non commissioned officers) on how to manage
a chemical-warfare operation and how to decontaminate their own
troops and equipment after their use against allied forces. But
Iraqi Army NCOs were not given concrete guidance on biological-weapons
use or safety precautions. Unlike U.S. troops in the Gulf, Iraqi
troops were never vaccinated against biological agents like anthrax.
Yet, had Iraq used its chemical weapons it may have found its own
troops affected by biological agents which, no doubt, would have
killed as many Iraqi soldiers as alliance forces.
After being
hit by Iraqi chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war, Iran learned
the dirty secret of Iraqi weapons: they tend to mix together various
types of chemical agents with biological-warfare agents. An early
choice was a Soviet-developed form of mycotoxins (sometimes called
"yellow rain"). Mycotoxins were used by the Soviet Union
in Laos against Hmong tribesmen and, later in Afghanistan. Intelligence
sources believe there was considerable cooperation, particularly
in the 1980s and perhaps since, between Iraq and Russia's biological-warfare
units. Some reports single out the Russian organization Biopreparat
as being linked to Iraq.
One of the
"fingerprints" of Russian weapons is to mix many substances
together. Adding mycotoxins to a chemical-weapons "cocktail"
is a trademark of the Soviet/Russian-weapons program which Iraq
copied. Iraq's use of mycotoxins combined with chemical agents was
confirmed by Belgian scientists working on behalf of the United
Nations.
While Iraqi
soldiers did not know what was in their bombs, NCO war prisoners
told allied interviewers that they feared that if they used such
weapons many of them would die just from contamination. Indeed,
the fact that the Iranians found it very hard to get rid of the
persistent CBW agents used by Iraq against them is a harbinger of
what we are now experiencing trying to clean up a relatively small
anthrax attack.
The truth is
nobody knows how to use biological weapons, or even the best way
to protect themselves from them.
Russia, the
U.S., and Britain have worked on vaccines to protect soldiers exposed
to biological agents. During the Gulf War over 150,000 American
soldiers were inoculated against anthrax. In the U.S., with the
failure to adequately decontaminate post offices, America's homeland-defense
agency has offered anthrax vaccine to U.S. Senate workers and U.S.
Postal Service employees for post-anthrax exposure protection. It
is not known if it really works — the offer is strictly an
experiment and the vast majority of postal workers have turned down
inoculation.
It is far from
clear that anthrax inoculation works reliably, even to protect against
initial infection. The success of the inoculation depends on the
type of anthrax and how the anthrax was "engineered."
The anthrax manufactured in the Soviet Union, for instance, was
no simple germ agent. The stuff that leaked into the air at Sverdlovsk
in 1979 contained at least four, and perhaps five, different strains
of anthrax mixed together (including the Ames strain, the strain
that was used by terrorists in the United States). At least one
of the Russians killed by the Sverdlovsk anthrax leak, probably
an employee of the Soviet weapons lab there, had received anthrax
vaccine before exposure.
Recently, the
Russians have said they have made progress on new vaccines and have
offered them to the United States to combat the anthrax attack.
Dr. Philip
Brachman, a pioneer in anthrax research, told the Los Angeles
Times that the anthrax spores found in the U.S. were so small
that they could get in someone's lungs and, perhaps years later,
fester into the anthrax disease. U.S. Government officials concur
with this assessment.
During the
Gulf War there was concern about so-called "dusty agents."
Dusty agents are very fine types of chemical or biological dust
that can penetrate protective clothing and gas masks. In the Gulf
War U.S. intelligence was sure that Iraq had dusty chemical agents
and may have had dusty biological agents.
Dusty agents
remain a major problem, as the recent U.S. terrorist attacks make
clear. The U.S. Army is searching for better gas-mask seals and
improved protective clothing to protect troops against chem-bio
attacks. (During the Gulf War troops were advised to put rain gear
over their chem-bio protective suits to try and block dusty agents.)
Engineered
anthrax in dusty form is an indiscriminate terror weapon. It has
no sensible military use, and how it operates on a complex society
is not well understood. When the Sverdlovsk leak occurred, the Soviet
government ordered surface soil removed, buildings decontaminated
on the outside as well as the inside, roads paved over, and dead
bodies buried in coffins filled with caustic chemicals to kill remaining
anthrax spores. That is how they dealt with a dusty agent.
Over the next
few years the United States will be searching for ways to handle
the anthrax threat, and threats from other biological weapons. But
is that enough?
Countries that
build biological weapons whose effects can't be controlled or even
predicted are engaged in global terrorism. That is one reason why
the U.S. ended its offensive biological-warfare program years ago.
Countries with
a demonstrated capability and willingness to use chem-bio weapons,
and who continue to develop nastier forms of biological-terror weapons,
are a potential threat to global survival. Iraq, from all the evidence
available including recent defectors, is the world's leading threat.
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