Salon | Newsreal: Germ war games

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IF THE U.S. FINDS ITSELF BACK IN THE DESERT WITH IRAQ, GET OUT YOUR GAS MASKS.
BY JEFF STEIN | One late summer day, Iraqi army units stand poised on the border of Kuwait. Two days later, Iranian-backed Shiites in Bahrain, home to U.S. Naval forces in the Gulf, launch a coup. As President Clinton mobilizes military units, a two-seat helicopter spools off an unmarked tanker in the Indian Ocean and heads for the U.S. Naval base at Diego Garcia. Spraying a fine mist from cylinders attached to its skids, the chopper makes three looping passes over the gathering armada of U.S. ships in the port and B-52 bomber crews on the runways.
Meanwhile, at U.S. air and Naval bases in Georgia and North Carolina, unmarked converted bread trucks pull up to staging areas and start pumping out an invisible plume of gas. Within minutes thousands of airmen, soldiers and logistics personnel are down and coiled in agony. Back in the Gulf, hundreds of sailors on U.S. ships headed for Kuwait begin collapsing with the "flu."
In fact, it's cholera, and the victims have been felled in a "germ war" that a study conducted for the Pentagon says U.S. forces are not ready for.
According to the study, made available to Salon, U.S. military units are "vulnerable" to a chemical and biological attack whose purpose is to delay, if not paralyze, the deployment of U.S. forces involved in desert fighting with Iraq. Yet many criticisms raised in the study, produced last November, have been ignored even as hostilities between the U.S. and Iraq appear imminent, informed sources say.
The study raises serious concerns should the Clinton administration take the Republicans' advice and seek to go all the way in toppling Saddam Hussein. "Our nation's ability to project power is vulnerable to limited chemical/biological (attacks)" when troops and equipment are being mobilized for the Gulf, warns the study conducted by Booz-Allen & Hamilton, a management consulting firm based in MacLean, Va.
The study projected a scenario in the year 2010, which suggests to one of the study's authors that U.S. vulnerability to germ-war attacks is even greater now, when U.S. and United Nations weapons inspectors are being barred by Iraqi authorities from checking out the regime's suspected weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological agents.
"The universal perception has been that's it's been a really important thing that you're pointing out and I hope someone else takes care of it," said Amoretta Hoeber, deputy secretary of the Army in the Reagan administration. "That's the generalized response we're getting."
The U.S. budget for protection against chemical and biological warfare has been soaring since last year. Estimates of "more than $2 billion could be defended," according to Bill Richardson, a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for chemical and biological matters. That includes everything from the FBI's counter-terrorism programs to civil defense training to the U.S. Marines' mobile Chemical and Biological Incident Response Force teams, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
"They're putting a lot of money into this," Hoeber said, "but the problem is there's no one in charge and no one is thinking right about it yet. They're not thinking about protecting the military, they're thinking about domestic preparedness and things like that."
Sophisticated shipboard gas and germ war detection systems have been deployed but found wanting, according to a technician who told Salon that navy computer labs in New Jersey are frantically trying to fix the bugs as the Iraqi crisis deepens.
N E X T+P A G E+| The "plague convoy"

T A B L E+T A L K Is support for abortion rights declining, and if so, why? Join the Aborting abortion debate in Politics R E C E N T L Y The lady is not a tramp By Jenn Shreve The lurid coverage of Monica Lewinsky's sex life tells us more about aging geezers in the press corps than it does about a young white house intern (02/06/98) The roots of the Clinton smear By Gene Lyons How Gennifer Flowers and other fast buck artists spawned the Clinton smear (02/05/98) Men in black (robes) By Bruce Shapiro Looking for an anti-Clinton arch-conspirator? Try the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (02/04/98) Subpoena me? Subpoena you! By Jonathan Broder Trying to turn the tables, the president's attorney gets legal on Kenneth Starr (02/03/98) Tonya's trials By Jane Meredith Adams How Tonya Harding went from skating champion to video poker addict (02/02/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		_____germ_war_games IF THE U.S. FINDS ITSELF BACK IN THE DESERT WITH IRAQ, GET OUT YOUR GAS MASKS. BY JEFF STEIN \| One late summer day, Iraqi army units stand poised on the border of Kuwait. Two days later, Iranian-backed Shiites in Bahrain, home to U.S. Naval forces in the Gulf, launch a coup. As President Clinton mobilizes military units, a two-seat helicopter spools off an unmarked tanker in the Indian Ocean and heads for the U.S. Naval base at Diego Garcia. Spraying a fine mist from cylinders attached to its skids, the chopper makes three looping passes over the gathering armada of U.S. ships in the port and B-52 bomber crews on the runways. Meanwhile, at U.S. air and Naval bases in Georgia and North Carolina, unmarked converted bread trucks pull up to staging areas and start pumping out an invisible plume of gas. Within minutes thousands of airmen, soldiers and logistics personnel are down and coiled in agony. Back in the Gulf, hundreds of sailors on U.S. ships headed for Kuwait begin collapsing with the "flu." In fact, it's cholera, and the victims have been felled in a "germ war" that a study conducted for the Pentagon says U.S. forces are not ready for. According to the study, made available to Salon, U.S. military units are "vulnerable" to a chemical and biological attack whose purpose is to delay, if not paralyze, the deployment of U.S. forces involved in desert fighting with Iraq. Yet many criticisms raised in the study, produced last November, have been ignored even as hostilities between the U.S. and Iraq appear imminent, informed sources say. The study raises serious concerns should the Clinton administration take the Republicans' advice and seek to go all the way in toppling Saddam Hussein. "Our nation's ability to project power is vulnerable to limited chemical/biological (attacks)" when troops and equipment are being mobilized for the Gulf, warns the study conducted by Booz-Allen & Hamilton, a management consulting firm based in MacLean, Va. The study projected a scenario in the year 2010, which suggests to one of the study's authors that U.S. vulnerability to germ-war attacks is even greater now, when U.S. and United Nations weapons inspectors are being barred by Iraqi authorities from checking out the regime's suspected weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological agents. "The universal perception has been that's it's been a really important thing that you're pointing out and I hope someone else takes care of it," said Amoretta Hoeber, deputy secretary of the Army in the Reagan administration. "That's the generalized response we're getting." The U.S. budget for protection against chemical and biological warfare has been soaring since last year. Estimates of "more than $2 billion could be defended," according to Bill Richardson, a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for chemical and biological matters. That includes everything from the FBI's counter-terrorism programs to civil defense training to the U.S. Marines' mobile Chemical and Biological Incident Response Force teams, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. "They're putting a lot of money into this," Hoeber said, "but the problem is there's no one in charge and no one is thinking right about it yet. They're not thinking about protecting the military, they're thinking about domestic preparedness and things like that." Sophisticated shipboard gas and germ war detection systems have been deployed but found wanting, according to a technician who told Salon that navy computer labs in New Jersey are frantically trying to fix the bugs as the Iraqi crisis deepens. N E X T+P A G E+\| The "plague convoy"