BY NORM DIXON
The crude efforts by a faction of the US government to link anthrax-infected letters to the Saddam Hussein regime — without a shred of evidence — are an attempt to win greater public support for an extension of Washington's "war on terrorism" to Iraq.
Even before the anthrax panic, the "attack Iraq now" faction of the US government — led by deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz — was pushing for Washington to seize the opportunity in the wake of the September 11 mass murders to deal a death blow to Saddam Hussein.
Since September 11, a vigorous public debate within the US ruling class's top policy-makers has been conducted by way of comments and leaks to New York Times and Washington Post reporters and through op-ed columns in those and other newspapers.
The dominant wing of the US government — the "attack Iraq, but not yet" faction led by secretary of state Colin Powell — has promoted the more cautious tactic of, for the time being, concentrating on ousting Afghanistan's Taliban leadership.
What divides the world's most powerful warlords is not whether Iraq should be attacked, but when. For now, a majority of the Bush administration is not yet willing to risk its fragile international "coalition" against terrorism by waging a much more unpopular war on Iraq.
Even so, the Bush administration has made it clear that Hussein remains in its sights. On October 7, US ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte delivered a blunt message to Iraq's UN envoy. According to the October 10 Washington Post, Negroponte told Mohammed Douri that should Iraq assist Afghanistan, "There will be a military strike against you and you will be defeated".
'Wolfowitz cabal'
On October 12, the New York Times reported that the "Wolfowitz cabal" had met under the auspices of the Defense Policy Board, a semi-official Pentagon panel that includes many former high-ranking defence and state department officials, on September 19-20 "to discuss the ramifications of the attacks of September 11".
"The members of the group", reported the New York Times, "agreed on the need to turn to Iraq as soon as the initial phase of the war on Afghanistan and Mr bin Laden and his organisation is over, people familiar with the meetings said. Both Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Mr Wolfowitz took part in the meetings."
The "attack Iraq now" faction refloated a strategy, which it has been pushing since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, to invade southern Iraq and install the discredited London-based Iraqi National Congress as the "legitimate" government of Iraq. US troops would seize the oilfields in south-eastern Iraq to finance the regime and to fund the pro-US Kurdish opposition in the north.
Defence Policy Board member Richard Perle, who was President Ronald Reagan's assistant defence secretary, bluntly told the October 16 Washington Post that Iraq should be attacked as an example to other "terrorist" states: "Whether it is Saddam Hussein or [Syrian President] Assad or the Lebanese or the Sudanese ... the regimes involved have to be persuaded that we will use whatever tool is necessary and that they are truly in jeopardy. The best way to give that the necessary reality is to do it in a couple of cases."
Perle is perhaps the most honest of Washington's "hawks". In a letter published in the October 1 Weekly Standard, Perle said that whether Hussein was involved in the September 11 mass murders is besides the point. He no doubt thinks the same about the anthrax letters.
"But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein", he and other conservatives wrote.
The "Wolfowitz cabal", having lost the argument that the September 11 attacks should be pinned on Hussein, immediately seized on the opportunity presented by the anthrax-laced letters.
Unnamed "leading US intelligence sources involved with both the CIA and the Defense Department" outlined their threadbare case against Iraq to the British Observer's New York correspondents, reported in its October 14 edition. The "giveaway" which suggests state sponsorship of the anthrax letters, they said, was that "the victims in Florida were afflicted with the airborne form of the disease".
The "sources" claimed Iraq has the technology and supplies of anthrax suitable for terrorist use. "They aren't making this stuff in caves in Afghanistan ... This is prima facie evidence of the involvement of a state intelligence agency. Maybe Iran has the capability. But it doesn't look likely politically. That leaves Iraq."
Those determined to destroy Hussein seem to think that deranged ravings can make up for their lack of any evidence to tie Iraq to September 11 or the anthrax bugs. "Administration officials close to the group" told the Observer: "We see this war as one against the virus of terrorism. If you have bone marrow cancer, it's not enough to just cut off the patient's foot. You have to do the complete course of chemotherapy. And if that means embarking on the next Hundred Years' War, that's what we're doing."
Richard Butler, former head of the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), the body set up after the Gulf War to ensure that Iraq dismantled its weapons programs, has also repeated the "evidence" that supposedly points only to Iraq: "weaponised" anthrax cannot be produced by small terrorist groups or rogue scientists; therefore, the attacks must be state sponsored; Iraq has attempted to produce biological weapons in the past; ipso facto, it must be Iraq.
But even according to the Pentagon, at least 10 other countries may possess anthrax weapons: the US, Russia, China, Israel, Taiwan, North and South Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran. Apartheid South Africa also experimented extensively with the germ. Britain and Germany are also known to have developed anthrax weapons.
Such programs have produced thousands of scientists with the skills and experience to produce basic "weaponised" anthrax. Much of the equipment needed to produce biological weapons is available legally or easily accessible in university or commercial laboratories.
There are at least 250 sites in the US, and 1000 worldwide, that hold anthrax bacteria. There are more than 1500 germ banks and thousands of laboratories in the world which keep more than a million microorganisms, many potentially lethal. Many have extremely lax security.
In any case, terrorists need not steal lethal germs. They can be bought over the phone, fax or internet and arrive in the mail a few days later.
Dr Richard Spertzel, former chief of UNSCOM biological weapons inspections, told Associated Press that the quantity of anthrax-laced powder used in the attacks is "within the capability of any dedicated individual that's determined to do it". Other experts concur.
Debunked
Scott Ritter, a former UNSCOM weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, forcefully debunked the accusations being made by the "attack Iraq" faction in an article in the October 19 British Guardian.
"Under the most stringent on-site inspection regime in the history of arms control, Iraq's biological weapons programmes were dismantled, destroyed or rendered harmless during the course of hundreds of no-notice inspections", Ritter wrote. "[Iraq's] major biological weapons production facility ... was blown up by high explosive charges and all its equipment destroyed...
"Moreover, Iraq was subjected to intrusive, full-time monitoring of all facilities with a potential biological application. Breweries, animal feed factories, vaccine and drug manufacturing facilities, university research laboratories and all hospitals were subject to constant, repeated inspections ... The UN never once found evidence that Iraq had either retained biological weapons or associated production equipment, or was continuing work in the field."
Ritter explained that Iraq does not possess the anthrax type, the Ames strain, that federal scientists believe was used in the letters sent from New Jersey. According to the October 24 New Scientist, the Ames strain was used by the US military in the 1960s to make its anthrax weapons. This would explain the virulent nature of the Washington letter.
Ritter concluded that "Washington finds itself groping for something upon which to hang its anti-Saddam policies and the current anthrax scare has provided a convenient cause ... Those who have suggested that Iraq is the source of the anthrax used in the current attacks — including Richard Butler ... — merely fan the flames of fear and panic."