This article is from Rep. Cynthia McKinney's (D-GA) office. The Mideast Mirror is a daily digest of the major business and political news and views in the Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish and Persian press; published in London. For a copy of the full article, contact HPN Editor Lee Loe: 713-524-2682.
There is no such thing as a long-range Iraqi missile with an effective biological warhead, says military analyst Meir Stiglitz. Firstly, he writes in Yediot Aharanot Wednesday, no one had found an Iraqi biological warhead. The UN inspectors' reports were based on documents from the most dubious sources and forced Iraqi confessions uncorroborated on the ground.
Secondly, the highest scientific- technological ability is needed to develop a biological warhead that will be effective, in other words, in which the virulent bacteria are dispersed over the target and don't turn into a bacteriological soup after a flight of several hundred kilometers at enormous speed.
Thirdly, Iraq has never tested ballistic missiles with biological warheads. The chances of it having succeeded to develop operative warheads without tests are zero. Having presented these facts, Stiglitz tries to explain what gave rise to the biological alarm. He claims the UN inspectors' team has a clear interest in presenting Iraq as a constant danger to world peace. Only in this way could legitimacy be acquired to consistently undermine an independent country's sovereignty.
The problem is that the UN inspectors did not make do with exaggerated warnings of a future danger (which was essential as long as Saddam Hussein refused to cooperate) but blew up the wicked Iraqi intentions to the dimensions of a clear and immediate danger of mass destruction.
At the same time, the inspectors' reports gave Saddam, out of nothing, a significant strategic deterrence capability. The current American pressure did, admittedly, lead to a stream of denials from his ministers and associates, but the threatening image was already created.
In the long term, there certainly is, Stiglitz claims. The Iraqis worked intensively on the research and development of biological measures for military purposes, and Saddam has calculated plans for the future. Many evil people in and outside the region registered the reaction close to hysteria of the Israeli public, and they are certainly pondering the fact that the biological threat may be the great equalizer to balance Israel's strategic deterrence.
Progress in bio-technological development would clearly make possible the development of violent strains of bacteria immune to vaccinations and drugs, and missiles are not necessarily the most effective means to introduce biological materials. Biological weapons may, therefore, serve in the near future as the ultimative means of terror.
But, and this is important, the biological materials possessed by the Iraqis have not turned, in operative terms, into a weapon of mass destruction and any reference to them as a national threat leads to futile panic whose strategic and economic damage is great.
. . . [Stiglitz] claims that an authorized statement is needed in these terms: There is no strategic or biological threat to Israel on Iraq's part. Full stop. [Emphasis added]. . .