Re: A Vaccine for the Hype

[Anthony Rodgers <cunningpike () gmail com>]

Many thanks for this posting - very interesting reading, and a  
refreshing change.
--
Anthony Rodgers
cunningpike () gmail com

"Genuinely objective journalism not only gets the facts right, it  
gets the meaning of events right. It is compelling not only today,  
but stands the test of time. It is validated not only by 'reliable  
sources', but by the unfolding of history. It is journalism that ten,  
twenty, fifty years after the fact still holds up a true and  
intelligent mirror to events." - T.D. Allman.


On 31-Mar-06, at 1:49 PM, Richard M. Smith wrote:

> http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/nsn/nsn-060331.htm
>
> http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/nsn/nsn-060331.htm
> National Security Notes is edited in Pasadena, California, by  
> George Smith, Ph.D. who is many things, including a protein chemist  
> and a Senior Fellow at GlobalSecurity.Org.
>
> National Security Notes, on the web: http://www.globalsecurity.org/ 
> org/nsn/index.html
>
>
> March 31, 2006
> National Security Notes
>
> A VACCINE FOR THE HYPE
> OUT OF THE BOX AND BOTTLE
> TWO DOMESTIC RICIN CONVICTIONS
> PUT THE BOTOX ON YOUR SHOES AND LEGS
>
> A VACCINE FOR THE HYPE: Milton Leitenberg's new “Assessing the  
> Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat”
> A recent issue of USA Today delivered remarkable advice on “how to  
> know if you've breathed ricin” in a biological attack: “ .. a large  
> number of people close to you suddenly develop fever, cough and  
> excess fluid in their lungs.” One might suspect flu in the office  
> first because ricin has never been used in such an attack and while  
> terrorists have shown interest in the material, castor beans and  
> castor plants, they have shown little or no capability in making it  
> into an inhaled weapon. Nevertheless, it is a sign of the times and  
> accompanying wisdoms that many believe such a thing likely, so  
> likely that authoritative sources regularly offer, at best,  
> conjectural advice on what to look for and what to do.
>
> There is an antidote – a vaccine -- to such groupthinking. It is  
> Milton Leitenberg's “Assessing the Biological Weapons and  
> Bioterrorism Threat,” published by the Strategic Studies Institute  
> of the US Army War College. Leitenberg, a scholar and expert on  
> arms control at the University of Maryland, writes “For the past  
> decade the risk and immanence of the use of biological agents by  
> nonstate actors/terrorist organizations -- 'bioterrorism' -- has  
> been systematically and deliberately exaggerated.” He immediately  
> adds this practice “accelerated” after 9/11 and the mailings of  
> powdered anthrax.
>
> The first part of Leitenberg's book examines the development of  
> national bioweapons programs, a discussion which dovetails  
> seamlessly into an exploration of what is definitively known about  
> terrorist organizations and what is known of their capabilities. He  
> documents four “significant” bioterror events: usage of the  
> salmonella bacterium to contaminate food in Oregon, Aum Shinrikyo's  
> “unsuccessful” work in the production of anthrax and botulinum  
> toxin, al Qaida's “unsuccessful” efforts toward obtaining anthrax  
> and the “successful” use of the same in the Amerithrax mailings.
>
> Upon this small clutch of samples, an assortment of bioterrorism  
> experts, lawmen, security advisors, national political figures and  
> academics have built the fancy that such attacks are easy and one  
> of the most catastrophic threats faced by the American people.  
> Leitenberg dissects this fraud, and that is not his word, but mine.  
> Because a fraud, and a substantial one, is what it is. The elements  
> of it are displayed in page after page in Leitenberg's precise  
> recapitulation of public statements, claims made to the media and  
> allegedly expert analyses, showing his readers who dissembled and  
> where the rotten bodies are buried.
>
> Of note is Leitenberg's dissection of the process of assessment as  
> practiced through bioterrorism threat scenarios conducted by the US  
> government and private think tanks. Exercises like Dark Winter,  
> which modeled an “aerosolized” smallpox attack, Top Off 2 and 3,  
> both on pneumonic plague strikes, and Atlantic Storm, an exercise  
> the purported to show an al Qaida group manufacturing a dry powder  
> smallpox weapon, were rigged. In the cases of Dark Winter and the  
> Top Offs, transmission rates of disease were sexed up beyond  
> historical averages so that “a disastrous outcome was assured” no  
> matter any steps taken to contain outbreaks. Eight pages are  
> reserved to pointedly condemn the Atlantic Storm exercise on a host  
> of sins which can generally be described as a bundle of frank lies  
> and misinformation coupled with a claimed terrorist facility for  
> making smallpox into a weapon that even state run biological  
> warfare operations did not possess. And once again, juiced  
> transmission rates of disease were employed to grease theoretical  
> calamity. The reader comes to recognize the deus ex machina – a  
> concoction or intervention added to dictate an outcome, in these  
> cases very bad ones – as a regular feature of the exercises.  
> However, the results of the same assessments – the alleged lessons  
> learned -- have never been reported with much, if any, skepticism  
> in the media.
>
> ...
>
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