I have a deep interest in this and any nations development of chemical, or bioloigical weapons and or any experiments designed to counter the effects of them. In order to defend against them, you have to create them and see how they work.
This nation along with with the rest of the civilized world signed and ratified the 1972 BWTC which was signed and approved by President Richard M. Nixon and the testing that was then ongoing at Fort Detrick, Maryland was stopped and the research volunteers sent on to other duty stations. There is a group by the name of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) that monitors these issues world wide their website is located here at sipri.org based in Stockholm, Sweden.
However, even before September 11,2001 the United States had already begun the process of ignoring the provisions of the 1972 Treaty, and involved none other than our last U.N. Ambassador John Bolton. This website shows his involvment as quoted here:
The U.S., in the person of John Bolton, torpedoed the Bioweapons inspection protocol in 2001. During the same period U.S. "bio-defense research was vastly expanded. Explore the WILPF DISARM web pages for information on Biodefense and suspected Bio warfare projects of which most US citizens are unaware. Some of it is pretty scary stuff. If you become seriously interested visit the Sunshine Project web site and subscribe to Edward Hammond's list serve. He is our most committed and savvy watch dog, and you can follow genetic engineering that is creating new forms of small pox for which there is no vaccine, and reconstructing the 1918 flu virus that killed millions. Learn why and how communities like Boston are resisting university labs that are bringing dangerous pathogens into local neighborhoods. If you want to get involved, let DISARM know. We need you
This article from the Christian Science Monitor shows the date of August 24, 2001 that the Bush Administration was working to undermine the BWTC Treaties provisions it shows Colin Powell arguing that the Clinton administration would have most likely come to the same conclusion.
COLLEGE PARK, MD. - Six years of negotiations to add enforcement provisions to the 1972 treaty outlawing biological weapons have halted. The reason: The Bush administration vetoed going ahead with a protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention that would have given states the right to obtain information about and inspect sites where biological weapons were suspected of being developed, produced, or used.
To escape blame, Secretary of State Colin Powell argued that the decision was not new: The Clinton administration "probably would have come to the same conclusion." But this and other statements seriously misrepresent the Clinton administration position and the value of the agreement itself.
The Bush team argues that because the equipment and materials used to make bioweapons are also used for legitimate civilian purposes, the convention's ban can't be verified. Therefore, no additional measures could detect violations with high confidence.
The Clinton administration agreed that verification in this narrow sense was not possible. We also believed, however, that we had an obligation to try to strengthen the prohibition against developing and producing biological weapons, given that most of the dozen or so countries pursuing bioweapons capabilities - including states like North Korea, Iran, and Iraq - are parties to the convention. Rather than verification, our goal was deterrence: to make it more costly and risky for cheaters to keep cheating.
The draft protocol under negotiation passes the test. It requires states to declare facilities and activities that could most easily be misused to develop bio-weapons. It contains consultation provisions to clarify questions that might arise from these declarations. It provides for on-site activities: random visits to promote accurate declarations, clarification visits to address questions about the declaration that aren't resolved through consultations, and challenge investigations to pursue concerns that a country is developing, producing, or using bioweapons
The arguments that someone else might have done it anyway, does not justify their doing it. Violating the BWTC is serious business and is an example of the United States thumbing it's nose at the rest of the world, saying you have to trust us to be doing this in the world's bets interest, but none of the rest of you can do it. WTF, in 2001, that may have been halfway credible, but in March 2007 with everything we now know about this administration does anyone think it is a good idea to TRUST them on biological weapons and or testing it to prevent terrorist acts? I don't. Whatever happened to President Reagans "trust but verify'? I would expect oversight and verification, except this administration does to much in secret, and under the table and leaves a bad taste in most sane people's mouth, Detainee treatment, NSA wiretaps, FBI National Security Letters, extraodianry rendition, secret prisons and GITMO, and Habeas Corpus and last but not least the US Attorney provision slipped into the new Patriot Act.
I have no faith or trust in this government to be able to conduct tests of illegal biological weapons nor chemical weapons, I have once been involved in their illegal activities in the now infamous MKULTRA/MKSEARCH program at Edgewood Arsenal that was conducted during the Cold War from 1955 thru 1975, I was there at the age of 18 as a Army volunteer for a "medical research unit" my number was 6778A and I was there from June 25 1974 thru 22 August 1974. I was in Washington DC the day President Nixon resigned from office and President Gerald Ford was sworn into office with his new administration including his Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld and his right hand man Richard Cheney, who kept the human testing program ongoing at Edgewood Arsenal until the release of the 1975 Department of the Army Inspector General Report on Human Experimentation, which noted the experiments violated the "Nuremberg Codes of 1947" a violation of international law. It was stopped when Congress, started the investigations. Sen Ted Kennedy was involved in these hearings.
Here is Editorial from the Salt Lake City Tribune from
March 23, 2007 that shows the government wants to expand the labrotory space at Dugway Proving Grounds to conduct the "secret research" given the sheep kill and othe problems the federal government has created at Dugway over the decades, I fully understand their aprehension to wanting this kind of research happening in their back yard again, they have spent decades trying to clean up the previous military use of Dugway test center and their problems, Utah has a valid right to complain and be suspicious, all Americans should be, there is nothing good that can come out of this.
But let's keep our eye on the ball here. The Army is expanding its experimentation with deadly pathogens for classified defense purposes, and that's scary. It's no wonder we're concerned.We're concerned because much of what happens at Dugway is top secret. We do know, however, that the 1,300-square-mile facility about 80 miles southwest of Salt Lake City is one of the Army's primary chemical and biological defense testing centers, and contains some of the nastiest bacteriological and chemical agents that nature and man have devised. And we're concerned because history has taught us to be. Let's not forget those 6,000 sheep that were killed outside the proving ground boundaries in 1968. The Army never admitted it was nerve gas gone astray, but they reimbursed the farmers, and promised to never test chemicals in the open aagain.
But mostly we're concerned that other nations believed to have biological weapons programs - Iran, China and Russia to name a few - will be concerned, perhaps concerned enough to step up "defensive" testing of their own. And who could blame them?
Think of testing biological warfare countermeasures as a scrimmage at football practice. You can't test your defense without learning a little bit about your offense. Same goes with testing biological weapons detection systems. The data you derive can be used for all sorts of purposes, offensive and defensive. So we're afraid that other countries will view our expanded research efforts as not only a threat, but a reason to build more labs and conduct more tests of their own. And the last thing the world needs is an escalation of this type of testing. The last thing the world needs is more deadly pathogens, and another Baker Lab.
I for one think all of us should help Utah by calling and or writing our elected officials and telling them we do not want this research done in Utah or anywhere else, we expect the United States to honor the 1972 BWTC that we signed and we do not want the Bush Administration to continue down this path.
Right is right and wrong is wrong, and redoing the same mistakes we made in the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's is not a repeat of history that we want as a nation. No we don't trust the government to do the right thing, when it's done in secret, problems seem to happen, and this will have deadly consequences.