Word: anthrax
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...during the blackout period. Then his team will try again to enter suspected weapons sites from which the Iraqis, violating Security Council resolutions, have repeatedly barred inspectors. Of most concern to the specialists is the arsenal of biological weapons they are certain Saddam is still concealing. Germ weapons like anthrax and botulinum are so deadly, so easy to make and hide that the monitors are not prepared to take the Iraqis' word that they have destroyed their stocks, especially since Saddam's scientists have denied for years that they ever...
...search, they will tangle once again with Iraq's longtime chief of bioweapons production, a diminutive woman named Rihab Rashida Taha or, to the U.N. representatives who distrust her, "Dr. Germ." Little known until last week, when NBC Nightly News revealed her role, Taha was responsible for tests of anthrax and botulinum at Iraq's Salman Pak facility, first on rats and mice, then on rhesus monkeys, beagles and donkeys. Still unreleased videotapes seized by the U.N. two years ago show animals that had been exposed to germ agents writhing and dying in agony...
...small quantities had survived. "Iraq has said that it destroyed stockpiles of biological weapons after the war," says Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon. "We have absolutely no confirmation that that has happened. We assume that they do have some stockpiles of biological weapons." In addition to thousands of gallons of anthrax and botulinum and smaller quantities of other poisons, some "weaponized" germs are unaccounted for: artillery shells, missile warheads and bombs filled with toxins...
...gravest international crisis of Clinton's presidency. American and U.N. officials believe Saddam blocked the Special Commission inspection teams because they were closing in on his secret stores of biological weapons, some held by the elite Republican Guard. For example, Iraq reportedly has some 900 lbs. of the anthrax bacterium, a single gram of which can kill millions. Clinton's mission is clear: get the inspectors back into Iraq. But no policy available to him--either diplomacy or war--can readily achieve that goal...
...output from a government's arsenals, like Saddam's biological weapons, with a group of semi-independent terrorists, like radical Islamist groups, who might slip such bioweapons into the U.S. and use them. It wouldn't take much. This is the poor man's atom bomb. A gram of anthrax culture contains a trillion spores, theoretically enough for 100 million fatal doses. The stuff can be spread into the air with backpack sprayers or even perfume atomizers. The U.N.'s specialists say that 100 lbs. of anthrax bacteria sprayed around a city of 1 million could kill 36,000 people...