Word: germ
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...time," they assure me confidently, scattering dust bunnies around the room. I cringe at first; such annoying girls! What horrible friends! I question the health of our relationship. But the dirty life becomes easier with each passing day, and the state of my room and the germ level of my hands become less precious...
...assassin--while a young man he took part in a 1959 attempt on the Iraqi Prime Minister--he once ordered a hit on George Bush. He has tried to build atom bombs and, U.N. inspectors believe, he is working to amass a stock of nerve gas and germ weapons. Finally--and this is crucial--he himself is the problem. Iraq experts agree that any successor, no matter how thuggish, would be less powerful, less malevolent, less dangerous. Isn't it moral--as with Hitler in 1938--to take this one life before he takes thousands more, or hundreds, or even...
...population is forever on the move. The U.S. is a sea into which evildoers can dive and remain submerged. Terrorists, like anyone else, have little difficulty obtaining guns or the simple makings for oil-barrel truck bombs. Now the new terror could be an even more lethal destroyer--microbes. Germ weapons are small, cheap, easy to hide, simple to dispense and horribly effective. They may be the threat of the near future...
...which called for government action to block assaults on U.S. territory and help for local governments to prepare to deal with them. The Pentagon is beginning to work on better detectors, masks, filtration systems and vaccines. The Army and Marine Corps have created special task forces to respond to germ or gas threats. But earlier this year President Clinton reported to Congress that local authorities are not properly trained. In fact, he said, the first police and paramedics on the scene were likely to become casualties themselves. Antidotes and other medical supplies should be stockpiled around the country...
BIOLOGICAL These are the inspectors' biggest worry right now. Before the Gulf War the Iraqis had a secret germ-weapon program that brewed up and tested huge quantities of several lethal agents, including 8,500 liters of anthrax, 19,000 liters of botulinus and 2,500 liters of aflatoxin. (That's theoretically enough to kill everyone on earth.) They had "weaponized" them by loading them into bombs and missile warheads. Iraq claims it unilaterally destroyed all those weapons after the war, but has never offered proof. U.N. inspectors have been checking more than 80 suspected areas for clandestine storage...