Word: germs
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...greater threat than chemical agents. Iraq is thought to have a limited capability to attack with biological agents, which pound for pound are deadlier than any other weapon, except for nuclear bombs. U.S. officials maintain that the masks handed out to the troops will also filter out most airborne germs. Yet there is no easy way to know immediately when such elements are present. All front-line combat troops have been inoculated against anthrax, which is considered Iraq's most likely germ choice, but not against many other potential diseases like tularemia and plague...
...last week was a switch in targets. In the first days of the war, bombers concentrated on blasting Iraqi nuclear facilities, chemical- and biological-weapons plants (including one factory in Baghdad that the Iraqis said manufactured baby formula but that the White House insisted was devoted to preparations for germ warfare), command-and-control centers and, in particular, the Iraqi air force. At a midweek briefing, Powell and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney counted a bit more than 40 Iraqi planes shot down or destroyed on the ground. That compares with 22 allied planes, half of them American, lost...
...drawback of germ warfare is its unpredictability. Saddam might be reluctant to use it on the battlefield because his own soldiers could become infected. He would be more likely to launch germ attacks against specific targets, such as airfields, command centers and ships, or against civilian populations in an attempt to cripple oil production. Even then, the Iraqi leader would need to choose his weapon carefully. Some hardy microbes, such as anthrax and plague, can infect an area for years, which would make it dangerous for Iraq's troops to move into a territory that had been captured with...
Saddam would also have to consider the inevitable outrage of the international community, which has banned the use of biological weapons since 1975. Resort to germ warfare would doubtless provoke devastating reprisals. "Saddam would be insane to use biological agents," says Matthew Meselson, a biological-weapons expert at Harvard University. Still, the Iraqi leader has ignored international opinion before. During the Iran-Iraq conflict, he employed poison gas against Iranian infantry and his own Kurdish population. The main impact of germ warfare on American soldiers may be psychological. Says Robert Weinberg, a germ-warfare expert at M.I.T.: "The very notion...
Chickens typically travel a filthy path from the farm through the slaughterhouse. Stuffed 10 or 12 to a cage on the truck to the processing plant, they eat one another's germ-laden excrement and spread it on their feathers and skin. At the plant, the birds move rapidly along a disassembly line where they are killed, dropped in scalding water, mechanically defeathered and eviscerated, and chilled in huge water tanks that usually become contaminated. "This is really no different than putting these birds in your toilet," contends Gerald Kuester, a microbiologist with the Public Citizen advocacy group...