Emerging Viruses-Aids & Ebola - By Leanard ... - preterhuman.net

each part in terms of objectives - is being used at the Pentagon.Secretary Laird has a group, known as his Systems AnalysisOffice, which examines the need for each kind of militarycapability much as I will examine for you the need for chemicaland biological capability. Unemotional analysis of the need forwar - fighting capability goes on every day." [emphasis added]"The first kind of capability I will analyze is lethal biologicals. . .. These are population-killing weapons. In situations in which ournational objective would be to kill other countries' populations,lethal biologicals could be used.""If we want to kill population, we can now do that with ourstrategic nuclear weapons - our B-52's, Minutemen, and Polaris.We keep the nuclear capability whether or not we have a lethalbiological capability. A lethal biological capability would be inaddition to our nuclear capability rather than a substitute for it.""Therefore, we do not need a lethal biological capability." [13]Failing to describe the benefits of biological versus nuclearweapons for population control, the former Defense Departmentanalyst rhetorically concluded that since a ". . . crude biologicalcapability is economically available to very many nations."". . . a decision to have capability, to have an option for that raresituation, requires weighing the uncertainties of nonproliferationwith the value of human life, perhaps of tens of thousands ofAmericans. If we decide today that we would be willing tosacrifice our soldiers in the situation I described, we do not needa capability. However, if we want the option to decide later,perhaps we need an incapacitating [as opposed to lethal]biological capability." [13]Ivan L. Bennett, Jr., a former Deputy Director of the UnitedStates Office of Science and Technology, was the last one toaddress the NAS general session. The topic of his presentationwas "The Significance of Chemical and Biological Warfare forthe People." He began by defining biological weapons as"organisms, whatever their nature, or infective material derivedfrom them which are intended to cause disease or death in man,animals, or plants, and which depend for their effects on theirability to multiply in the person, animal or plant attacked." [13]"Both chemical and biological agents lend themselves to covertuse in sabotage," he noted, against which it would be exceedinglydifficult to develop any really effective defense."As one pursues the possibilities of such covert uses, onediscovers that the scenarios resemble that in which thecomponents of a nuclear weapon are smuggled into New YorkCity and assembled in the basement of the Empire State Building.