Biological terrorism
If the Northern Alliance fails to overthrow the Taliban, we may have to send in our own ground forces. biological terrorism Religious-terrorism. Do we do that next month in face of the grim Afghan winter, Moslem religious holidays and unexploded land mines? Or do we wait for spring? In any event, a quagmire looms ahead. As for the post-Taliban regime, this has vanished into a gruesome tangle of tribal feuds and rivalries. The American military's conflicting accounts of Afghanistan have inflicted "collateral damage'' by losing the Joint Chiefs a lot of credibility. biological terrorism Suvs-and-terrorism. Contradictory accounts of perils on the home front have wrought the same collateral damage. Nearly every day newspapers carry stories about new and mysterious instances of anthrax poisoning. Behind anthrax looms the spectre of smallpox, which, unlike anthrax poisoning, is contagious. biological terrorism Potassium-iodide-and-terrorism. Since smallpox was supposedly beaten a quarter of a century ago, very few people today have active vaccinations, and smallpox vaccine is in very short supply. If terrorists can find ways of unleashing a smallpox plague, it might be like the Black Death, which ravaged Europe in the 14th century. One can hardly blame the administration for not foreseeing such problems. Few among us foresaw them. But official reactions have been discordant and confusing. Did the poisoned letter sent to Senator Tom Daschle, the Senate's majority leader, contain low-grade or high-grade anthrax? We were told one thing one day; another thing, another day. The impression given is of a group of public servants who are rattled and out of their depth, and of an administration in disarray. Official exhortations to behave normally, and at at the same time to report every suspicious circumstance to the authorities at once, confuse people. The Attorney General's warnings that a new terrorist outrage is just around the corner have the air of CYA (cover your ass) documents. The Attorney General also runs the risk that was sadly discovered by the boy who cried wolf.
Biological terrorism
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