BRITAIN is stockpiling smallpox vaccine. Meanwhile the Pentagon is trying to drum up support for war. But what evidence is there that Iraq has a smallpox weapon?
Who knows what Iraqi defectors have revealed behind closed doors, but outwardly, the main plank is an admission by Iraq to UN weapons inspectors in 1995. Fearing a high-ranking defector had already talked, Iraqi officials owned up to working with camelpox, a close relative of smallpox (see Desert warriors). But since it doesn鈥檛 make humans sick, the Iraqis鈥� claim that they planned to use camelpox as a weapon didn鈥檛 wash. Then as now the suspicion was that they wanted to practise growing smallpox in bulk and loading it into weapons without unleashing accidental epidemics. The only other bit of evidence is an incubator labelled 鈥渟mallpox鈥� that the UN inspectors stumbled upon. Hardly conclusive. Yet on past performance Saddam Hussein seems more than capable of mass murder. So stockpiling vaccine is prudent and proportionate.
Bombing Baghdad on that basis is another matter, however. Some argue that if Saddam is building smallpox weapons it is better to stop him now rather than face the terror of a major biological arsenal. But the political fallout from such an attack is incalculable. What the world really needs is more intelligence and for Iraq to agree to serious weapons inspections. And that鈥檚 not going to happen while spin doctors keep trying to turn our fear of disease into demands for war.
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