US Bioweapons research may violate the law

[JoFerret]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4118039,00.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - Arms control advocates are warning the Bush administration that proposed research for a new Homeland Security center may violate an international ban on biological weapons and encourage other countries to follow.

In a statement posted on the Internet, three arms control experts say proposals for the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, established by Congress last year, appear to flout the prohibition on development of bioweapons.

``The rapidity of elaboration of American biodefense programs, their ambition and administrative aggressiveness and the degree to which they push against the prohibitions of the Biological Weapons Convention are startling,'' the authors said.

The writers are Milton Leitenberg, an arms control expert at the University of Maryland; James Leonard, who headed the U.S. delegation that negotiated the bioweapons ban in 1972; and former U.N. weapons inspector Richard Spertzel.

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[aljones]

1. Why am I not surprised??

This administration has no regard for the International laws that govern us all!!

[mulethree]

2. they're businessmen

That means that they ignore the meaning and purpose of the laws and put together a team of lawyers. The lawyers then study the letter of the law, and court cases involving similar wordings to determine just how far the law can be bent before it can be considered broken.

Then you take the max-bend description from the first team of lawyers and give it to a second team for risk-assessment. How much further can you bend this law before it's prosecutable? What would be the likely sources of evidence in such a case? If controllable sources of evidence can be 'safeguarded' then how far can we push it until uncontrolled sources would be sufficient?

Presto we now have a new description of the same law which is 'legal' and defines the all important 'wiggle room' that gives 'businessmen' an advantage over those wussy 'law abiding' governments.

[JoFerret]

3. Just another way to escalate terra

.

[truthisfreedom]

4. bushco can't find enough terror around the world... so it has to

home-grow it. without terror, bushco has no meaning.