The spread of multi-drug resistant infection concerns us all. And having some small experience with military and VA medical facilities myself I found this article to be particularly troubling.

"The wounded soldiers were not smuggling bacteria from the desert into military hospitals after all. Instead, they were picking it up there. The evacuation chain itself had become the primary source of infection. By creating the most heroic and efficient means of saving lives in the history of warfare, the Pentagon had accidentally invented a machine for accelerating bacterial evolution and was airlifting the pathogens halfway around the world."

If you or someone you love visits VA medical facilities, be aware of the dangers and keep an eye out for symptoms of infection. If you have the choice, seek care at civilian facilities whenever possible. I know this is a no-brainer for most of you, but let your parents and grandparents know too. From the article:

"One of the most unsettling long-term questions about the military outbreak is how far the bugs of war will proliferate now that thousands of Iraq veterans have entered the VA hospital system. Many of the older vets who are already there - struggling with chronic conditions for decades, in and out of nursing homes - fall into the bacteria's target demographic."

On a conspiratorial note: Do medical investigators have access to the engineered, oil-eating versions of this bug mentioned in the Wired article? Was it used in the clean-up operations following the first Gulf War? Did the engineers build in a genetic kill switch?

~Wired

Labels: Acinetobacteria, gulf war, iraq

During an unprecedented speech to the entire world last night President Bush assured the Iraqi people that “If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you.”

He went on to declare “In free Iraq there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.”

In the short term – after the death and destruction that will accompany the war – an interim government will be established in Iraq. That government will be comprised of three administrative regions, which on paper will look very much like the current map of Iraq. Former US Generals will administer two of the regions – essentially the same areas that are the northern and southern no-fly zones today. Barbara Bodine, former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, will administer the third, central region including Baghdad. Over all of them will be the head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, former US Army Lieutenant General Jay Garner.

Mr. Garner has significant baggage. He was responsible for the deployment and evaluation of the experimental Patriot Antimissile Missile System during Gulf War I. He worked closely with the Israeli Defense Force to assess the success of the system. Some might say a little too closely. Following the war, having retired from military service, Mr. Garner served as president of SY Coleman, a division of defense contractor L-3 Communications. The company specializes in missile defense systems – the same systems that have been fast-tracked for deployment around the US without testing by October of next year.

Is this the man we really want calling the shots in Iraq during an occupation? Can he be trusted to protect Iraqi oil from scheming corporations and governments and uphold President Bush’s assertion that they are “a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people”?

Mr. Garner will lead Iraq’s interim government, but someone much more disturbing will likely lead Iraq after the US occupation: Nizar al-Khazraji.

Nizar al-Khazraji, the former Iraqi Army Chief of Staff, is suspected of war crimes against Iraqi Kurds in the 1980’s. Up until Monday, March 17 2003 he was under house arrest in Denmark. That country had dared to prosecute Nizar al-Khazraji for war crimes despite strong US diplomatic efforts to spare him the burden of having to face trial for his alleged crimes against humanity. He has since disappeared.

In short, Iraq will be ruled by an unscrupulous agent of the US Department of Defense for the foreseeable future, and then the reigns of power will be handed over to one of the chief architects of Saddam Hussein’s regime of terror.

This is what liberation means to our administration.

Labels: dod, George W. Bush, gulf war, iraq, Jay Garner, missile defense

The first Gulf War was characterized by surgical Tomahawk missile strikes penetrating individually targeted air shafts like some strange homage to Lucas. The U.S. Department of Defense has promised a second Gulf War will be very different. For Gulf War II: The Empire Strikes Back, our forces are tasked with seizing the city of Baghdad; One way, or the other.

The DOD has deduced this goal can be reached in one of two ways.

The first plan of attack is a psychological operation dubbed “Shock and Awe.” The intent of this strategy is to force the surrender of Iraqi forces before U.S. troops on the ground need to fire a single shot. Our military planners are hoping to march into Baghdad without a fight with a stunning display of unadulterated power. Central to this ambitious plan to take Baghdad is a bomb…A very big bomb.

Nicknamed “Big Blue,” the largest non-nuclear bomb ever created will be utilized as one of our military’s primary psychological warfare agents. Its purpose is to scare the living shit out of anyone who witnesses its detonation. The DOD believes that even a video of a test of such a device might be enough to shake the loyalties of some Iraqi soldiers and conscripts. That must be some kind of bomb, eh?

Well, it is. Big Blue tips the scales at 21,000 pounds (some reports put it at 30,000 lbs.) – far heavier than its predecessor the BLU-82 “Daisy Cutter.” Some of you may remember the devastation wrought by these comparatively puny 15,000 pound dumb-bombs during the first Gulf War.

Not only does Big Blue pack a bigger punch, it’s also a lot smarter than the Daisy Cutter; It’s guided by GPS. That’s right, for the first time ever we will have precision destruction on the scale of a small nuclear weapon without that nasty world-wide public relations disaster aftertaste!

So what the hell is Gelled Slurry Explosive? Remember Oklahoma City…That whole fertilizer bomb in a U-Haul thing? That explosion was caused by Ammonium Nitrate – the primary ingredient in Gelled Slurry Explosive. The blast produced by the 4,800 pounds of Ammonium Nitrate in that truck was powerful enough to take down half of a nine storey building, leave a 40 foot crater in the street with a depth of about 7 feet, and kill 168 people. Care to imagine what 21,000 to 30,000 pounds of GSE can do? Me neither.

These bombs are GPS guided; They will have targets. For the shock and awe plan, those targets will be remote, unpopulated areas outside of Baghdad. Places where the blast will be visible to Iraqi troops inside the city limits (which by the way is one-and-a-half times as large as New York city). The fireball created will be of a size comparable to a small nuclear blast – probably so comparable that some troops in the city may in fact believe them to be nuclear weapons. This is a cunning use of psychological warfare to be sure – but what if it fails to convince the troops that all is lost, and that surrender is their best option?

This brings me to the DOD’s second option for capturing Baghdad – level it into submission.

If used inside Baghdad, a Big Blue could level most of a city block. Collateral damage? No. This is collateral disintegration. Should the psy-ops gambit of shock and awe fail in those first nights of bombing, our military may be forced to consider a “no body, no crime” policy inside Baghdad city limits. Would the world care if parts of the city were leveled by non-nuclear weapons? Is there anything they could do if they did care?

Street-to-street and building-to-building warfare can only occur if there are streets and buildings. If these bombs are authorized for use as target killing ordinance above and beyond their use as psychological warfare agents, parts of Baghdad - those deemed non-critical to occupation and rebuilding - could be reduced to small fields of ash and rubble.

One way or another, every opportunity to protect U.S. troops from fighting a lengthy urban battle will be taken. If the psy-ops option fails, and considerable resistance remains in Baghdad after the first week of conflict, we may very well witness the first large scale destruction of a city since World War II.

Our arrogance will be rewarded a thousand-fold.

Labels: dod, gulf war, iraq, Shock and Awe, wmd