[Interesting Times]

This guy gets it.

No, actually he doesn't.

Ken Alibek, who directed bioweapons research for the Soviets, claims that at one point they were manufacturing over 10 tons of weaponized smallpox per year.

"There's no reason to believe that any of our enemies has smallpox virus. Nobody has any evidence that any of our enemies has smallpox virus as contrasted with 1972 when we knew our enemy did have smallpox virus," he said.

The good doctor would do well to familiarize himself with the story of the demon in the freezer.

The Bush Administration is getting ready to produce tens of millions of doses of smallpox vaccine and make it widely available to the public.

Now why do you suppose they would want to do that?

[Interesting Times]

From "The Demon in the Freezer":

KEN ALIBEK, who was once Kanatjan Alibekov, a leading Soviet bioweaponeer and the inventor of the world's most powerful anthrax, shocked the American intelligence community when he defected, in 1992, and revealed how far the Soviet Union had gone with bioweapons. In a new book of his, entitled "Biohazard," Alibek says that there were twenty tons of liquid smallpox kept on hand at Soviet military bases; it was kept ready for loading on biowarheads on missiles targeted on American cities.

Sorry, make that 20 tons...

[Wordsmith]

Stunning. Thanks for posting the link to the articles about Alibek and the Soviet program.

I don't think there's any doubt that the bad guys have this.

[rwt60]

Last night on Nightline, there were two Islamic radicals from Northern Iraq in the custody of the Kurds. They were interviewed and they told a story of smuggling weapons from Iraq to Iran where they would then be forwarded into Afghanistan.

There were the usual weapons like ammunition and RPGs, but the most significant disclosure was that of smuggling refrigeration units. The going price for smuggling refrigeration units out of Iraq was $10,000. These men were self-admitted al Qaeda operatives smuggling refrigerators out of Iraq. They did not know what was inside the refrigerators.

[Dark Wing]

I also found the text below at the following link:

http://www.iraqwatch.org/wmd/biological.html

"Smallpox: The virus can be inhaled or absorbed by the skin. Its initial symptoms are like a severe flu, then a rash appears. Smallpox kills about a third of unvaccinated victims, but the vaccine is highly effective. The virus can be stored over long periods of time if it is freeze-dried, and it is easy to produce, making it a good candidate for biological warfare. In addition, countries like the United States are susceptible, as all natural occurrences of smallpox were eradicated by 1980, making regular vaccinations unnecessary. Iraq was reported in late 1998 to be suspected of concealing the smallpox virus, but this has not been confirmed."

[Rocksalt]

"The Bush Administration is getting ready to produce tens of millions of doses of smallpox vaccine and make it widely available to the public."

This would tell me something.It must be cause for concern.