Chem-Bio attack looming, say U.S. officials: According to Sen. Tim Hutchinson, 'The unthinkable has become thinkable'.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold

Gas! Gas! Gas!" The warning crackled over military radios as clouds of thick, white smoke covered the cold, gray battlefield. One U.S. soldier was overcome and quickly fell unconscious. Others successfully donned their protective gear and charged the enemy, with their M-16s blazing. Within minutes, a medivac helicopter--a Black Hawk emblazoned with bright red crosses--swooped down to whisk away the casualty.

The event wasn't real. It was a tactical demonstration at the Arm/s Pine Bluff Arsenal, the second largest domestic storage site for the nation's chemical stockpile. It was conducted for visitors attending the Chemical Biological Defense Industrial Base Symposium, in nearby Little Rock, Ark., sponsored by the National Defense Industrial Association.

The demonstration took on added significance in the midst of the U.S.-led war on terrorism. The war is placing unprecedented emphasis upon the nation's chemical and biological defenses, top military and industrial leaders said during the symposium.

After last fall's terrorist attacks, "the chem-bio threat was no longer something that was just talked about," said Army Maj. Gen. John C. Doesbutg, commander of the Soldier Biological and Chemical Command (SBCCOM), which includes Pine Bluff. "It was real, and it was killing people."

Shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, anthrax-contaminated letters, delivered through the U.S. mail system, killed five civilians in four states and the District of Columbia. Another 17 were infected by anthrax, but recovered after being treated with antibiotics, such as ciprofloxacin, which is trademarked as Cipro. In all, more than 5,100 people may have been exposed to anthrax, without becoming infected.

Just who mailed the letters remained a mystery, although evidence pointed toward an as-yet unidentified, disgruntled American scientist, investigators said.

The possibility of chem-bio attacks against the United States, however, is stronger than ever, warned Sen. Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark., ranking minority member of the armed services personnel subcommittee. "Since anthrax was discovered in our mail system, the unthinkable has become thinkable," he said. "Osama bin Laden has said that it is his religious duty to acquire chemical and biological capability."

In fact, U.S. forces in Afghanistan, searching deserted al Qaeda facilities, have uncovered evidence of bin Laden's efforts to develop such weapons. "We have found a number of things that show an appetite for weapons of mass destruction-diagrams, materials, reports that things were asked for, things were discussed at meetings, that type of thing," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters.

It's not just bin Laden who has U.S. officials worried. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is known to have developed both chemical and biological weapons, including anthrax. In fact, he used chemical weapons against neighboring Iran in the 1980s and against his own people in the 1990s.

In all, at least 25 nations already have or are in the process of developing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and the means to deliver them.

"In the world of today, we need to be able to protect not only our forward-deployed military personnel, facilities and equipment overseas, but also our loved ones and homes here in the United States," Doesburg said. "We're no longer talking about a distant battlefield. We're talking about a son or a daughter, a wife or a husband."

A Lot of Focus

Thankfully, he said, the United States has placed "a lot of dollars and a lot of focus" on chemical and biological warfare in the past decade. Operation Desert Storm, against Iraq in 1991, revealed critical deficiencies in U.S. abilities to defend itself against those kinds of attacks. To correct those deficiencies, a number of...