We must not forget that chemical warfare will sooner or later bring in its wake bacteriological warfare, pest propagation, typhus and other serious diseases.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
First of all, I don't think that America is truly prepared for a biological or a chemical attack. However, we are moving in the right direction.
If we emit massive quantities of untested chemicals into the environment, some of them are bound to end up in places that surprise us, doing things that endanger us.
Chemical and biological attacks are scary and will kill a lot of people but don't rise to the level of nuclear.
Although every step must be taken to protect against a chemical or biological attack in America, our nation would survive the use of those weapons as we did when anthrax was mailed to our Capitol and other targets.
If you take the biological weapons in the United States we still will have perhaps a single individual who was able to make anthrax, dry it, and spread it through the mail and cause terror.
Those are the things that, in the wrong hands - and certainly in our war on terrorism we also must attack proliferation and those nations that proliferate with chemical, biological and nuclear type devices, because that can cause the most catastrophic results.
The scenarios of biological or chemical warfare painted in detail by the American media during the months after September 11 only betray the inability of the government to determine the magnitude of the danger.
Starvation and disease are the original weapons of mass destruction. When you burn fields and kill animals, people are left vulnerable.
Americans in all places and levels of government have begun to consider the areas where we need to prepare ourselves from future threats, including the latest weapon: bio-terror.
Chemical weapons simply have no place in the 21st century. Progress in this vital area will help generate momentum to meet our goal of eliminating all weapons of mass destruction.