IRAQ AGAIN: No-one seems to know whether Iraq is involved in the anthrax outbreaks. But here's what we do know. According to Jane's Defense Weekly, "It is known that Iraq obtained anthrax cultures, for example -- quite legally -- from the American Type Culture Centre (ATCC) in the 1980s at a time when the West tacitly supported the regime. No questions were asked." And someone's been leaking to the Guardian that some in the administration suspect an Iraqi link. I don't trust everything in the Guardian's story, but the possibility of some state sponsorship of this operation has to be considered. The Wall Street Journal has an eminently sensible editorial making this point today. It seems to me this doesn't have to lead to a conventional war against Iraq. But couldn't it lead to a war-like inspection regime for Saddam's biological and chemical warfare plants? As one reader has suggested, why couldn't we cite our suspicions about biological warfare to demand immediate access to Saddam's suspicious bio-cehmical installations? If he refuses, why not destroy them from the air? Give him 48 hours notice and then annihilate them, rather as Israel did to prevent his earlier attempt at nuclear capability. It would be better if we could get hard evidence. But even without it, it's justifiable. In my view, it's self-defense. Do we have to wait for the worst to happen in a major U.S. city before we take action?

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001