US finds evidence of WMD at last --
buried in a field near Maryland
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Actor pours scorn on Bush and Iraq conflict

By Duncan Campbell

Los Angeles, California, May 31— Sean Penn has issued a damning indictment of President George W. Bush, the Iraq war, and the American media — in the shape of whole page advertisement in yesterday’s New York Times.

In a long and reflective essay, the film actor warns that the US flag is in danger of becoming “a haunting banner of murder, greed, and treason against our principles.”

Penn visited Baghdad before the war and was vilified in the US for doing so. In the ad, he pours scorn on the motives for the war, which he suggests is now mainly benefiting US business. Although the New York Times does not give details of how much has been paid for a specific ad, a member of its advertising department said yesterday that a similar “advocacy” ad would cost $125,647.

In the essay, Penn mocks Bush’s recent landing, dressed as a fighter pilot, on an aircraft carrier off California.

“He seemed quite pleased with this, his military service,” writes Penn. “He likes it better now than when he was a member of the Texas national guard, when in 1972 he simply failed to show up for duty for over a year in wartime.

“I certainly wouldn’t want to remind him that, were he Awol in a time of war, that would amount to treasonous desertion.”

Describing the attacks on him after his Iraq visit, Penn wrote that he “experienced first hand the repressive condition of public debate in our country ... I was beginning to feel the price paid by a citizen exercising a position of dissent.”

In a lawsuit, Penn claimed he was dropped from a film project because of his anti-war statements.

He went on: “Our flag has been waving, it seems, in servicing a regime change significantly benefiting US corporations.” He takes a sideswipe at the newspaper in which his ad appears for its “unchallenging” coverage of weapons inspections: “We see chaos in the Baghdad streets but no WMDs.”

And he criticizes TV for showing “grateful” Iraqis “with no true acknowledgment that true poverty will bring the best of us to our knees.”

He concludes: “Osama bin Laden’s agenda is being furthered by our fear, promoted by the invective language of media and a congress that shamefully cowers from criticism.”

He also criticizes Democrats for failing to challenge President Bush: “It has been an obscene and cowardly betrayal of their constituents.” He urges everyone to vote when the time comes.

Figures who have offered much milder criticism, as did the Dixie Chicks in London this year, have been subjected to death threats and boycotts.

Source: Guardian (UK)

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US finds evidence of WMD at last --
buried in a field near Maryland

By Julian Borger

Washington, DC, May 28— The good news for the Pentagon yesterday was that its investigators had finally unearthed evidence of weapons of mass destruction, including 100 vials of anthrax and other dangerous bacteria.

The bad news was that the stash was found, not in Iraq, but fewer than 50 miles from Washington, near Fort Detrick in the Maryland countryside.

The anthrax was a non-virulent strain, and the discoveries are apparently remnants of an abandoned germ warfare program. They merited only a local news item in the Washington Post.

But suspicious finds in Iraq have made front-page news (before later being cleared), given the failure of US military inspection teams to find evidence of the weapons that were the justification for the March invasion.

Even more embarrassing for the Pentagon, there was no documentation about the various biological agents disposed of at the US bio-defense center at Fort Detrick. Iraq’s failure to come up with paperwork proving the destruction of its biological arsenal was portrayed by the US as evidence of deception in the run-up to the war.

In an effort to explain why no chemical or biological weapons had been found in Iraq, the US defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said yesterday the regime may have destroyed them before the war.

Speaking to the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, he said the speed of US advance may have caught Iraq by surprise, but added: “It is also possible that they decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict.”

The US germ warfare program at Fort Detrick was officially wound up in 1969, but the base has maintained a stock of nasty bugs to help maintain America’s defenses against biological attack.

The leading theory about the unsolved anthrax letter attacks in 2001 is that they were carried out by a disgruntled former Fort Detrick employee; equipment found dumped in a pond eight miles from the base has been linked to the crimes.

The Fort Detrick clean-up has unearthed over 2,000 tons of hazardous waste.

The sanitation crews were shocked to find vials containing live bacteria. As well as the vaccine form of anthrax, the discarded biological agents included Brucella melitensis, which causes the virulent flu-like disease brucellosis, and klebsiella, a cause of pneumonia.

Source: Guardian (UK)

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