BRITAIN is stockpiling smallpox vaccine. Meanwhile the Pentagon is trying to drum up support for war. But what evidence is there that Iraq has a smallpox weapon?
Who knows what Iraqi defectors have revealed behind closed doors, but outwardly, the main plank is an admission by Iraq to UN weapons inspectors in 1995. Fearing a high-ranking defector had already talked, Iraqi officials owned up to working with camelpox, a close relative of smallpox (see Desert warriors). But since it doesn’t make humans sick, the Iraqis’ claim that they planned to use camelpox as a weapon didn’t wash. Then as now the suspicion was that they…
