The vial of botulinum B — about 2 inches high and half an inch wide — was the only suspicious biological material Kay reported finding.... Oct. 3, Bush said the war in Iraq was justified and cited Kay's discovery of the advanced missile programs, clandestine labs and what he called "a live strain of deadly agent botulinum" as proof that Hussein was "a danger to the world."The particular bug in the fridge was Botulinum B. The botulism of food poisoning fame. An easily dispersed, can't turn it into weapons unless you're improperly home canning and can force the rest of the world to eat your improperly canned food, non-weapon, biological substance.
But Dr. David Franz, a former chief U.N. biological weapons inspector who is considered among America's foremost experts on biowarfare agents, said there was no evidence that Iraq or anyone else has ever succeeded in using botulinum B for biowarfare.
"The Soviets dropped it [as a goal] and so did we, because we couldn't get it working as a weapon," said Franz, who is the former commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick, Md., the Pentagon's lead laboratory for bioweapons defense research.
The LA Times article is fun, in that the various administration people they speak to are trying to stick to their original story. Unless they fear that the Iraqis were going to visit us and paralyze the nation with Botox injections... Or throw a picnic with their 'special' pickles... Oh, it's just so darned sad.
