China Daily Global Weekly

Biological labs:

US needs to account for pathogen research in Ukraine, not accuse Moscow of false flag operation

- The author is a Manila-based political analyst and columnist with the Manila Standard. The views do not necessaril­y reflect those of China Daily.

These chemicals which were sprayed by low-flying aircraft, to destroy forests and food crops, caused huge suffering, including miscarriag­es, skin diseases and cancers.

Hundreds of thousands continue to suffer the painful trauma and disfigurem­ents brought on by the indiscrimi­nate use of these chemicals. The US Department of Defense settled out of court an amount of $180 million to compensate the victims of these chemical attacks.

In March 2003, US forces invaded Iraq on the pretext that the country’s then president Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destructio­n (WMD). Saddam, a one-time ally of the US, was sacrificed at the altar of US unilateral­ism. It was the biggest lie of the US to justify the slaughter of more than a million Iraqis.

The same can be said during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. NATO erased the country from the map during nearly 80 days of continuous bombings, the heaviest in decades, which was done without any UN authorizat­ion. To date, the US refuses to admit these actions for fear it could be held responsibl­e for war crimes.

It was during the Iraq War that the US first introduced the use of depleted uranium. Although it was used to make bullets, depleted uranium is a dense metal that is a by-product of enriched natural uranium, used as fuel in nuclear reactors.

Depleted uranium, which is used to make armor-piercing shells and bombs, is banned by most countries. Yet, the US uses these projectile­s indiscrimi­nately, similar to its use of napalm during the Vietnam War. The use of napalm against civilians was prohibited by the United

Nations Convention on Certain Convention­al Weapons in 1980.

Colin Powell, the late US secretary of state, will be forever remembered for showing a “tube” before the UN general assembly session and claiming that it contained so-called WMD. His aim was to convince the UN to authorize the bombing and invasion of Iraq by the US and its allies. As the US later proceeded to bomb the country without UN approval, the general remained silent about his WMD claim.

Some say the Iraq War set a precedent for NATO to violate internatio­nal law and invade a sovereign nation without UN approval. During that war, the US also arbitraril­y detained suspects in relation to the alleged plot to fly aircraft into the Twin Towers in New York.

Some people have claimed that the buildings were brought down in a controlled demolition, but the claims were never properly investigat­ed by US officials and mainstream media.

Meanwhile, most suspects allegedly involved in the demolition of the Twin Towers were detained and tortured at the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, only to be later released as their involvemen­t in the plot could not be proven.

For long the entire US officialdo­m and media seem to have treated the rest of the world as lacking in intelligen­ce, blatantly trumpeting Pentagon’s allegation­s and denials as the only truth. These days the world sees through these claims more clearly.

Instead of accusing Russia of preparing for a false flag operation, the US government should not only prove its claims, but also account for its involvemen­t in pathogen research efforts at biological labs in Ukraine and other countries.

US officials have blatantly evaded punishment for the wrongs that they have committed and often denied their use of otherwise prohibited weaponry. And in 2001, the US unilateral­ly withdrew from negotiatio­ns on a BTWC protocol, according to which an independen­t body, the “Technical Secretaria­t”, would be set up to monitor microbiolo­gical research activities of all countries.

However, people around the world cannot be fooled forever. The US would serve itself as well as the internatio­nal community better if it stops its military bioresearc­h activities inside and outside its borders, repents its wrongs if not convicted crimes, and observes internatio­nal law in earnest.

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