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8 Biological Weapons: The United States and the Korean War G. Cameron Hurst III The advent of the “War on Terror” during the presidency of George W. Bush has brought to the forefront the specter of “weapons of mass destruction.” The phrase was not particularly new, but in the past several years it has become ubiquitous in the media; in the abbreviated form WMD, it has become well known across the United States. The use of this term in the United States is somewhat disingenuous. That is, the of¤cial American concern with WMD is solely that other nations or organizations might direct them against a blameless American nation. This ignores the fact that few countries possess the WMD arsenal of the United States. Except for the ICBM-mounted nuclear weapons covered under the U.S.–Soviet arms control agreements, Americans do not know how many nuclear weapons they possess, and the government refuses to allow independent inspection of U.S. chemical, biological, and nuclear stockpiles. Moreover, no nation has used WMD to the extent the United States has. Instead, in the post-9/11 world, the scenario of WMD has been one in which “axis of evil” nations or terrorist networks might employ WMD against innocent American civilians. Indeed, the Bush administration policy of “preventive strike,” a departure from past U.S. experience that ®aunts international law, was formulated to justify an American attack against societies and/or organizations that are construed as threats to the U.S. The American invasion of Iraq, cleverly pitched to the American people by the White House as “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” was predicated upon unsubstantiated reports of Iraqi WMD. The Bush administration also attempted to associate the Saddam Hussein regime with al-Qaeda and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, with no proof and despite the fact that the terrorists were primarily citizens of an ally, Saudi Arabia, and included not one Iraqi. Long after the invasion of Iraq, when it is generally acknowledged that there was no connection between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorists, Democratic presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry was unable to use that information convincingly enough to unseat President Bush. Such are the current fears of WMD in the wake of 9/11. But if we shift our gaze back just sixty years, we are presented with an entirely different picture. Of course, World War II in the Paci¤c was concluded with the most extensive reliance upon WMD in history, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Moreover, carpet bombings of German and Japanese cities that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, while not involving radioactivity , were nonetheless instances of applying WMD. In the unfolding of the Cold War, furthermore, the United States became deeply involved in the development , stockpiling, and possible use of WMD. Indeed, the U.S. is not only the largest military force in the world but also the nation with the largest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. This history and current status makes more than a bit hypocritical the Bush administration’s highly moralistic condemnation of other nations as belonging to an “axis of evil”for even being suspected of some of the things of which the U.S. has been guilty. Destroying North Korea: Bombing in the Korean War During the Korean War of 1950–53, actual and threatened use of WMD played an important part in America’s attempt, ¤rst, to halt the invasion of the southern part of the peninsula by the armies of the north; second, to unify the entire peninsula under southern president Syngman Rhee; and, ¤nally, in the wake of the Chinese intervention, to salvage as much of the original Republic of Korea (ROK) territory as it could. UN commanding general Douglas MacArthur threatened to resort to atomic bombs in Korea within the ¤rst few weeks of the war, when ROK troops were on the run and the fate of the peninsula appeared to be in jeopardy. Later, following the massive intervention of Chinese forces, which he assured President Truman wouldn’t happen,MacArthur threatened to drop “thirty to ¤fty atomic bombs . . . strung across the neck of Manchuria , (which would) spread behind us . . . a belt of radioactive cobalt” (Halliday and Cumings 1988, 128). Both presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower threatened nuclear warfare on the Korean peninsula, and Truman moved bombs to an aircraft carrier in the sea off Korea and took other steps to ready American bases in Okinawa for possible atomic bombings of Korea...

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