Six-Legged Soldiers by Lockwood Jeffrey A.;

Author:Lockwood, Jeffrey A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2009-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

actually, retaliatory bacteriological warfare does not involve some complicated super weapon. The means of delivering germs to enemy territory are simple and involve equipment of the type with which the services are already well stocked . . . such as the containers used currently for dropping propaganda leaflets.17

There were, however, some inexplicable devices described in the commission's report. For example, the North Koreans claimed to have found the remains of a bombshell that was less than 0.04 inches thick; any such casing would have immediately fractured and disintegrated upon release from an aircraft. Although the Americans eagerly attacked every questionable detail in the report, the most compelling rebuttal pertained to military tactics and the essential nature of biological warfare.

The major problem with the report of the International Scientific Commission was not that the evidence was too weak but that it was incomprehensibly strong. The case was lavish beyond belief, with the accusers wallowing in insects, bomb fragments, microbial slides, autopsy reports, eyewitness testimonies, and POW confessions. One of the prime virtues of biological warfare is its covert potential. The Americans claimed that had they waged biological warfare, they would not have engaged in entomological carpet bombing. For years leading up to the Korean War, the U.S. military had treated biological weapons with the utmost security. Was it really plausible that a country developing a weapon under conditions of the highest secrecy would then launch hundreds of daylight attacks in full view of the enemy? The Americans might tolerate being called criminals, but they couldn't abide being called stupid.

With the nations in the left corner and those in the right corner of the political boxing ring having flailed away at one another for months, the political title fight came down to a decision. The international community could believe either that the Americans had launched the most conspicuous and ill-conceived series of insect-vectored biological attacks in the history of the world or that the communists had mounted the most foolishly composed and resource-draining propagandistic conspiracy plot in living memory. The majority of nations favored the latter judgment, unable to swallow the findings of a commission that possessed scientific credibility but lacked political objectivity. However, it is probably fair to say that some, perhaps many, governments harbored a nagging suspicion that where there is smoke there is fire18—maybe not a conflagration of overt biological warfare but perhaps the flame of covert field testing.

Back at the UN, the Americans tried to take one final, parting shot.19 At the 1953 session, the United States submitted a resolution calling for a neutral—as if such existed—commission to render a decision concerning the Soviets' charges. In what western diplomats took as a tacit admission that the case against the U.S. military was a sham, the Russians offered a deal. They would withdraw their allegations if the United States would withdraw its resolution. Three months after the two nations struck the deal, an armistice was signed at Panmunjom. Open hostilities on the Korean peninsula might have ended on July 27, 1953, but the entomological embers continued to smolder.

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