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Jewish World Review Dec. 14, 2001 / 29 Kislev, 5762

Stephen D. Bryen

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Poison bomb in Jerusalem should serve as a wake-up call in America


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com -- AT least one of the bombs that blew up in Jerusalem Dec. 1 was more than an explosive device packed with nails; it was laced with rat poison.

Rat poison is an interesting choice for a terrorist weapon.

While there are different types of rat poison on the market, the most popular use anticoagulants to kill small mammals like rats.

Anticoagulants such as warfarin, fumarin, diphacinone and bromadiolone work in the same way.

They make it difficult or impossible for the body to produce coagulation factors needed to make the blood clot and stop bleeding.

Ingestion of rat poison by eating it leads to a slow death for a small animal. Every mammal needs to produce clots internally to manage the body and prevent hemorrhaging.

A rat or dog that has eaten poison made with these anticoagulants will likely succumb after a few days as it first becomes pale and anemic and then has internal hemorrhaging.

Anticoagulants that are injected into a patient, of course, act much faster.

Thus, an anticoagulant-soaked bomb will unleash projectile fragments that will inject the poison directly into the person struck by a fragment.

According to Israeli Internal Security Minister Uzi Landau, much of the rat poison used in the Jerusalem bomb burned up in the explosion, so the poison was not as effective as intended. But had it worked, many more of the 100 or so people who were wounded by the bomb would have died or suffered considerable agony.

This is not the only type of poison in the hands of terrorists. In the al-Qaida caves in Afghanistan, U.S. Marines found quantities of ricin, a deadly poison. Ricin is also produced in Iraq, and Iraq's connection with the Palestinians is another source of the spread of this toxin.

Ricin is made from the castor bean plant. Breathing dust that contains ricin causes cough, weakness, fever, nausea, muscle aches, difficult breathing, chest pain and cyanosis (blue skin).

Breathing the dust can result in respiratory and circulatory failure. Exposure to concentrated airborne ricin particles by large numbers of people at one time and place could cause many fatalities. Injection of ricin toxin would likely result in muscle tissue necrosis near the injection site, multiple organ failure and death. All forms of exposure are very dangerous and often fatal.

In September 1978, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov felt a stabbing pain in his right thigh in front of the Waterloo bus station in London. Three days later he died in a hospital in great agony, succumbing to what was thought to be some strange type of blood poisoning.

What had happened was that an umbrella was remanufactured by the KGB, and a small round ball was placed in its tip. The ball contained nearly microscopic indentures filled with ricin. The plot by Bulgarian and Soviet intelligence to kill Markov became generally known and was revealed in a 1979 BBC documentary, Who Killed Georgi Markov.

Like rat poison, ricin can be packed into bombs. That al-Qaida was producing ricin is a cause for major concern.

Many other chemical and biological materials, some commonly available and others specially manufactured, can be packed into bombs. In addition, radiological "dust" can also be put into bombs, and there is growing evidence that al-Qaida, with help from Pakistani scientists, was working on radiological weapons.

No doubt the same know-how also exists in Iraq, which has nuclear reactors and experienced nuclear scientists.

Judging from what happened Sept. 11, what's happening in Israel now and the risk of sleeper agents already in the United States, the security challenge to ferret out terrorists is formidable. It is questionable that self-defense measures will suffice to protect our population from future attacks. President Bush is right that the only alternative open to us is to go after the terrorists and their supporters and destroy them.

As al-Qaida collapses in Afghanistan, we are entering a period of acute danger, and it is imperative that we act quickly and ruthlessly before more, and deadlier, terrorist incidents take place.



Stephen D. Bryen, a board member of JINSA, served as a senior Defense Department official in both Reagan administrations and was the staff director of the Near East Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Comment by clicking here.

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© 2001, This article first appeared in the Baltimore Sun