A more dreadful ‘weapon of mass destruction’, alas, came out of China, not Iraq

Since President GMA two weeks ago announced that she will be sending "policemen" to Iraq, not to fight in the war but to help in the postwar stabilization of that country, I hear the Americans and Brits are interested in her dispatching our Metro Manila policemen over there much sooner, like today.

Why? Because thus far, after two weeks of searching and fighting, they still haven’t found those frequently-mentioned "weapons of mass destruction" which Saddam Insane and his bad boys have been hiding. Many of my friends are certain our cops would succeed where Hans Blix dismally failed. You know, like they sudden discover shabu of other prohibited drugs in cars, SUVs and other vehicles they stop and search. All US General Tommy Franks needs is a few of our versatile policemen to sniff out those concealed things like anthrax biological poisons, nerve gases, and even a dirty nuke or two. Presto – and suddenly the evidence is uncovered.

Time is of the essence, since it appears the Americans and the Brits have commenced their big drive on Baghdad. After an "operational" or "strategic" pause, all those Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and other "gung ho" armored vehicles, plus the first Marine Division, the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division, the air mobile troops of the 101st Airborne Division and every unit the Yanks have in the field are streaming across the Euphrates River, in a push towards Baghdad, while US-Brit coalition aircraft have been flying 18,000 sorties to pound Saddam’s entrenched Republican Guards, such as the 6,000 men of the Guard’s Medina Division dug in around Karbala.

Since it’s ridiculous for us "armchair generals" and television "analysts" sitting in our air-conditioned bunkers so many thousands of miles from the war front to determine what’s really going on, I won’t try to sound like a know-it-all strategist and second-guess what the commanders on both sides are doing. It intrigues me, though, that the Iraqis didn’t blow the bridges – a "must do" in every war when the enemy is approaching – and have instead, permitted the US armor to cross them without much opposition.

Are they trying to suck the Americans and Brits into a building-by-building battle inside Baghdad? We’ll know soon enough, when the coalition forces get there, so I won’t speculate.

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By the way, our President, as a member of the "coalition of the willing", ought to send a battalion of lawyers, too.

I’ve been amused at so many of our legal beagles, from leftist attorneys to grandstanding barristers, ululating endlessly that the US and Britain should stop the war, and that the United Nations and the world community must put a halt to this naked act of invasion and aggression since what the Yanks and Brits are doing is blatantly illegal, violating international law, et cetera ad nauseam.

Here’s a chance for our noisy legal pundits and statute-spouting lawyers to do something practical about halting the "illegal" war. Drop them in front of the advancing Abrams MIA2 tanks so they can stop them, like that brave fellow who attempted to stop that file of Chinese tanks approaching Beijing’s Tiananmen Square – remember? – to assault the student activists and worker demonstrators who had been rallying there since April!

The photograph of that young man in a white shirt, on June 4, 1989, standing in the middle of Changan boulevard in a soon-pushed aside gesture to halt four heavy tanks was snapped by Jeff Widener and has become immortal. The young demonstrator was seized and you know the rest. The tanks went on to crush the ranks of protesters "like meat pies" (one girl survivor testified later). The army went on firing. In the wake of the massacre, there were one thousand estimated dead, with thousands more wounded. For weeks, the reprisals went on all over the city and other parts of China.

This time, what about our "brave" lawyers who so publicly shoot off at the mouth? They can try to stop the advancing Abrams and Bradleys, waving TROs (temporary restraining orders) or writs of injunction, or affidavits of condemnation, or petitions to the International criminal court or the court of justice in The Hague. The problem is that the tanks will probably keep on going (or they might be shot, mistaken for fedayeen).

Or they can run towards the Iraqi lines. The Republican Guards’ T-72 Russian-made tanks might mistake them for attacking Americans. That would be the ultimate humiliation.

I’m not sure our attorneys will be able to enforce the "rule of law" in the war zone. Why, they can’t stop the war in Mindanao — or in Bulacan.

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The awful truth is that soon the war fever may be eclipsed by a real fever – that of the spreading SARS epidemic, which may soon become pandemic.

Fourteen countries have already been affected on three continents. Yesterday’s news was that the worldwide total of SARS sufferers (severe acute respiratory syndrome) had reached 1,880, with at least 63 deaths. By last night, I’m certain the aggregate was much higher.

Alas, this strange and deadly type of pneumonia has become an actual "weapon of mass destruction", devastating economies as well as taking lives – and putting entire cities in the grip of fear.

Reporting yesterday from the People’s Republic of China, where the weird disease was first spotted, Peter Wonacott of The Asian Wall Street Journal said that while "China continued to remain silent on possible fresh cases . . . of SARS," it was apparent that "concern within the country mounted as residents picked store shelves clean of face masks in Beijing and Shanghai, several foreign schools closed and a host of major events were cancelled because of the disease."

Wonacott’s dispatch was datelined Beijing, so he was on the spot. He further revealed that "chief medical officers of Beijing’s hospitals met last week and were told not to release any information on the number of patients to the public, according to persons familiar with the meeting. China’s last ally, released more than a week ago, put total SARS cases in the country at 806, with 34 deaths . . ."

What’s Wonacott trying to do, get himself expelled from that country? Writing for the Wall Street Journal he could be classified as a saboteur or an agent provocateur by the irate Beijing authorities.

The journalists did mention that in Shanghai, residents had stripped the store shelves clean of face masks, which indicates the Shanghainese are panicking over the spread of the death-dealing SARS virus. Why, wasn’t that where Speaker Joe de Venecia and his eleven congressmen just came from? I hope they’re not meeting people, or going about. They might be disease-carriers. This is not a case in which "parliamentary immunity" can apply to a virus.

The first known cases of SARS, it seems, were recorded in November in Foshan, a city in the environs of Guangzhou (Canton City). Already, Hitoshi Oshitani, the World Health Organization’s regional adviser on communicable diseases, is saying: "We believe, at this stage, that it is more infectious than a disease like Ebola." Sanamagan.

Already, the WHO has issued an advisory warning travelers not to go to Hong Kong or Guangdong province (Canton), China.

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Yesterday’s issue of the International Herald Tribune reports the woes of once-upmarket Singapore under the impact of SARS.

Andy Ho, a writer who trained as a doctor and is a columnist of Singapore’s leading English-language daily, The Straits Times, wrote:

"At Novena Square in Central Singapore – normally bustling with shoppers and diners at sparkling clean restaurants – the sidewalks are quiet. Since mid-March, people have been avoiding this area because it’s close to a hospital that has been designated to deal with the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS."

"So far, about 90 of the more than 1,500 cases of the illness and four of the 58 deaths it has caused have been in Singapore, a place known for its antiseptic cleanliness and its usual immunity to the contagious diseases that plague its neighbors. It is believed that the illness was brought here by three women returning from a trip to Hong Kong."

Ho added the warning: "SARS is just one of a number of new and deadly infections that have emerged in the last few decades. Since 1973, about 30 new pathogens, including Ebola and HIV, have appeared. Still those diseases do not spread as widely or as quickly as SARS has."

Well, yesterday, Cable News Network (CNN) said that three more SARS victims had died in Toronto, Canada, and one more in Hong Kong. The Grim Reaper appears to be on a rampage.

We’d better watch out, and not keep on acting so happy-go-lucky.

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In Vietnam, Margot Cohen reports from Hanoi, doctors have traced all of Vietnam’s reported cases to the Hanoi visit of a "Johnny Chen – a Chinese-American garment merchant who is thought to have picked up the virus that causes SARS from a fellow hotel guest at the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong, before bringing it to Vietnam in late February".

"A total of 58 more people came down with SARS, mostly doctors and nurses who treated Mr. Chen at the privately-run Hanoi French Hospital," Cohen said. "Five of the health workers died of the disease, four in Hanoi and one in Bangkok."

The hospital, Hanoi’s only international facility, has been closed to new patients. Most of the 16 patients at Hanoi’s Bach Wai hospital are reported to be in stable or improving condition, the authorities state. The government has been making assurances that the disease is receding.

"Still, other expatriates and many Vietnamese remain wary. The country’s communist rulers have a long track record of suppressing unfavorable news, and people here fret that authorities could be clamping down on reports of new cases in the interest of reviving the country’s vital tourist industry," the writer concludes.

Reminds me of our own Tourism Secretary Dick Gordon. Is it true that he’s announcing that tourists should come here because the Philippines is "SARS free"? Not for long, if the tourists who answer his call arrive – bringing SARS with them.

This is a time when paranoia helps, not hurts.