GAO: Pentagon sold biolab gear

[TheReligiousLeft]

This is pretty crazy! Not only are we allowing potential terrorists to get their grubby hands on Biolabs, we are not making a profit!!!
<http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/10/06/gao.pentagon/index.html>

The Defense Department agency responsible for the sale of excess property to the public, the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service, halted the sale of such items September 19 while the practice is reviewed.

"Many items needed to establish a laboratory for making biological warfare agents were being sold on the Internet to the public from DoD's excess property inventory for pennies on the dollar, making them both easy and economical to obtain," the GAO draft report said.

"As requested, GAO established a fictitious company and purchased over the Internet key excess DoD biological equipment items and related protective clothing necessary to produce and disseminate biological warfare agents."

[Caution]

1. Ok so Bush's national security record

His Pentagon sells the equipment necessary to produce biological weapons, his administration endangers the lives of CIA agent and their networks who are dedicated to stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, his policy is to go after a country that has NO weapons of mass destruction (iraq) and to ignore a country that TELLS us they are building nuclear weapons (north korea) and this guy is supposed to be building greater american security?

[TheReligiousLeft]

3. In summary, yes

If Bush* is the economic and security president we are in a lot of trouble. He sells stuff to make WMD at 10% of cost!

[Nottingham]

2. Where is Homeland Security! Is Tom Ridge snoring

:bounce: this is incredible

[TheReligiousLeft]

5. Hell, he might be selling

not snorting.

[zekeson]

4. Did they get the Bagdad outlet closed down before anything got planted?

:shrug:

[Kool Kitty]

6. Like Crazy Eddie-"Their prices are INSANE!!!"

I feel so much safer now than I did two years ago. :eyes:

[TheReligiousLeft]

7. Don't we all

If it wasn't for Cheap-Labor Conservitives we would actually BE safe.

[synchronance]

8. The British also sell biolabs to terrorists, apparently

Iraq's "mobile weapons labs" in trailers that Powell was talking about are, in fact, a system called for Artillery METereological System, made by Marconi, out of the UK. See

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4686547-102275,00.html

Bit of a scandal, actually, them even getting it. Bit of a nasty political problem, actually, considering it was part of a sweetheart $1 billion deal that Thatcher used to prop up Saddam.

Old news is news, I guess. Dual-use stuff is easily abused

[newyawker99]

14. Hi synchronance!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[farmboxer]

9. Will The Mainstream News Report This?

I wonder?

So, we go to war to stop WMD, while selling the equipment to allow any terrorist to buy such?!

Note: I noticed this came from CNN.com, but I did not notice it on CNN. Has it been reported on TV?

The Carlyle Group, The Bin Laden Family and The Bush Crime Family? What is going on?! Am I within "The Twilight Zone"?

[TheReligiousLeft]

11. Do not attempt to adjust your TV, you are in The Twilight Zone (nt)

[synchronance]

10. You can buy a lot of that stuff on Ebay

do a search for "incubator" or "agar". or for that matter autoclaves, and for that matter lots of other "biolab" equipment

this is actually quite different from thatcher

[prolesunited]

12. They were covering the hearing

this morning live on CSPAN. I was simply astounded by some of the things I heard. I couldn't watch too much, though, because I had to leave for work.

[CheshireCat]

13. Disgusting

Will those in charge of this country NEVER learn??

We need to spread this far and wide. They spend $50,000 of our tax money on an item. Then they resell it to terrorist for $5,000.

How much of a kickback do those in the Defense Dept. get on the original purchase?

And by selling to potential terrorists, the DoD guarentees itself a disgustingly large budget that is hardly questioned by Congress.

Who are the real terrorists?!

[underpants]

15. That's what I thought too

Aside from the disturbing fact that they just sold this to anyone they didn't come close to covering their initial costs.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/US/wnt_gaoreport031006.html

And the Pentagon has been selling the equipment at bargain prices. Some equipment that the Pentagon paid $46,000 for was sold to investigators for $4,100. That could be a real bargain for potential terrorists.

[fsbooks]

16. The equipment looked pretty standard to me.

From the items I saw on the news last night, it really didn't look like much more than is a standard high school biology/chemistry lab. Technical equipment of all types certainly loses value quickly, so 10 cents on the dollar is not unreasonable (I recently picked up a computer discard for free that was $100000 7 years ago). Perhaps we should all live in straw huts (us plebians) and let the technology be for the elite.

Not that I want to excuse pentagon waste, but this basically seems a little ridiculous to me. The best way to stop the spread of biological warfare agents is to stop the pentagon research on the subject.

[Waistdeep]

17. I think everybody is overreacting

As fsbooks noted, this looks like standard equipment. Put controls on stuff like this and high school students are going to be reporting to Homeland Security to get permission to enter the science fair. No point in letting the press get you all riled up over trivia.

[robbedvoter]

18. Nice try! The "party of National security" does it again!

Our social security is going to the dogs... It may be trivial to you, but I se here both theft and depraved indiference. I guess we have different threshholds. (I also think presidents should actually be elected in this country)

[Waistdeep]

19. I'm puzzled by your response

Used scientific equipment always sells for pennies on the dollar. If the government has no more use for something, I'd rather see it auctioned on eBay than through some other, less visible channel.

I'll say it again. This is fairly common equipment. What it has to do with "social security", as you put it, is beyond me.

And what in the world does "I also think presidents should actually be elected in this country" have to do with the topic of this thread? Are you implying that I think otherwise? Or that I am a republican or worse?