{"id":1385316,"date":"2022-03-16T23:05:47","date_gmt":"2022-03-17T03:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1385316"},"modified":"2022-03-16T23:06:00","modified_gmt":"2022-03-17T03:06:00","slug":"whatever-you-do-dont-call-them-biolabs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/whatever-you-do-dont-call-them-biolabs\/","title":{"rendered":"Whatever You Do, Don\u2019t Call Them Biolabs!"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwhatever-you-do-dont-call-them-biolabs%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1385316&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2022\/03\/Readers-Pass-Knowles-Bioweapons-by-Any-Other-Name-Are-Just-as-Deadly16x9.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.3.0\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p><span>As Vladimir Putin\u2019s bloody campaign to conquer Ukraine approaches its fourth week, a new variable has complicated the crisis: bioweapons. Russian propagandists have alleged that Ukraine coordinated with the United States to \u201cdevelop ethnically targeted biological weapons\u201d \u2014 whatever that means \u2014 near the Russian border. Chinese propagandists amplified the Russian claims, alleging that the United States secretly controls 336 biological research laboratories in 30 countries around the world. The United States, for our part, has dismissed the allegations as \u201cmalarkey\u201d and \u201cdisinformation.\u201d But now it seems our own propagandists have played just as fast and loose with the facts as have our enemies overseas.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has long denied the existence of the labs. The Kyiv Post reported one such denial over two years ago. \u201cRecently, \u2018fake news\u2019 about the alleged activities of American military biological laboratories in Ukraine has been spread in the media and social networks,\u201d the SBU complained. \u201cNo foreign biological laboratories operate in Ukraine. Statements recently made by individual politicians are not true and are a deliberate distortion of the facts.\u201d The left-wing \u201cfact-checking\u201d website Politifact similarly concluded, \u201cThere are no US-run biolabs in Ukraine, contrary to social media posts.\u201d But while there may not be any \u201cforeign\u201d or \u201cUS-run\u201d laboratories on Ukrainian soil, \u201cU.S.-funded\u201d labs do in fact exist, as the State Department admitted last week.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>During Senate testimony on March 8, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland acknowledged, \u201cUkraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we\u2019re now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how we can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Another left-wing \u201cfact-checking\u201d website, Snopes, offered more details. \u201cThe rumors are a distortion of the fact that the Ministry of Health of Ukraine and the Department of Defense of the United States of America entered into an agreement in 2005,\u201d Snopes explained, to \u201cstem the threat of bio-terrorism by placing safeguards on deadly pathogens dating from a Soviet-era biological weapons program.\u201d Snopes then linked to a video produced by the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv defending the research program and directing viewers to learn more at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency\u2019s (DTRA) website, <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/dtra.mil\/\"><span>dtra.mil<\/span><\/a><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin, citing talking-points handed to her by the Pentagon, assured television viewers that the bioresearch partnership was nothing more than an \u201ceffort to try to clean up these Soviet-era labs and make sure that nothing escapes from those labs.\u201d But this \u201cfact-check\u201d raised more questions than answers. For starters, the Soviet Union collapsed 31 years ago. The United States waited 14 years to launch this partnership in 2005, but even so, it has now been in operation for 17 years. How long does it take to \u201cclean up\u201d a Soviet bioweapons lab? If the United States has successfully converted the labs from their focus on bioweapons research to more mundane (and legal) scientific endeavors, then why is the American military still running the running and funding the program? If the research presently taking place in the labs is innocuous, why should we worry if it falls into Russian hands?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>CBS News reporter David Martin conveyed the Pentagon\u2019s fears on Sunday. \u201cThe concern is that the Russians will seize one of these biomedical research facilities that Ukraine has where they do research on deadly pathogens like botulism and anthrax, seize one of those facilities, weaponize the pathogen, and then blame it on Ukraine and the U.S.,\u201d he explained, \u201cbecause the U.S. has been providing support for some of the research being done in those facilities.\u201d In other words, the Pentagon now contends that the very same pathogens that are not bioweapons in the hands of Americans and Ukrainians will become bioweapons in the hands of the Russians. Perhaps our increasingly woke military will dub the microbes \u201cweapon-fluid\u201d or \u201ctrans-tactical.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>This postmodern definition strains credulity to its breaking point. Either the labs contain bioweapons \u2014 i.e., dangerous pathogens that can be \u201cweaponized\u201d \u2014 or they do not. Mealy-mouthed sophists who distinguish between bioweapons and potential bioweapons draw a distinction without any practical difference. The Pentagon admits as much. Robert Pope, a director for the DTRA, insisted to New York Times that \u201cthere is no place that still has any of the sort of infrastructure for researching or producing biological weapons.\u201d But in the same interview he conceded, \u201cScientists being scientists, it wouldn\u2019t surprise me if some of these strain collections in some of these laboratories still have pathogen strains that go all the way back to the origins of that [Soviet bioweapons] program.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>When former congressman Tulsi Gabbard published a video acknowledging the existence of the U.S.-funded biolabs and calling for their closure, Mitt Romney accused her of \u201cparroting false Russian propaganda\u201d and warned that \u201cher treasonous lies may well cost lives.\u201d Romney did not cite any evidence for his defamatory claims because none exists. Romney is right that propaganda can prove deadly. That includes our own. Biological weapons \u2014 potential or otherwise \u2014 exist in Ukraine. The war in that country is much more dangerous as a result, and it will take more than flimsy propaganda to mitigate the risk.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i>The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Vladimir Putin\u2019s bloody campaign to conquer Ukraine approaches its fourth week, a new variable has complicated the crisis: bioweapons. Russian propagandists have alleged that Ukraine coordinated with the United<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1385316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1385316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1385316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1385316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1385316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1385316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1385316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}