Why does the US want to attack Iraq? Well, one reason is to see what it's like to microwave lots of people

By John Sutherland, The Guardian (London), Monday 17 February 2003

I am afeard there are few die well that die in battle says Shakespeare’s soldier, the night before Agincourt. The cause, the old sweats agree, is the only thing that can justify the next day’s carnage. And here we are again, on the eve of battle. What then is the cause that has taken 46,000 British troops to the Gulf? Oil? Payback for the failed hit on dad? Homeland defence?

Add weapons-testing to the causa belli. Samurai knights, one is told, were permitted to try the cutting edge of their sword on the neck of any luckless (and soon headless) passing peasant.

The battlefield will be the testing ground for the US samurai. No more rhesus monkeys or pigs but real, live Iraqis.

In Afghanistan, the big new toy was the thermobaric bomb—the 15,000lb Daisycutter. It ploughed underground to release a tsunami of air pressure. Your lungs were suddenly where your nose used to be. The bomb had been used twice in Gulf war one without success. Bunkers were obstinately unbusted. In 2001 it was profusely dropped on the Tora Bora cave complex. But, as Osama’s recent bulletin told us, his warriors simply dug little holes elsewhere and escaped, their daisies uncut.

The newer, smarter weapon to be battlefield-tested in Gulf war two will be that fantasy of every sci-fi writer, a death-ray. The HPM (high-power microwave) bomb is the first viable product from America’s top-secret Dew (directed energy weapon) programme. It is described as 100 lightning bolts, focused into a single pulse of radiation equivalent to two billion watts. Wow! The HPM bomb fries any electronic equipment within its impact area: computers, motors, radar. It all conks out, leaving the enemy defenceless.

The bomb is mechanically simple, robust, compact and—most important of all —ready to lock and load. Vircator (sounds Latin, but it is just short for Virtual Cathode Oscillator) has been fitted to small AGM-86 cruise missiles, carried by the cluster on B52s.

Currently, Vircator’s destructive radius is a puny 300ft (they are working on that). But, if aimed precisely, it can penetrate underground without needing to blast its way into Saddam’s bunkers. Well-earthed wire mesh built into the concrete fabric affords protection — but cunning radiation will eel its way through ventilation shafts, cracks, wires, radio antennae. You can burrow, but you can’t hide.

The HPM arsenal has had highest priority in the run up to the war. It is, as the Pentagon coyly puts it, the top item in our boutique of capabilities. And, in the past few weeks, it has been sold to the American public as a weapon of mass non-destruction—the Mother Teresa of bombs. What’s good about it, the Pentagon says, is that it doesn’t harm people. Regurgitating PR releases, the American press has hailed HPM as a humane wonder weapon.

The only danger, apparently, is to those with pacemakers or on life-support systems. Since Saddam buries his nastiest labs under hospitals, that thesis may well be tested—having a pacemaker explode in your chest just might be classified as harm.

Although not primarily an anti-personnel device, those who have been exposed to HPM report that its effect is agonising. The radiation penetrates below the skin, boiling nerve cells. It can blind. It induces uncontrollable panic (early research into HPM was as a crowd control agent).

Will the HPM bomb be employed as a precision weapon? Or as part of the declared shock and awe strategy to terrify the general population? Will it be used to destroy what infrastructure the last war left working? Will Iraqi civilians serve as guinea pigs? No one knows what the long-term effect of microwave exposure is. And, frankly, no one this side of the Tigris and Euphrates gives a damn. Peasant, bare your neck!