Obama's Bad Call on Bio Weapons

The Obama administration has embraced many troubling national security policies adopted by the Bush administration, but in most of these cases -- such as the regrettable decision to continue the "rendition" of captured terrorism suspects to foreign countries -- it at least had a reasonable-sounding explanation. When it comes to this week's misguided ruling on biological weapons, though, administration officials couldn't even dream up a good excuse.

The Biological Weapons Convention outlaws the production and use of deadly bioweapons such as anthrax and smallpox. The United States is one of 162 nations that have signed on to the 1972 convention, which isn't particularly effective because it has no teeth. Unlike the treaties that govern nuclear arms or chemical weapons, it contains no mechanism for monitoring or enforcement. A 2001 conference aimed to change that, but the Bush administration refused to go along and the initiative collapsed.