Mystery of the toxic satellite

From http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dodgy-dossier-was-wrong-its-author-says-783374.html

Mystery of the toxic satellite
Andrew Gumbel
London Independent
Sunday February 17, 2008

It sounds like the plot of a bad Hollywood movie. A dying US spy satellite is hurtling towards Earth. Military specialists worry that its toxic fuel load could contaminate a populated area. After weeks of deliberation, a resolute president gives the order to shoot the satellite down with an air-to-space missile...
This, however, is no movie. The US military will indeed try to shoot down a rogue satellite this week, as soon as the space shuttle Atlantis has completed its mission. But almost nobody believes the public health rationale offered for the missile strike, seeing it instead as an attempt by the US to test out space weaponry or, possibly, to play a game of one-upmanship with China.
The satellite, which is about the size of a school bus, has been drifting back towards Earth since last month. True, it does contain about 1,000lb of a toxic fuel called hydrazine. But the risk, even if the fuel did spill out in the middle of a city, is so minimal as to be laughable, according to experts.
"In the history of the space age, there has not been a single human being who has been harmed by man-made objects falling from space," Michael Krepon of the Henry L Stimson Center, a military think-tank, told The Washington Post. "There has to be another reason behind this."
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Other researchers point out that 42 objects fell to Earth last year, including one with a form of hydrazine on board and a dozen others containing hydrazine residue. They put the risk of someone being harmed at about one in a trillion. "Having the US government spend millions of dollars to destroy a billion-dollar failure to save zero lives is comedic gold," one expert told Wired magazine's blog.
The mission carries with it considerable risk of loss of prestige if it fails. But the US government is sticking to its line that this is all about protecting people, and has mobilised emergency management experts to alert the world's citizenry to a danger they cannot see.