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TechnoratiThe FBI's lead suspect in the September, 2001 anthrax attacks -- Bruce E. Ivins -- died Tuesday night, apparently by suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the attacks. For the last 18 years, Ivins was a top anthrax researcher at the U.S. Government's biological weapons research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where he was one of the most elite government anthrax scientists on the research team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID).
The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters -- with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 -- that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax -- sent directly into the heart of the country's elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokow, and other leading media outlets -- that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.
If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab, sent by a top U.S. Army scientist at Ft. Detrick. Without resort to any speculation or inferences at all, it is hard to overstate the significance of that fact. From the beginning, there was a clear intent on the part of the anthrax attacker to create a link between the anthrax attacks and both Islamic radicals and the 9/11 attacks. This was the letter sent to Brokaw:
The letter sent to Leahy contained this message:
We have anthrax.
You die now.
Are you afraid?
Death to America.
Death to Israel.
Allah is great.
By design, those attacks put the American population into a state of intense fear of Islamic terrorism, far more than the 9/11 attacks alone could have accomplished.
Much more important than the general attempt to link the anthrax to Islamic terrorists, there was a specific intent -- indispensably aided by ABC News -- to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. In my view, and I've written about this several times and in great detail to no avail, the role played by ABC News in this episode is the single greatest, unresolved media scandal of this decade. News of Ivins' suicide, which means (presumably) that the anthrax attacks originated from Ft. Detrick, adds critical new facts and heightens how scandalous ABC News' conduct continues to be in this matter.
During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."
ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.
That means that ABC News' "four well-placed and separate sources" fed them information that was completely false -- false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein. And look where -- according to Brian Ross' report on October 28, 2001 -- these tests were conducted:
And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.
Two days earlier, Ross went on ABC News' World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and, as the lead story, breathlessly reported:
The discovery of bentonite came in an urgent series of tests conducted at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and elsewhere.
Clearly, Ross' allegedly four separate sources had to have some specific knowledge of the tests conducted and, if they were really "well-placed," one would presume that meant they had some connection to the laboratory where the tests were conducted -- Ft. Detrick. That means that the same Government lab where the anthrax attacks themselves came from was the same place where the false reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq.
It's extremely possible -- one could say highly likely -- that the same people responsible for perpetrating the attacks were the ones who fed the false reports to the public, through ABC News, that Saddam was behind them. What we know for certain -- as a result of the letters accompanying the anthrax -- is that whoever perpetrated the attacks wanted the public to believe they were sent by foreign Muslims. Feeding claims to ABC designed to link Saddam to those attacks would, for obvious reasons, promote the goal of the anthrax attacker(s).
Seven years later, it's difficult for many people to recall, but, as I've amply documented, those ABC News reports linking Saddam and anthrax penetrated very deeply -- by design -- into our public discourse and into the public consciousness. Those reports were absolutely vital in creating the impression during that very volatile time that Islamic terrorists generally, and Iraq and Saddam Hussein specifically, were grave, existential threats to this country. As but one example: after Ross' lead report on the October 26, 2001 edition of World News Tonight with Peter Jennings claiming that the Government had found bentonite, this is what Jennings said into the camera:
This news about bentonite as the additive being a trademark of the Iraqi biological weapons program is very significant. Partly because there's been a lot of pressure on the Bush administration inside and out to go after Saddam Hussein. And some are going to be quick to pick up on this as a smoking gun.
That's exactly what happened. The Weekly Standard published two lengthy articles attacking the FBI for focusing on a domestic culprit and -- relying almost exclusively on the ABC/Ross report -- insisted that Saddam was one of the most likely sources for those attacks. In November, 2001, they published an article (via Lexis) which began:
On the critical issue of who sent the anthrax, it's time to give credit to the ABC website, ABCNews.com, for reporting rings around most other news organizations. Here's a bit from a comprehensive story filed late last week by Gary Matsumoto, lending further credence to the commonsensical theory (resisted by the White House) that al Qaeda or Iraq -- and not some domestic Ted Kaczynski type -- is behind the germ warfare.
The Weekly Standard published a much lengthier and more dogmatic article in April, 2002 again pushing the ABC "bentonite" claims and arguing: "There is purely circumstantial though highly suggestive evidence that might seem to link Iraq with last fall's anthrax terrorism." The American Enterprise Institute's Laurie Mylroie (who had an AEI article linking Saddam to 9/11 ready for publication at the AEI on September 13) expressly claimed in November, 2001 that "there is also tremendous evidence that subsequent anthrax attacks are connected to Iraq" and based that accusation almost exclusively on the report from ABC and Ross ("Mylroie: Evidence Shows Saddam Is Behind Anthrax Attacks").
And then, when President Bush named Iraq as a member of the "Axis of Evil" in his January, 2002 State of the Union speech -- just two months after ABC's report, when the anthrax attacks were still very vividly on the minds of Americans -- he specifically touted this claim:
The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade.
Bush's invocation of Iraq was the only reference in the State of the Union address to the unsolved anthrax attacks. And the Iraq-anthrax connection was explicitly made by the President at a time when, as we now know, he was already eagerly planning an attack on Iraq.
There can't be any question that this extremely flamboyant though totally false linkage between Iraq and the anthrax attacks -- accomplished primarily by the false bentonite reports from ABC News and Brian Ross -- played a very significant role in how Americans perceived of the Islamic threat generally and Iraq specifically. As but one very illustrative example, The Washington Post's columnist, Richard Cohen, supported the invasion of Iraq, came to regret that support, and then explained what led him to do so, in a 2004 Post column entitled "Our Forgotten Panic":
I'm not sure if panic is quite the right word, but it is close enough. Anthrax played a role in my decision to support the Bush administration's desire to take out Saddam Hussein. I linked him to anthrax, which I linked to Sept. 11. I was not going to stand by and simply wait for another attack -- more attacks. I was going to go to the source, Hussein, and get him before he could get us. As time went on, I became more and more questioning, but I had a hard time backing down from my initial whoop and holler for war.
Cohen -- in a March 18, 2008 Slate article in which he explains why he wrongfully supported the attack on Iraq -- disclosed this:
Anthrax. Remember anthrax? It seems no one does anymore -- at least it's never mentioned. But right after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, letters laced with anthrax were received at the New York Post and Tom Brokaw's office at NBC. . . . There was ample reason to be afraid.
The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.
For this and other reasons, the anthrax letters appeared linked to the awful events of Sept. 11. It all seemed one and the same. Already, my impulse had been to strike back, an overwhelming urge that had, in fact, taken me by surprise on Sept. 11 itself when the first of the Twin Towers had collapsed. . . .
In the following days, as the horror started to be airbrushed -- no more bodies plummeting to the sidewalk -- the anthrax letters started to come, some to people I knew. And I thought, No, I'm not going to sit here passively and wait for it to happen. I wanted to go to "them," whoever "they" were, grab them by the neck, and get them before they could get us. One of "them" was Saddam Hussein. He had messed around with anthrax . . . He was a nasty little fascist, and he needed to be dealt with.
That, more or less, is how I made my decision to support the war in Iraq.
Cohen's mental process that led him to link anthrax to Iraq and then to support an attack on Iraq, warped as it is, was extremely common. Having heard ABC News in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack flamboyantly and repeatedly link Saddam to the anthrax attacks, followed by George Bush making the same linkage (albeit more subtly) in his January, 2002 State of the Union speech, much of the public had implanted into their minds that Saddam Hussein was not just evil, but a severe threat to the U.S., likely the primary culprit behind the anthrax attacks. All along, though, the anthrax came from a U.S. Government/Army research lab.
Critically, ABC News never retracted its story (they merely noted, as they had done from the start, that the White House denied the reports). And thus, the linkage between Saddam and the anthrax attacks -- every bit as false as the linkage between Saddam and the 9/11 attacks -- persisted.
We now know -- we knew even before news of Ivins' suicide last night, and know especially in light of it -- that the anthrax attacks didn't come from Iraq or any foreign government at all. It came from our own Government's scientist, from the top Army bioweapons research laboratory. More significantly, the false reports linking anthrax to Iraq also came from the U.S. Government -- from people with some type of significant links to the same facility responsible for the attacks themselves.
Surely the question of who generated those false Iraq-anthrax reports is one of the most significant and explosive stories of the last decade. The motive to fabricate reports of bentonite and a link to Saddam is glaring. Those fabrications played some significant role -- I'd argue a very major role -- in propagandizing the American public to perceive of Saddam as a threat, and further, propagandized the public to believe that our country was sufficiently threatened by foreign elements that a whole series of radical policies that the neoconservatives both within and outside of the Bush administration wanted to pursue -- including an attack an Iraq and a whole array of assaults on our basic constitutional framework -- were justified and even necessary in order to survive.
ABC News already knows the answers to these questions. They know who concocted the false bentonite story and who passed it on to them with the specific intent of having them broadcast those false claims to the world, in order to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks and -- as importantly -- to conceal the real culprit(s) (apparently within the U.S. government) who were behind the attacks. And yet, unbelievably, they are keeping the story to themselves, refusing to disclose who did all of this. They're allegedly a news organization, in possession of one of the most significant news stories of the last decade, and they are concealing it from the public, even years later.
They're not protecting "sources." The people who fed them the bentonite story aren't "sources." They're fabricators and liars who purposely used ABC News to disseminate to the American public an extremely consequential and damaging falsehood. But by protecting the wrongdoers, ABC News has made itself complicit in this fraud perpetrated on the public, rather than a news organization uncovering such frauds. That is why this is one of the most extreme journalistic scandals that exists, and it deserves a lot more debate and attention than it has received thus far.
UPDATE: One other fact to note here is how bizarrely inept the effort by the Bush DOJ to find the real attacker has been. Extremely suspicious behavior from Ivins -- including his having found and completely cleaned anthrax traces on a co-worker's desk at the Ft. Detrick lab without telling anyone that he did so and then offering extremely strange explanations for why -- was publicly reported as early as 2004 by The LA Times (Ivins "detected an apparent anthrax leak in December 2001, at the height of the anthrax mailings investigation, but did not report it. Ivins considered the problem solved when he cleaned the affected office with bleach").
In October 2004, USA Today reported that Ivins was involved in another similar incident, in April of 2002, when Ivins performed unauthorized tests to detect the origins of more anthrax residue found at Ft. Detrick. Yet rather than having that repeated, strange behavior lead the FBI to discover that he was involved in the attacks, there was a very public effort -- as Atrios notes here -- to blame the attacks on Iraq and then, ultimately, to blame Stephen Hatfill. Amazingly, as Atrios notes here, very few people other than "a few crazy bloggers are even interested" in finding out what happened here and why -- at least to demand that ABC News report the vital information that it already has that will shed very significant light on much of this.
Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy.
© Salon.com
109 Comments so far
Show AllThe Ivins suicide and framed anthrax case, and Suskind revealing the Bush faked letter of Jalil Habbush in the same week sure is bringing the buried bodies in this Iraq war-crime to the surface.
— Posted by Alan MacDonald
Scroller: Thanks for the White House press release text. Some found on the slitter machine; they forgot to warn congress and the judiciary. It happens. (Or sometimes such things happen on purpose.)
MikeBinSC: The way NPR told the story about Ivins' "homicidal tendencies," they claimed that at the time, they only examined doctor and psych records if other screening results in a red flag and a perceived need for more digging. They claimed that in Ivins' case, there were no red flags, so they didn't dig and it slipped in under the radar, supposedly.
PF-Flyer: My mistake, you are right about the cipro use in the White House preceding the anthrax attacks according to credible wire service reports and (as you note) never denied by the White House. I found this from the Washington Post, 10/23/01. Note that without any claimed knowledge of the ones doing the attacks, without any claimed evidence, Bush publicly says, in comments no doubt written for him to read, that "there's no question" that the culprit is "the evil-doers". No lone nut. Multiple members of "the" "evil-doers". No question. No question. No question. No question. No question. (Any questions?)
(I suppose a Bush apologist could parse it as Bush making a difficult-to-falsify [and hence logically meaningless] statement that "there's no question" that "the evil-doers" were "continuing to try to harm America", without directly saying he meant the anthrax attacks were included in those continuing efforts, even though that was the context.)
------ START EXCERPT----
[from "White House Mail Machine Has Anthrax",
Sandra Sobieraj, Washington Post, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2001]
On the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House Medical Office dispensed Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David, and told them it was "a precaution," according to one person directly involved.
At that time, nobody could guess the dimensions of the terrorists' plot.
Now, Bush said on Tuesday, "There's no question that the evil-doers are continuing to try to harm America and Americans."
The president spoke in an afternoon Cabinet Room meeting with members of Congress, minutes after his press secretary announced that a "small concentration" of anthrax spores were found on the slitter machine that opens White House mail at a Secret Service-controlled facility on property shared by the Anacostia Naval Station and Bolling Air Force Base.
----------END EXCERPT------
If Ivins was known since 2000 to have homicidal tendencies, then why was he allowed to continue working in the bio-weapons lab until June of 2008?
Some commenters on this article have said that some of their comments disappeared, but at least in regard to the disappearance of the suggestion that Mouse write a book, there may be some confusion between comments left on this article by Greenwald and comments left on the New York Times article by another author, reproduced here at CD at this address:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/01/10752/
Scroller asked when the White House started taking cipro, and if there was proof that they started taking it on 9-11-01, implying that this might indicate foreknowledge. Here's an address for the Judicial Watch news release regarding the lawsuit to find out why they took cipro starting on that date, while congress and the judiciary did not:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/1967.shtml
The White House never contested the facts that they began taking cipro on 9-11 (after the hijacking attacks, but before the anthrax letters were known to the public). They merely said they could not talk because it was a secret matter of national security. Right.
If it's not a question of fact that they did take cipro, I do not believe that this, in and of itself, constitutes proof of foreknowledge and/or complicity in the sending of the letters. The White House could claim that the protocol in an emergency required the executive branch to take the cipro, but not the judiciary or legislative, because of the possibility that a terrorist attack like that which occurred on 9-11 might be followed by a bioterrorist attack on the executive (perhaps someone believed that the risk of attacking the other branches was much lower).
Fine, but if this is the case, show us the protocol, in writing, and show us when the protocol was written, and who wrote it.
Scroller: I like your point regarding the alternative voices, including the opinion of the co-workers who were shocked at the news.
JH, I like your observations about the timing, which coincides with the Hatfill settlement, and the psychiatrist's disclosures. I would think that, even if the man is dead, the family might have some rights to privacy regarding medical and psychological records, unless disclosure is required by law as evidence in court.
Finally, regarding homicidal tendencies and motives, consider:
1. As I said before, If I have homicidal tendencies and want to kill people, I don't warn them that they will die, or that there's anthrax in their letter. So what does Ivin's past homicidal tendencies have to do with sending these letters, with this specific text?
2. One official explanation regarding the anthrax letters is that it was a lone insider who was either concerned that the nation was not as prepared for an anthrax attack as he/she thought we should be, and/or frustrated at the lack of funding for research and preparedness (perhaps at risk of losing a research job due to cuts). Such a person does not have to be homicidal to send out letters. They, like Bush and Cheney, merely have to believe that the ends justify the means, and that any collateral damage doesn't matter as much as achieving a goal. In other words, the goal is not murder at all: The problem here is not homicide but moral indifference to "collateral damage," and an "ends justify any means" attitude. Yet clearly, there was some concern for collateral damage, or there would not have been warnings in the letters. Whoever decided on the text of the letters seemed to have wanted to minimize the harm by making it obvious that there was a problem.
3. The alternative explanation is that the letters were planned to achieve any number of goals, like the burning of the Reichstag, or the bombing of a radio station and the attempt to make it look like it was done by Polish troops before the Nazi's invaded Poland, or in more recent decades, Operation Northwoods. In other words, the goals were to galvinize public support for war against a hated enemy (Muslim extremists), and perhaps to pass the Patriot Act, and maybe to have unfettered access to legislative offices while the decontamination was going on, as some have said here at CD. If these were the motives, again, the problem is not about homicidal motives, but about cool indifference to casualties so as to attain a goal; ends justify means.
Some claim that Bush-Cheney are not smart enough to multi-task on their goals to any initiative, but in some ways, this has been a hallmark of their administration: Don't introduce just one controversial measure, or the opposition might unite in their focus and defeat it. Instead, try six conroversial measures in the same week, so the media, public and potential opposition won't be able to decide what goes in the news, what gets focused on, and how to unite and oppose so many measures. This is not about Bush's intelligence, but about someone with a mind more like Karl Rove.
Some claim that Cheney-Rove didn't have to be in on the planning for the anthrax letters. They just had to be ready to take advantage of them, in Milton Friedman (a la Naomi Klein) "Shock Doctrine" style. Maybe. But this still doesn't address the issue of who sent them and why.
There is still the problem of why the White House (and not the legislative or judiciary branches) was on cipro, and the protocol, and the secrecy about the protocol. If they just say, "Yeah, the protocol should have included the Judiciary and Legislative branches as recipients of the cipro," does this give away a big secret to our potential enemies?
Why not say, "Our protocols will be reviewed and improved, but here's what the protocol was that pertained to cipro for the White House on 9-11, and so we were just following protocol, established during the Clinton Administration (or not)"? If you have nothing to hide, you would not need to be so secretive.
It's suspicious behavior for the White House to have stonewalled regarding the Judicial Watch lawsuit, but then that's nothing new.
I would not jump to any conclusions before the TV movie comes out.
Here's a little excerpt regarding ABC and anthrax attacks before 911 from -
Rogue State
A Guide to the
World's Only Superpower
William Blum
Zed Books - London
Spearhead - South Africa
And a link -
http://arcticbeacon.com/books/William_Blum-Rogue_State(2002).pdf
"In October 1999, ABC's "Nightline" program ran a five-part series in which it simulated a biological weapons attack on a large American city, featuring a squad of terrorists
releasing anthrax spores into the subway system, complete with panic, death and rampant chaos. Ted Koppel made the explicit pronouncement that such an attack was bound to take place in the US at some future time. As one would expect, the programs were long on sensationalism and short on science."
pf-flyer: on Cipro in the White House the day of 911--while Cipro in the White House is well attested, the timing of its use is not, at least so far as I have been able to find. Is there hard evidence that its use preceded the events and knowledge of the anthrax attacks? Obviously, the answer to this question has a great effect on interpretation of this Cipro use.
On Ivins (writing Sunday evening), there is now a "lone nut" story that hangs together: someone who was in the lab, had the means and opportunity, an apparent history of death threats and instability, access to the New Jersey point of mailing of the letters, motive in the sense of a (twisted) urge to see his patented antidote be used and proven effective, and last but not least, a claim that the FBI was certain he was the culprit and planned to indict, and that the source had been traced to his Ivins' specific lab dish. It hangs together. There is no specific counter-evidence (the Cipro in the White House is not counter-evidence unless the timing of its use is demonstrated pre-anthrax attacks; the doctor who treated a lesion on one of the 911 hijackers' legs in Florida and speculated it was an anthrax wound could simply be wrong in that speculation). It is tidy, and appears to account for all of the known facts. The phenomenon of a "tag-along" or "copycat" crime, in which the 911 attacks were opportunistically followed by a lone nut sending out the anthrax letters, is not implausible.
And yet ... there are two dissonant voices. One is his lawyer who says he can prove Ivins' innocence (not of being disturbed, or of having psychiatric problems, but of the anthrax attacks). The other is a report citing one or two of the scientists in the Fort Derrik lab, Ivins' coworkers, who said (reportedly) that "no one" of the scientists in that lab thought Ivins had done it.
Both of these dissonant voices can be discounted (the lawyer, in having a motive to defend his client's family interests even after Ivins' death; the coworkers, in simply having been bamboozled). Nevertheless, the head of the lab's very serious and important point that the FBI must not simply assert, but publish the specific proof, of Ivins' guilt, is highly relevant.
And there remains the distinct issue raised by Glenn Greenwald's reporting, of ABC's sources claiming to pin the anthrax attacks on Iraq (which agrees with the National Enquirer article I saw [noted earlier by me above] which included the [disinformation?] that letters had arrived to the National Enquirer inquiring about anthrax, prior to the attacks).
Could Glenn Greenwald or someone track down this National Enquirer article and get to the bottom of the claim that letters arrived from Iraq inquiring about anthrax, prior to the attacks? (A story which is completely nonexistent in all current narratives of the anthrax attacks, even though I personally saw this article c. 2001-2003, and I am of sound mind and am absolutely not imagining or inventing this.) Because--if there was disinformation linking Iraq to anthrax attacks prior to the anthrax attacks, this could call into question the "lone nut" explanation.
This entire story feels "wrong." I can't quite put my finger about why it has my, "there's more to this than they're saying" bells ringing. One thing is the timing coming on the heels of announcing the multi-million dollar settlement to Hatfill (sp?) for wrongly trying to pin the blame on him. How was this line of investigation kept in the quiet when Hatfill was pursued in the press (as well as by criminal investigation)? Also, why is Ivins' psychologist speaking in public about her former patient? Is this part of a preemptive effort to create the image of Ivins as unbalanced. I would have thought that the sort of narrative coming from this psychologist would not become public until a trial or other official disclosure. Finally, the notes written by the sender in 2001 have egregious misspellings -- hardly seems like the work of a scientist. I am supremely suspicious because, by dying, Ivins has insured that all the details about the crime will disappear from public access. How convenient if you are our government.
Good comment robinea. As we know, the purpose of the anthrax attacks was not so much to kill people, but rather to frighten them, and with the help of the complicit media we have "Mission Accomplished"! By the end of October the prewritten "Patriot Act" was passed almost unanimously! The MIMIC(military-industrial-media-infotainment-complex) had done its work well. All that is left is sweeping the remaining evidence under the rug.
The anthrax scare has had a greater effect in galvinizing or manipulating the country into following the Bush Administration to launch a sequence of wars aimed at the 'Axes of Evil'.
Within days of the first letters, our favorite Doctor Phillip Zellikow was trotted out on one of the major networks (maybe ABC) as a 'specialist in bio-terror'. Zellikow stated, with none of the careful caveats one would expect from an academic, that the attacks 'had to come from a government lab', implying that the Al Queda in the caves of Afghanistan were incapable of such a feat and hinting darkly at the Iraqi government. Zellikow is not a microbiologist or an MD. He is a neo-con academic/administration official who specialized in the effects of 'Catastrophic Terror' on the public and the uses of the 'Public Myth' to direct history. He was appointed Executive Director to the 9-11 Commission and wrote the Official Report. He once likened sceptics of the 'Official Report of the 9-11 Commission' to bacteria which needed to be controlled.
The anthrax mania really started with Clinton, whose Administration pumped up the country's fears on warnings of possible bio-attacks and actually instituted for a 'red alert' in Seattle (involving all hospitals and first responders) during the WTO demonstrations claiming that 'anarchists' were planning bio or chemical attacks...Clinton also started the campaign to get the nation vaccinated against small pox giving a contract to develop a 'new' vaccine to a tiny unknown company with absolutely no experience in vaccine development. His administration gave the anthrax vaccine development contract to a newly formed group headed by the former head of the Joint Chief of Staff under Reagan (Admiral Crowe) who wouldn't have known a bacteria from a virus.
Finally. Anthrax is a lousy 'bioweapon' but a fantastic means of creating mass terror because has long been known to rapidly destroy large herds of livestock whose carcasses have to be burned or buried in lime pits. Anthrax (a zoonosis) primarily infects cattle and similar mammals causing fatal sepsis and is very infectious within a herd of four-legged critters who chew grasses. It can form spores which persist for years in the soil before cropping up again, which is why herders hate the disease. Just look at the veterinary testbooks. Humans usually get a localized skin infection from direct innoculation, working with infected animals, which is 100% treatable with Penicillin or Tetracyclin. It infects humans systemically with difficulty and many thousands of spores have to be inhaled deep in the lungs to develop deadly pulmonary anthrax - which is why the pulmonary form is so rare. It cannot be transmitted from human to human and is exquisitely sensitive to common antibiotics like penicillin and tetracycline. Once pulmonary anthrax develops there is a high fatality rate due to an irreversible toxemia or shock . We recently had a case in Upstate New York which survived with intensive hospital care (a drum maker who illegally imported goat skins from Africa which were presumably heavily contaminated). Most fatalities are believed to have pre-existing conditions which render them susceptible (like emphysema from long term tobacco abuse) The five fatalities in the fall of 2001 were either old, or with pre-existing lung conditions, or received massive doses (like the two African American postal inspectors who had the powdery envelope contents literally blown back into their faces by the automatic sorting machines at the Brentwood Postal Facilities in Maryland and whose diagnoses were delayed by incompetence or worse). Only five died compared to the thousands in the World Trade Center and the hundreds and hundreds of thousands in Iraq.
This is what happens when we have an society made ignorant of basic scientific facts and where censorship and self-censorship is widespread. I blame the complicit self-censorship of the scientific and medical (especially infectious disease and public health) community which let the nation be dragged into this mass hysteria with virtually no protest. Many in the public health and infectious disease community convinced themselves (in the pages of their journals - like Science) that this business with anthrax (and small pox) would create huge government spin-offs in terms of money for research and various related programs. In fact it deviated billions of dollars from vital public health programs (like AIDS prevention and detection, childhood vaccinations etc) throughout the country which had been critical to protecting our vulnerable fellow citizens.
Ultimately though, the conscious, cowardly perpetuation of this lie(more than the 9-11 attack) has led our country into invading Iraq (for WMD) and causing the horrific deaths of over one million precious human beings who meant us absolutely no harm. Greenwald is only beginning to scratch the surface of this grotesque and cruel hoax.
This morning on ABC's "This Week" with Geoge Stephanopolis, there was a brief mention of the anthrax suicide story, but no mention of ABC's involvement and complicity in it.
By design, those attacks put the American population into a state of intense fear of Islamic terrorism, far more than the 9/11 attacks alone could have accomplished.
Who writes this stuff? When were they assigned by the People to express our thoughts and emotions?
"I would ask those who doubt my veracity or intentions, as well as those who would seek a public disclosure of the identities of those who are involved in these events to understand that our families and friends have already experienced the devastating loss of some of the most extraordinary and beautiful people in our lives, and to please respect our wishes to remain anonymous. I would also ask that you extend your sympathies to the family and friends of Bruce Ivins. I mean no disrespect to them or to his memory and hope no offense is taken by my comments posted above. They are merely my opinion as I seek the truth on a topic which is very close to my heart. I stand by my statement, as it is the truth, and I do not care to amend, append, nor defend it."
With respect to your wishes, I discerned none of your worries of security in any of the above comments. As to the validity of your comments....
Conspiracies are easy fiction, harder proven. That is the nature of intrigue. Thus intrigue, conspiracies, require huge amounts of expensive labor to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
However, I did notice that two comments I had posted here on August first failed to be included. One of which believed Mouse should write a book. It is very easy to remain anonymous when writing best selling fiction under a pen name.
In addition, Marc Melchiori,
The assumption of the residence of christian labeling (heaven and hell) to the concepts, or phenomena, of the correct and incorrect of human behavior in simplistic platitudes doesn't elevate you to guru. In fact, to believe such tripe places such a mentality in the same logic trap, or psychosis of siege or Armageddon.
To be a humanist requires minimizing those dissonant concepts that drain energy, ability and prevent human personal growth.
Have you noticed the excessive strain apparent on the physical manifestation of Bush's face?
That is the result of waaay too many conflicting concepts that have been left unresolved.
As for the editors of CD...I understand, I KNOW, the grieving process. I have lost both parents, my cosmic, biological brother (the others are estranged) and all of my best friends of 20 or more years. A day does not pass my consciousness that we are stardust....My gratitude, my being is humbled by CD's, her husband and her children's grief.
Who picked the targets and who would know about US Army anthrax? A former Secretary of War perhaps?
I heard a National Public Rado story on the suicide this afternoon, and they highlighted the claim that Ivins (according to his shrink --?-- not a social worker as some stories claim --?) demonstrated "homicidal tendencies" for years since when he was in college or some such thing.
But look at the letters. These are not homicidal letters. The intent is not to kill, but to create fear and in one letter, get folks to take an antibiotic. If the intent was to kill, you'd send a fan letter to Brokow and a request for legislative action or a flag to your Democratic congressman or senator. You'd say nothing about anthrax or Allah or antibiotics or death.
Any attempt to pin it on Ivins because he supposedly had homicidal tendencies that were missed -- this would indicate that the FBI must either be trying too hard to make him the patsy, or they're trying to make others who are under investigation think they believe they found their man and the case is closed.
As others have noted before and elsewhere, we should recall that, late in the day on 9-11, the White House staff was instructed to start taking cipro (whether or not it would be effective, it was thought by someone that it would be).
But members of the Supreme Court, the House and Senate and their staffs were not instructed to start taking cipro on 9-11.
Eventually Judicial Watch (a supposedly non-partisan organization that went after Bill Clinton for at least one issue) sued the White House to find out why they and their staff were the only ones covered by the cipro policy.
White House reply: We don't have to answer that because it's a matter of national security.
(This is an example of why Bruce Fein, Bob Barr and other Republicans started the American Freedom Agenda (Google it) to complain about Bush-Cheney abuses of "national security secrets" and "executive privilege," and signing statements, torture, etc.)
It seems there was a plan, either via 9-11, or if that failed (oops, flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania field), to allow all the functions of government but the White House and its staff to go under, at least if you consider who was getting the cipro....
But again, that's just a hunch, not an established fact.
Maybe the proper authorities (congress, via impeachment) should waterboard Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and all their staff to find out more...? I mean, pre-emptively, just to be safe, in case there was high treason and all. This would be in harmony with the Bush-Cheney policy of pre-emptive war and enhanced interrogation techniques.
On the one hand, it would be nice to have whistleblowers and more hard evidence of really nasty treason and conspiracy to "sex up" an impeachment trial (as the Brits say).
On the other hand, if you do things the Bush-Cheney way, you don't need hard evidence. You just make things up....
marc melchiori -- thank you so much for the name of the author of The Good Day, i read it in an anthology of science fiction stories when maybe eleven years old and never forgot it, i was a voracious reader as a child but that story is still so clear in my mind . . .
recently, i have been studying russian language and history, so your explanation is so welcome and puts the entire concept in context, especially the idea that, no matter what happens, it is always A Good Day, like in the movies favored by Stalin (i am thinking specifically of his favored comedy, Volga Volga)
right now i am working my way through Zamyatin's book We, there is much prescient literature in Russia which we in the west know nothing of . . .
thanks also for the kind moniker, i am actually just a well-seasoned farm wife but we are fortunate to live in a very beautiful state, i am not sure that 'erotic' is the right word to describe an environment as challenging as ours, but 'passionate' would definitely be accurate . . .
will go to russiankniga.com to look for books by Mendelev . . .
meanwhile, the matrix continues to morph . . . it's time to say 'end program' and exit the holodeck . . .
The anthrax attacks represent our best chance to expose and bring those responsible to justice. The anthrax is almost completely swept under the rug now. If nothing comes out of this, just stick a fork in us, were done!
yourstruly wrote: "If we're stupid enough to fall for the story that Irvin, purportedly a lone 'madman' (as per Oswald) did it all by himself."
Isn't that possible? If Irvin knew he would have access to the mailed anthrax when it arrived at Ft Detrick for testing, he could have contaminated the sample with bentonite. No-one, including the "four anonymous officials", would be any wiser.
This is starting to look like the OJ Circus.
Miftin - but you have to let the devil out. He is as much a part of life as the sun and rain. He lives in you and me.
Richard Cohen sez: "I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official ... "
***
Wonder if the official was the same one who suggested Ashcroft eschew commercial airline travel in the weeks BEFORE 9/11?
Hmmn, this is the scariest thread I have read in a long time.
Indeed, my first thought when I heard the news blab about Dr. Ivins, was Dr. Kelly who so convientiently slashed his wrists back in 2003.
Life sucks, but sometimes it is on steroids...
As a kid, my most riveting Twilight Zone episode was when they captured the Devil and were holding him in a locked room at a little monastery in Europe on a stormy night. It ain't Common Dreams posters you have to worry about taking over the world and issuing totalitarian edicts-- It's the people who actually have taken over the world and are issuing totalitarian edicts.
If the Feds bury this case with Bruce E. Ivins then we will know for sure that the Feds were behind this bioterror attack.
Do you want this story to be arround on Monday morning? ITs up to you! Post away on Topix forums
SEE HOW EASY IT IS TO INTRODUCE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS TO COMMON DREAMS YOU DONT EVEN HAVE TO REGISTER WITH TOPIX FORUMS , WHICH CONNECTS YOU TO SOME OF THE BIGGEST DAILY PAPERS IN US.
Bush -Dems lies will reach 300,000,000. How many will the truth reach? Critical mass: Its up to you!
http://www.topix.net/forum/source/list
Thank you Mr. Greenwald,
Now I understand why Charles Gibson has recently looked stained, as if he's gazing off into the horizon...from the deck of the Titanic.
Peter Jennings and Dan Rather begin to look different now too.
The 'Suicide' Of Bruce E. Ivins Is To The Anthrax Attacks What The Murder Of Lee Harvey Oswald Was To The Kennedy Assassination
"How is that?"
"If we're stupid enough to fall for the story that Irvin, purportedly a lone 'madman' (as per Oswald) did it all by himself."
"So case closed?"
"Exactly."
"Which lets the FBI/CIA off the hook?"
"And the role of mainstream media in this conspiracy?"
"Same as with the Anthrax scare."
"That being?"
"After the Anthrax attacks in 2001 MSM fed us rumors and innuendo from anonymous sources about the Anthrax spores supposedly having come from Iraq."
"Anonymous sources or in-house FBI/CIA plants?"
"Based on?"
"The revelations of the 1973 Church Committee that Intelligence agencies had been infiltrating and planting propaganda in mainstream media."
"But thirty-five years later could such illegal activities still be going on?"
"Well, once again MSM is feeding us gossip from mostly anonymous sources, as in today's LA times - 'Suspect stood to gain from anthrax panic' with subtitle 'The puzzle: If he did it, why?'"
"What's it all about?"
"MSM is trying to take our attention off the possibility that a FBI/CIA rogue unit was responsible for those Anthrax spores."
"Shades of how the media's all out coverage of Lee Harvey Oswald helped the Intelligence services get off scot-free."
"What should the Intelligence services do?"
"Fess-up to their crimes."
"Anything else?"
"We elect someone president who's going to end the Iraq War, negotiate with Iran, get to the bottom of those Anthrax attacks as well as the murder of President John F. Kennedy, plus turning things around here at home."
"And then what sort of world?"
"It'll be up to us."
Small point: No one's mentioned the return addresses on the envelopes sent to Brokaw, Daschle, etc. In childlike capital letters -- as was all the writing, which looked phony to me -- the letter purported to be from an elementary school that turned out to be fictitious. Clever. What could be more benign and non-threatening than a letter from a school kid?
As soon as I saw that on TV I knew Al-Qaida hadn't sent it. The tradition of having grade school kids write letters to their Senators or other famous people is an odd anomaly of American life, and the chances that anyone in bin Laden's circle would have known about it are incredibly remote. Also, the date on letter shown in this article is 09-11-01 (the American way), not 11-09-01 (in the rest of the world).
I was paying close attention to the anthrax-in-the-mail problem because I'm allergic to Cipro. It was really terrifying, especially after that elderly lady in New Jersey died and they weren't able to trace how she was exposed. One of the posters above asserted that good old penicillin would have worked if the anthrax was not weapons grade -- but another poster said it WAS weapons grade. If anyone has inside knowledge about this, I'd appreciate your posting it here, just in case it happens again. Thanks!
And if so and we do not throw off the yoke of our oppressors then I guess we will all meet in the FEMA camps with glowsticks up our butts.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/01/308445.shtml
I have two comments to make on Glenn Greenwald's excellent coverage of this issue. First, his findings ring true to what I have currently been reading in Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine." Whether or not the Bush administration was actually complicit in 9/11, it does seem absolutely clear that they would have had in readiness shock procedures to add to any catastrophic event, just as had been done clandestinely by the CIA in the past in other countries. Ms. Klein makes the point that such torture procedures used to be covert, but the Bush administration has redefined them into public use, such as eavesdropping, such as waterboarding. They haven't yet done so with mailing out anthrax willynilly, but maybe that's a bridge too far even for them.
My second point is that what convinces me that this would be considered as an additional shock to a national catastrophe is that I remember very well how the mail was disrupted. I was sending, innocently enough, a letter to Mr. Bush which had been endorsed by my local town council, pleading with him NOT to invade Iraq. Four and a half months later came the reply that 'due to security considerations' he had not (of course) been able to address my concerns until now (July, the invasion well and truly happening.)
I am beginning to wonder - why didn't it all go on from there? Had to be because they had convinced themselves they would suceed in Iraq and that would be the proof of the pudding for the rest of us dumb mortals. After all, we were going along, the majority of us. It worked.
olny part right my beautiful alaskamaid (god that sounds erotic).
The short story you refer to is by the russian author Zemenkie mendelev (spelling might differ) He was like solysnitzen (spelling is waaaay wrong) a vocal opponent of the soviet system. Your memory of the short story is correct and your are right to point out the basic jist of the story, however the author, being a first hand witness to the failures of communism, uses the boy as a metaphor for soviet leadership. He argues that they were all very child like and when things went bed, like production goals not being met or harvests coming in poor, the leadership, like the boy, would wish people away. The cornfield is like the gulag system or worse. as we know in the soviet union people were erased from living memory as easily as the few remaining people in the book or the Twilight Zone movie were. I suppose you could argue the current situation is like that of the boy and his cornfield, or even that the few remaining people are so bereft they choose not to kill the boy, however the author was writing about the failures of communism - not the current state of affairs.
I appreciate the comments from lwfrey and oleManRiver
lwfrey August 1st, 2008 2:55 pm
OleManRiver August 2nd, 2008 12:58 am
and many others here.
MikeBinSC (August 1st, 2008 8:13 pm):
Yes, I've read some of the stuff from other sources contending that AIDS/HIV was man-made, but I'm not a genetic biologist and have no ability to judge the claims of one expert against another. Yes, given my limitations, I'm still suspicious, but no, it doesn't make me assume that these alternate "expert" opinions ignored by the MSM are telling the truth. I am absolutely certain that all sorts of horendous things have been done, and powers abused. The purpose of covert action is in part to keep some things secret. So might we assume that very nasty germs have been created? Of course. Is it possible that AIDS/HIV, specifically, is one of them? Of course. Is it a fact? I'm in no position to say. Such articles and claims don't make a believer or a conspiracy theorist out of me. They make me a more cautious and suspicious agnostic on the specifics.
Mouse, I mean no disrespect, and all you've said here is fascinating stuff. I respect your claims about the devastating effects to friends and family of scientist/employees, and that your privacy should be respected. I'm fine with all that.
I'm fine with editorial and anonymous hearsay at CD if it keeps me thinking and questioning, to a point.
Veracity Presence (August 1st, 2008 8:40 pm): fiction "based on" historical events and conspiracy theories is fine, interesting and perhaps sometimes helpful to spread the word of certain theories, and to help the mind get a grip on certain possibilities. But fiction is fiction, and not admissible in court. It can inspire the investigative journalist, but the journalist can't claim it's non-fiction and write about it till the facts are established.
(BTW, I own many of David Griffin's books, and "Crossing the Rubicon," and am a fan of "The Long Emergency" as well.)
But when one seeks to go beyond hearsay and verify or obtain evidence that can be admitted in court, one doesn't look for anonymous posters of comments, but for some brave/foolish whistleblower who is willing to step out into the limelight and make public claims, like Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers, Vietnam), or Sybil Edmonds (FBI translator, 9-11), or retired air force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (Pentagon, office of special plans, Iraq war).
And these days, you need a lot of them, not just one or two whistleblowers, if the MSM isn't on your side with the story. You need to reach a critical mass to change the way the wind is blowing.
Umlaut: As I recall, it was under Carter that Brzezinski devised the strategy of arming and training mujaheddin in Afghanistan in order to weaken and bring down the USSR (creating their Vietnam). But it is true that their sins were mostly of omission, such as watching and doing nothing (or perhaps giving the nod-and-wink) while Argentina's military tortured and disappeared hundreds and Pinochet "cleaned up" between 1977 and 1980.
I'd like to read a good article or book on the real policies of the US under Carter. Any recommendations?
marc melchiori -- never watched the twilite zone but i am familiar with 'the little boy who wishes away people he does not like into a corn field'
this theme was taken from a short story called 'The Good Day', can't remember the author but i never forgot the story
in the story, a doctor delivers a demon and tries to smother it at birth, but the demon does 'something' and suddenly the entire rural community is 'elsewhere' and totally isolated from the rest of the cosmos
the demon has total control over everything that happens, and does in fact 'wish away into a corn field' (actually into graves beneath the cornfield) anyone who thinks bad thoughts about it
that is why the story is called "The Good Day" -- it is vital to think only good thoughts, no matter what, to prevent being wished away into the cornfield yourself
the subtle message is that the people understand that the demon is actually a manifestation of their own collective unconscious and as such cannot be destroyed, but must be tolerated until it comes into self-awareness (see www.awakeninthedream.com for more about manifestations of the collective unconscious)
naturally, the demon controls the weather as well, the story ends "The next day, it snowed and ruined half the crops. But it was a Good Day."
and also a very telling metaphor for our situation
It was easy to suspect something was afoot when Leahy and Daschle were targetted. In fact, Daschle's office was quarantined and remained off-limits, as I recall, for at least 3 months, time enough to separate him and his staff from vital documents and for the bushies to read and copy whatever they wanted, for later use. It is conceivable that the Democrats have been blackmailed or at least kept in check by knowledge gathered during that quarantine.
It's also very sad that ABC's Peter Jennings might have become "collateral damage", as I am now sure he was: it's probable that he knew something or at least had strong suspicions, if not about the anthrax then about the casus belli being drummed up by the admin., and he had to keep quiet during those months leading up to the attack on Iraq. He seemed tormented and tense all that time, then fell ill and died. Had he been working in a less emotionally-toxic environment he might have not been hit so hard. We'll never know. (Forgive the idle speculation, but I can't get the images of the anguished Jennings having to read lies and more lies on the evening news.)
"Time enough at last" and "The obsolete Man" both around 1959. Top that
I'd have included Colin Powell's role in the article -- did I miss it somehow? Here's the link to his U.N. disinformation campaign before the U.N. (conveniently found on the whitehouse.gove website):
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html
have a good weekend, Common Dreamers -- I love (most of) you.
kokuaguy in honolulu
Excellent article. As the author says, even if everything is as projected by the "authorities" is true - one has to wonder what we are spending trillions of dollars on "defense" for - our worst enemies appear to be born/breed Americans.
I used to read spy novels, ala John LeCarre. Now, just listening to the daily news is far more fictional and thought-provoking.
I did read THE SHELL GAME by Steve Alten, a documented semi-fiction all of you should read. The other is non-fiction, THE LONG EMERGENCY by James Howard Kunstler, an executive summary of the global catastrophes that POTENTIALLY loom for mankind at the end of the cheap oil era.
Cliches that come to mind are: "Forewarned is forearmed." and "Just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean THEY aren't out to get you!".
How about the episode were he plays the man who speaks the truth and reads the truth against the wishes of the Big Brother Government. The government declares him "obsolete" and forces him to choose the method of his death. It speaks volumes about how the folks on CD would rule the world if they got there way. I believe he quotes the Bible, in the last few minutes of the episode, "though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i shall fear no evil....." Wow - I can picture it now. The several dozen CD members in charge - dispensing their edicts upon the masses, declaring anyone who is not one of them OBSOLETE! just as Orwell had envisioned things to come in 1984.
if the athrax attacks have been proven to originate domestically in order to provide an excuse to invade Iraq.....then logic dictates that the 911 attack was also of domestic origin.
MIFTIN Burgess Merideth. One of the greatest Twilight Zone episodes ever. how many other people even know what you just referenced? How many people remember Merideth - that little book worm?
I kind of think most of the folks at CD would want to be the little boy that wishes away people he does not like into the corn field. (Shit i forget his name - lost in space). Question? Why did the neighbor who was drunk on the last bottle of brandy not smash the kids head it with the empty bottle? God that is some really F-ed up shit.
my favorite episode - the marketing fella who goes back home in search of his childhood, in the episode his name was Martin. He finds his childhood and discovers that you only get one summer of fun in your life and that you should cherish that summer. But all in all life is not that bad. Something the folks at CD should watch becuase in reality, life is not all that bad, you can't go back in time, and cherish those memories of days gone by. Burgess Merideth - great character actor. What a face.
People love to complicate simple things. Like the 9/11 attacks, the anthrax mailings were orchestrated by the US government.
And like the 9/11 attacks, the truth behind the anthrax attacks will never be known. If we had a real opposition party, things would've been different.
But Democrats are not a real party, they are Bush's co-conspirators. So move along, nothing to see here.
Oh yeah and i hear them saying he had a history of mental illness.
They let people with a history of mental illness work with weapons grade anthrax?
Again actual journalism *shakes head vigorously* It's like back in college eating a piece of fresh fruit after a week of pizza. Can we have a Salon 24 hour news network please? I've been ready them on the front lines of so much ringing the bell before the train hits for at least 6 years now. Too bad not enough listen to the warnings.
So, Saddam Husein attacking America would consist of him targeting democrats, the only ones who voted against an attack on his country, and the press?
Let's see, I heard the same day on the MSM that i heard about his suicide, the words "case closed"
Hmm, he worked at a military lab for bio-weapons.
This one is just too obvious.
Also, why do the bad guys on the right always end up dying just before or after prosecution?
Maybe he's on a beach on some secret island with Ken Lay.
Slightly tangent, but consequent, didn't the necons that perpetrated this get the memo that the dems, even those against Patriot, were secretly just part of the same corrupt system that falsely gives us the appearance of two parties when they really laugh behind our backs at secret handshake parties behind closed doors? "Ooops, sorry bout that Daschle, my bad, forgot you were on our side."
I mean after all, look at those dems. Roosevelt arrested and interned 100,000 american citizens, Truman, the only human to ever authorize the use of a nuclear weapon on human targets, and mostly civilian at that, Kennedy authorized air strikes against Cuba and an overthrow of Castro, Clinton bombed his share of Iraq.
Sorry, nothing comes to mind about Carter.
Yeah, you guys have won me over. Now is the time, with our extremely informed populace, to rise up and claim a victory for the third party. America has reached a new age of enlightenment and is ripe for it!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVbobdL3yi0&eurl=http://widget-b9.slide.c...
Something I noted years ago is the date on the "Brokaw Note." Almost everywhere else on the planet--including especially Islamic countries--the date notation starts with the MONTH--11-09-01 is the script for 11 September 2001 in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America--just about everywhere EXCEPT English-speaking countries.
Most Republicans and Democrats are braiwashed Proles who woule be Greens if they could think for themselves. Now, the millionaire+ Reps and Dems are another matter. And my close relatives--who just can't seem to be bothered by any sort of bad news like this--can't understand why I refuse to pay US taxes.
The Cipro Bayer connection is marvelous.
You can't just kill all the Republicans. This part of the country would be deserted. I'd be like Burgess Meredith sitting on the steps of the public library surrounded by books but holding a pair of broken reading glasses.
51 comments precede the herein comment.
My father also was a microbiologist/immunologist who died young in a foreign land after working for the U.S. government in a variety of capacities. He had well-formed political ideas and voted for Adlai Stevenson against Ike both times. (Yet he agreed with Ike's retiring statement on the threat of the MI complex)
I am a retired investigative reporter.
None of the entries above has examined the letter printed by Greenwald as sent to Tom Brokaw. Ask yourself whether Dr. Ivins would send such a letter. Yes, he might purposefully misspell "penacilin," but why the emphasis on the capitation of all the upper-case Ts? This letter strikes me as a sledge hammer. Over the decades, I have often contemplated a variety of "poison-pen letters" I would have liked to send to "enemies." I have also studied handwriting. That letter was nothing like mine. If you have any doubts here, contemplate the letter you want to write so you can rob a bank without a gun in these trying economic times! "Gimme duh money."
Immediately below the graphic of that letter, Greenwald writes:
"The letter sent to Leahy contained this message:
We have anthrax.
You die now.
Are you afraid?
Death to America.
Death to Israel.
Allah is great."
These messages were immediately conflated to target Saddam Hussein, despite the fact that Saddam was a secular Sunni running a country along somewhat Socialist lines.
If you think about the history of the two decades preceding 9/11, the last person on Earth who would have attempted to provoke the U.S. at that time was Saddam.
Also, contrary to an earlier post, the anthrax attack in the U.S. WAS "weapons grade," which is why it was so lethal.
It was an inside job...at least this should be the first supposition of anyone investigating it. And the person who observed that it shut down the Congress for several weeks while people who did the "clean-up" had access to INFO in Congressional offices is spot on!
Pardon the tautology, but anyone who thinks that Outsiders like Al Quaida or Saddam Hussein could have pulled off the anthrax gambit just does not know Washington.
IT WAS AN INSIDE JOB, and Greenwald has just, basically, exposed it.
Also, I am familiar with Tylenol 3 and 4. Lousy suicide drug, almost like trying to commit suicide by smoking pot! And a host of other drugs. Were I suicidal, which I am not, Hemingway had it about right, a shotgun under the jaw (or was it in the mouth?) aimed at the brain. Messy, but what suicide is not messy, one way or another?
What goes around comes around. My heart goes out to the families of the 9/11 victims and all the others similarly situated.
We are governed by psychopaths. The real question is how to expunge them. Shakespeare said, First, kill all the lawyers. I say, First, kill all the Republicans, then maybe the Democrats will remember their historic calling. Oh, I forgot, then kill every single hedge fund millionaire if you can find their lair. We are come to a time when any billionaire can create any convoluted conspiracy the Waltons desire. Whatever happened to oblesse oblige? Pardon my bad French, but Greenwald is right here. Is there a single ABC reporter willing to spill the beans?
Remember the Dixie Chicks! Earl had to die. A metaphor for Dr. Ivins...
-30-
DOUGLAS AMES: Spoken like a true sleuth.
MOUSE: Wow! Everything you said resonates with what my own intuition was suggesting about the "suicide" of this guy. Like many, it seems too convenient that Wellstone's plane went down, and the latest Kennedy, too. Sorry for your loss, but what a story!
Thanks for reminding us of the significance of the anthrax attacks in building the momentum for both the "war on terror" and the War on Iraq.
It was all too hokey to believe at the time. To me the anthrax attacks were an obvious "false flag" operation, part and parcel of the 9-11 false flag operation. But that's just me - the American public bought the scare.
No new topic, even this, is complete without an election plug. Do you believe Bush will investigate himself on the anthrax case in the next few months? Do you believe McCain will pick it up in January? Would you rather have a shot at it via Obama? I would.
jakenewton: It is Iowa State University. Here is one source, there are many more:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/24273
The anthrax strain used in the attacks originates from a USDA Lab just outside Ames, Iowa on the opposite side of town from the university. All government records of the strain were destroyed by order of the Bush Administration, which the article sourced here confirms.
I would ask those who doubt my veracity or intentions, as well as those who would seek a public disclosure of the identities of those who are involved in these events to understand that our families and friends have already experienced the devastating loss of some of the most extraordinary and beautiful people in our lives, and to please respect our wishes to remain anonymous. I would also ask that you extend your sympathies to the family and friends of Bruce Ivins. I mean no disrespect to them or to his memory and hope no offense is taken by my comments posted above. They are merely my opinion as I seek the truth on a topic which is very close to my heart. I stand by my statement, as it is the truth, and I do not care to amend, append, nor defend it.
To those who commented the Ivins story may be the key to finally cracking open and unravelling the truth of the events surrounding 911 and related crimes, I would say you may be right, and I encourage any effort which brings those responsible for these crimes to justice, either through War Crimes trials or an Independent Truth Commission modeled after those held in South Africa after Apartheid was dismantled. I believe this will likely only be possible after a revolutionary shift in global politics which would by necessity include full international disarmament, both nuclear and conventional, and the dismantling of the global military industrial complex. I do not encourage you to hold your breath waiting for it on January 21st.
It's 1939 all over again.
Time to organize your White Rose cells.
Not you JF, up a few posts.
Oh dear Jesus, the idiot's back.
The human race seems to respond very well to fear...and Americans seemingly most of all. Home of the Brave? Not from what I see. Chickenshit Nation, more like.
Veteran '66-68
I am waiting to hear some sort of motive that would cause a twenty year career scientist to commit a crime like this, especially knowing he would be most surely scrutinized.
Sounds like a patsy to me.
Pick a guy suffering from depression, obviously weak emotionally and physically. Keep an eye on him, harass him for a couple years, and then get rid of him.
Poor guy, couldn't handle the strain and the guilt.
My bullshit meter exploded when I read the news.
This article is excellent, and it is also very frustrating.
It's excellent in that this guy has followed the trail doggedly and served us well by showing ABC's role in it. He's still on the trail; good for him.
It's frustrating because he seems to accept that it was a suicide (on what evidence?) and seems to think there was a loose cannon at work instead of a false flag op, which was stage 2 in the Shock and Awe campaign that started with 9-11 itself. Patsies and fall guys all the way down. Systemic and sophisticated evil, folks. No loose cannons in sight.
A final frustration. CommonDreams is willing to reproduce this article for us, but if the guy had tied it to false flag op 9-11, which most people posting here seem to agree is an obvious connection, the article would have been blocked. How annoying is that?!
"And let's not forget that shortly before the "attacks" the nation's single database on anthrax strain sources, maintained at the Univ of Iowa (Ames), was ordered destroyed by the Bush admin, thereby making the trace of the mailed spored difficult if not impossible."
Source please?
Excellent article. I quit reading on another site when I read the AP's first paragraph:
"WASHINGTON (AP) - Anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and severely rattled the post-9/11 nation may have been part of an Army scientist's warped plan to test his cure for the deadly toxin, officials said Friday. The brilliant but troubled scientist committed suicide this week, knowing prosecutors were closing in."
Did the motherfucker also say "Woo ho ha ha ha" as lightning struck the top of his castle?
this is just SO suspicious!
And let's not forget that shortly before the "attacks" the nation's single database on anthrax strain sources, maintained at the Univ of Iowa (Ames), was ordered destroyed by the Bush admin, thereby making the trace of the mailed spored difficult if not impossible.
There's definitely something rotten at 1600 Penn Ave.
The sad thing is 90% of people will buy into the fact the case is closed and it was a rogue scientist and not part of the conspiracy.
Bush & Company must be doing some house cleaning, cleaning out the skeletons. Osama will soon be caught and killed soon, but maybe his body wont be able to be identified. How convenient. But Bush can then say, Mission Accomplished. Osama gone, anthrax killer caught