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Anthrax mailings were an inside job.

RustRust __BANNED USERS regular
edited August 2008 in Debate and/or Discourse
No, it's not truther bullshit. Now that the guy responsible for the anthrax mailings has apparently been found out (and committed suicide), some facts about his connection to the U.S. government and their complicity with the news media have come to light. Everyone needs to read this.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/index.html
Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News

The 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 Brokaw, 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 of 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 News 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's 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.

UPDATE II: Ivins' local paper, Frederick News in Maryland, has printed several Letters to the Editor written by Ivins over the years. Though the underlying ideology is a bit difficult to discern, he seems clearly driven by a belief in the need for Christian doctrine to govern our laws and political institutions, with a particular interest in Catholic dogma. He wrote things like this:

Today we frequently admonish people who oppose abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide or capital punishment to keep their religious, moral, and philosophical beliefs to themselves.

Before dispensing such admonishments in the future, perhaps we should gratefully consider some of our country's most courageous, historical figures who refused to do so.

And then there's this rather cryptic message, published in 2006:

Rabbi Morris Kosman is entirely correct in summarily rejecting the demands of the Frederick Imam for a "dialogue."

By blood and faith, Jews are God's chosen, and have no need for "dialogue" with any gentile. End of "dialogue."

It should be noted that the lawyer who had been representing Ivins in connection with the anthrax investigation categorically maintains Ivins' innocence and attributes his suicide to "the relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo."

On a note related to the main topic of the post, macgupta in comments notes the numerous prominent people in addition to those mentioned here -- including The Wall St. Jorunal Editors and former CIA Director James Woosely -- who insisted rather emphatically from the beginning of the anthrax attacks that Saddam was likely to blame. Indeed, the WSJ Editorial Page -- along with others on the Right such as Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report and Fox News -- continued even into 2007 to insist that the FBI was erring by focusing on domestic suspects rather than Middle Easterners.

The Nation's Michael Massing noted at the time (in November, 2001) that as a direct result of the anthrax attacks, and the numerous claims insinuating that Iraq was behind them, "the political and journalistic establishment suddenly seems united in wanting to attack Iraq." There has long been an intense desire on the neoconservative Right to falsely link anthrax to Saddam specifically and Muslims generally. ABC News was, and (as a result of its inexcusable silence) continues to be, their best friend.

UPDATE III: See this important point from Atrios about Richard Cohen's admission that he was told before the anthrax attacks happened by a "high government official" to take cipro. Atrios writes: "now that we know that the US gov't believes that anthrax came from the inside, shouldn't Cohen be a wee bit curious about what this warning was based on?"

That applies to much of the Beltway class, including many well-connected journalists, who were quietly popping cipro back then because, like Cohen, they heard from Government sources that they should. Leave aside the ethical questions about the fact that these journalists kept those warnings to themselves. Wouldn't the most basic journalistic instincts lead them now -- in light of the claims by our Government that the attacks came from a Government scientist -- to wonder why and how their Government sources were warning about an anthrax attack? Then again, the most basic journalistic instincts would have lead ABC News to reveal who concocted and fed them the false "Saddam/anthrax" reports in the first place, and yet we still are forced to guess at those questions because ABC News continues to cover up the identity of the perpetrators.

UPDATE IV: John McCain, on the David Letterman Show, October 18, 2001 (days before ABC News first broadcast their bentonite report):

LETTERMAN: How are things going in Afghanistan now?

MCCAIN: I think we're doing fine . . . I think we'll do fine. The second phase -- if I could just make one, very quickly -- the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don't have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may -- and I emphasize may -- have come from Iraq.

LETTERMAN: Oh is that right?

MCCAIN: If that should be the case, that's when some tough decisions are gonna have to be made.

ThinkProgress has the video. Someone ought to ask McCain what "indication" he was referencing that the anthrax "may have come from Iraq."

After all, three days later, McCain and Joe Lieberman went on Meet the Press (on October 21, 2001) and both strongly suggested that we would have to attack Iraq. Lieberman said that the anthrax was so complex and potent that "there's either a significant amount of money behind this, or this is state-sponsored, or this is stuff that was stolen from the former Soviet program."

As I said, it is not possible to overstate the importance of anthrax in putting the country into the state of fear that led to the attack on Iraq and so many of the other abuses of the Bush era. There are few news stories more significant, if there are any, than unveiling who the culprits were behind this deliberate propaganda. The fact that the current GOP presidential nominee claimed back then on national television to have some "indication" linking Saddam to the anthrax attacks makes it a bigger story still.

UPDATE V: I tried to be careful here to avoid accepting as True the matter of Ivins' guilt. Very early on in the article, I framed the analysis this way: "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," and I then noted in Update II that Ivins' lawyer vehemently maintains his innocence. My whole point here is that the U.S. Government now claims the anthrax attacks came from a Government scientist at a U.S. Army lab, and my conclusions follow from that premise, accepted as true only for purposes of this analysis.

It's worth underscoring that it is far from clear that Ivins had anything to do with the anthrax attacks, and someone in comments claiming (anonymously though credibly) that he knew Ivins personally asserts that Ivins was innocent and makes the case as to why the Government's accusations are suspect. As I see it, the more doubt there is about who was responsible for the anthrax attacks, the greater is the need for ABC News to reveal who fabricated their reports linking the attacks to Iraq.

UPDATE VI: I'll be on Rachel Maddow's radio show tonight at 8:30 p.m. EST to discuss this story. Local listings and live audio feed are here.

Numerous people have advised me in comments and via email that ABC News is deleting any mention of my piece today in the comment section to their article on the Ivins suicide (though many such comments now seem to be posted there). Last year, ABC was in full denial mode when responding to the stories I wrote about this issue. The key here, I think, will be to try to devise the right strategy to induce the right Congressional Committee to hold hearings on the false ABC News stories and the anthrax issue generally. I hope to have more details on that effort shortly.

Anyone who isn't wordless with outrage after finishing can feel free to share their thoughts. I've got nothing aside from phrases like "beyond the pale" and "kill all journalists."

Rust on
«134

Posts

  • GodfatherGodfather Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    I...wow

    That is a lot to take in.

    I'm in the same boat as Rust; speechless.

    Godfather on
  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Let's be clear as the most reasonable explanation:

    1) The FBI investigation apparently sucked.
    2) This guy, if he really was guilty (and I'd appreciate a public airing of the evidence if possible), seems to have been a disturbed guy based on what I've read. So "inside job" in the sense that it was a member of the US government, but probably not "inside job" in the sense that it was a false flag thing.
    3) The government certainly used those attacks to persuade the public to go after Iraq.
    4) ABC News is fucking corrupt as hell, as I continually point out in the election thread.

    enlightenedbum on
    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
  • Lave IILave II Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    I don't have time to do more than read the bold and skim the rest.

    Bascially over the next decade or so it will slowly leak how manipulated the public was over The War on people trying to scare us" but will be drip fed at a rate so people won't do anything about it.


    For example I would like to add this little link:

    http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/31/cheney-proposal-for-iran-war/

    Which talks about a meeting in the vice presidents office where they were cooking up ways to provoke Iran into attacking the USA. Including a video of first hand testimony. But no one cares.

    Lave II on
  • RustRust __BANNED USERS regular
    edited August 2008
    Let's be clear as the most reasonable explanation:

    1) The FBI investigation apparently sucked.
    2) This guy, if he really was guilty (and I'd appreciate a public airing of the evidence if possible), seems to have been a disturbed guy based on what I've read. So "inside job" in the sense that it was a member of the US government, but probably not "inside job" in the sense that it was a false flag thing.
    3) The government certainly used those attacks to persuade the public to go after Iraq.
    4) ABC News is fucking corrupt as hell, as I continually point out in the election thread.

    This guy, the guy who allegedly sent out the envelopes, was the same guy who analyzed, determined and released a statement saying that the envelopes were possibly connected to Iraq.

    That sounds pretty goddamned false-flag to me.

    Rust on
  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Rust wrote: »
    Let's be clear as the most reasonable explanation:

    1) The FBI investigation apparently sucked.
    2) This guy, if he really was guilty (and I'd appreciate a public airing of the evidence if possible), seems to have been a disturbed guy based on what I've read. So "inside job" in the sense that it was a member of the US government, but probably not "inside job" in the sense that it was a false flag thing.
    3) The government certainly used those attacks to persuade the public to go after Iraq.
    4) ABC News is fucking corrupt as hell, as I continually point out in the election thread.

    This guy, the guy who allegedly sent out the envelopes, was the same guy who analyzed, determined and released a statement saying that the envelopes were possibly connected to Iraq.

    That sounds pretty goddamned false-flag to me.

    Or the guy read the tea leaves (and seriously, they were there well before 9/11) and used his position to create a false lead to preserve his own innocence. See update two above where he apparently was a Christian fundamentalist for bonus maybe he was pro-Iraq invasion AND you know, didn't want to get caught.

    enlightenedbum on
    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
  • SavantSavant Simply Barbaric Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Rust wrote: »
    Let's be clear as the most reasonable explanation:

    1) The FBI investigation apparently sucked.
    2) This guy, if he really was guilty (and I'd appreciate a public airing of the evidence if possible), seems to have been a disturbed guy based on what I've read. So "inside job" in the sense that it was a member of the US government, but probably not "inside job" in the sense that it was a false flag thing.
    3) The government certainly used those attacks to persuade the public to go after Iraq.
    4) ABC News is fucking corrupt as hell, as I continually point out in the election thread.

    This guy, the guy who allegedly sent out the envelopes, was the same guy who analyzed, determined and released a statement saying that the envelopes were possibly connected to Iraq.

    That sounds pretty goddamned false-flag to me.

    Well, depends on if this is actually the guy who did it, and if it was whether or not he was acting alone. It is extremely suspicious, but we shouldn't jump the gun too quickly. Though if he wasn't acting alone I'm thinking we need to get some treason charges going and let the fuckers swing.

    ABC news needs to start talking, and fast. They cannot be allowed to get away with stonewalling.

    Savant on
  • IncenjucarIncenjucar VChatter Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    edited August 2008
    There are too many corrupt people to be sure who the primary corrupt people are.

    Too convenient a suicide and all that.

    Incenjucar on
  • Fatty McBeardoFatty McBeardo Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    I always hated that fucking band.

    Fatty McBeardo on
  • UrianUrian __BANNED USERS regular
    edited August 2008
    If this was actually an inside job the implications are so fucking huge i cant even begin to think about it right now. I guess I should read the entire article but holy shit...

    Urian on
  • Fatty McBeardoFatty McBeardo Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Well, of course it was an inside job. Nobody else has anthrax that was as potent as the stuff used in those attacks was except for the USA. In fact for a while we didn't even think we had stuff that potent and thought it had come from some new source of unknown bioweapons tech. Dr. Evil's Island or something. The whole Iraq notion was retarded, they never demonstrated the technology to have something like that. If they'd had it they would have used it against Iran or the Kurds.

    Fatty McBeardo on
  • UrianUrian __BANNED USERS regular
    edited August 2008
    What happens next?

    Urian on
  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Urian wrote: »
    What happens next?

    Nothing! Our government and media are awesome.

    enlightenedbum on
    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
  • Fatty McBeardoFatty McBeardo Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Snorting weaponized anthrax off of models' hipbones becomes the hottest new trend in Hollywood.

    Fatty McBeardo on
  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Snorting weaponized anthrax off of models' hipbones becomes the hottest new trend in Hollywood.

    Optimist.

    enlightenedbum on
    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    So, uh, wow.

    The anthrax was definitely one of those things that shot up the fear level globally. I remember the hysteria around Sydney at the time.

    electricitylikesme on
  • SolidGobiSolidGobi Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Well let's not get sensationalist journalism and government conspiracy mixed up. A lot of the time when people look for explanations for things they cling to things that are recognizable, so seeing how someone was attacking Americans randomly with chemical weapons right after 9/11 is easy to see why the media jump to this somewhat easy conclusion. It's like all of those conspiracy nuts who can prove the "New World Order" by finding triangles in just about everything they see. If you are a scared reporter that thinks America is under attack by Jihadists than this is an easy to reach conclusion. Also politicians using unrelated things to prove political points is a pretty old trick.
    Or the guy read the tea leaves (and seriously, they were there well before 9/11) and used his position to create a false lead to preserve his own innocence. See update two above where he apparently was a Christian fundamentalist for bonus maybe he was pro-Iraq invasion AND you know, didn't want to get caught.

    This is the more probable explanation. But it is defiantly a good idea to make damn sure he was not acting alone.

    SolidGobi on
  • UltimaGeckoUltimaGecko Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Lave II wrote: »
    I don't have time to do more than read the bold and skim the rest.

    Bascially over the next decade or so it will slowly leak how manipulated the public was over The War on people trying to scare us" but will be drip fed at a rate so people won't do anything about it.


    For example I would like to add this little link:

    http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/31/cheney-proposal-for-iran-war/

    Which talks about a meeting in the vice presidents office where they were cooking up ways to provoke Iran into attacking the USA. Including a video of first hand testimony. But no one cares.

    That's almost Nazi Germany and Poland stuff right there.

    ...not even Godwin's law either, this is SS soldiers dressing up as Poles and blowing up radio stations type stuff. Not like the current administration can really lose much more credibility, but I'd rather they not go down that alley.


    As for the initial topic here, I don't think I'm informed enough to properly comment, but I would have thought the initial findings of the anthrax's origin would be peer-reviewed at least. The US needs better, less fradulent, less biased (or at least bias-acknowledging) journalism.

    UltimaGecko on
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    Bitstream wrote: »
    People respect a man who might do science at any moment.
  • SavantSavant Simply Barbaric Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Yeah, I think it is very likely that he worked alone or with only a small number of confederates. If a conspiracy to do something like this gets too big the risks of it falling apart or leaking get rather high (although they did zero in on this guy...) Remember that Cheney's nutty plan to do a false flag operation to tip off a war with Iran just leaked too.

    However, this is something where they can't let any stone be left unturned. There were warnings out within the higher eschelons that the attack was coming, so someone knew. ABC and everyone who had connections with someone who knew too much need to start singing like canaries.

    Edit: at the very least the FBI was almost surely out of the loop on any potential conspiracies because they started barking up the right tree pretty quickly. Supposedly the wingnuts were pissed early on that they were focusing their investigation on domestic sources for the attack.

    Savant on
  • SolidGobiSolidGobi Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Lave II wrote: »
    I don't have time to do more than read the bold and skim the rest.

    Bascially over the next decade or so it will slowly leak how manipulated the public was over The War on people trying to scare us" but will be drip fed at a rate so people won't do anything about it.


    For example I would like to add this little link:

    http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/31/cheney-proposal-for-iran-war/

    Which talks about a meeting in the vice presidents office where they were cooking up ways to provoke Iran into attacking the USA. Including a video of first hand testimony. But no one cares.

    That's almost Nazi Germany and Poland stuff right there.

    ...not even Godwin's law either, this is SS soldiers dressing up as Poles and blowing up radio stations type stuff. Not like the current administration can really lose much more credibility, but I'd rather they not go down that alley.


    As for the initial topic here, I don't think I'm informed enough to properly comment, but I would have thought the initial findings of the anthrax's origin would be peer-reviewed at least. The US needs better, less fradulent, less biased (or at least bias-acknowledging) journalism.

    I agree, that's why I tend to get my news from outside the country. Yeah this is not the first time recently that a major news outlet got embarrassed when an outside source check their "facts". The Dan Rather incident comes to mind. Apparently some notes written on a napkin do not count as a real source.

    Edit: Savant makes a good point about leaks, most crazy over the top government conspiracies can be debunked because of the risk of leaks. For example I'm reading a book about Nixon and Kissinger and Nixon could not even think about doing something without it getting leaked, and that was before the internet.

    SolidGobi on
  • ErlkingErlking Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Huh. I'm waiting a week on this one. Hopefully snopes will have something.

    Erlking on
  • UrianUrian __BANNED USERS regular
    edited August 2008
    This is starting to sound more and more like JFK.

    Urian on
  • ElldrenElldren Is a woman dammit ceterum censeoRegistered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Urian wrote: »
    This is starting to sound more and more like JFK.

    Yes it is.

    Elldren on
    fuck gendered marketing
  • HonkHonk Honk is this poster. Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    edited August 2008
    You need to have a revolution.

    Honk on
    PSN: Honkalot
  • SolidGobiSolidGobi Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Honk wrote: »
    You need to have a revolution.

    Yeah totally, people that live in Myanmar are just whiny bitches compared to Americans. Geez!

    SolidGobi on
  • [Tycho?][Tycho?] As elusive as doubt Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    This is sketchy as all fuck, but I'm going to wait a while before reading details on this one. This has a ways to go still.

    [Tycho?] on
    mvaYcgc.jpg
  • KalkinoKalkino Buttons Londres Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Very interesting article

    Kalkino on
    Freedom for the Northern Isles!
  • ElldrenElldren Is a woman dammit ceterum censeoRegistered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Honestly it's not as if the U.S. hasn't done this before. The only real questions are what was the degree of involvement and how much advance warning did they have.

    Elldren on
    fuck gendered marketing
  • stiliststilist Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Dang.

    stilist on
    I poop things on my site and twitter
  • ÆthelredÆthelred Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    People need to stop citing the Operation Northwoods plan as evidence for false-flag operations. It was never accepted.

    Æthelred on
    pokes: 1505 8032 8399
  • ElldrenElldren Is a woman dammit ceterum censeoRegistered User regular
    edited August 2008
    People need to stop citing the Operation Northwoods plan as evidence for false-flag operations. It was never accepted.

    People are me. The person who didn't accept it was JFK. Dick Cheney is the kind of guy who would accept it.

    Elldren on
    fuck gendered marketing
  • ege02ege02 __BANNED USERS regular
    edited August 2008
    Elldren wrote: »
    People need to stop citing the Operation Northwoods plan as evidence for false-flag operations. It was never accepted.

    People are me. The person who didn't accept it was JFK. Dick Cheney is the kind of guy who would accept it.

    Furthermore, it was drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You're talking about the six highest ranking military commanders coming up with and approving a fucked up idea. Not exactly a small thing.

    ege02 on
  • DrakeDrake Edgelord Trash Below the ecliptic plane.Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
  • [Tycho?][Tycho?] As elusive as doubt Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    People need to stop citing the Operation Northwoods plan as evidence for false-flag operations. It was never accepted.

    I had never heard of Operation Northwoods. I just looked it up.

    Sweet fuck. It was written by the god-damn chiefs of staff. It was signed by the Secretary of Defense.

    Do I think someone like Rummy, or Cheney, or Bush is capable of coming up with a similar operation? Yes, why wouldn't I?

    This obviously doesn't prove a thing, I'm sure this must be cited all the time in all manner of conspiracy theories. But it does show (in case it wasn't already obvious) that just because these people are in power does not make them innocent by default, or above suspicion.

    [Tycho?] on
    mvaYcgc.jpg
  • UrianUrian __BANNED USERS regular
    edited August 2008
    Drake wrote: »

    Brilliant.

    Urian on
  • IncenjucarIncenjucar VChatter Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    edited August 2008
    I want to argue with that man until we find out which one of us is more cynical. <3

    Incenjucar on
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Honk wrote: »
    You need to have a revolution.

    I don't know if you understand American culture, but the vast majority of people here are not willing to take a rifle butt to the head for something as paltry as the steady degradation of their rights when they're so secure in their iPods and SUVs. Also media's role in the military industrial complex yadda yadda

    TL DR on
  • ege02ege02 __BANNED USERS regular
    edited August 2008
    "It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."

    That's gold.

    ege02 on
  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Honk wrote: »
    You need to have a revolution.

    I don't know if you understand American culture, but the vast majority of people here are not willing to take a rifle butt to the head for something as paltry as the steady degradation of their rights when they're so secure in their iPods and SUVs. Also media's role in the military industrial complex yadda yadda
    Also you know, revolutions tend to fuck up countries for years to come, and are bloody drawn out affairs which tend to cause deep seated enemities for years to come?

    Jesus - there are still effects of the first American civil war floating about.

    electricitylikesme on
  • AldoAldo Hippo Hooray Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Man, why is PA forums the only place I even hear about things like this. You'd think that with this being summer they'd have time in the Dutch media to point and stare at the crazy Americans some more. It's our favourite pass time after all.

    Aldo on
  • Fuzzy Cumulonimbus CloudFuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud Registered User regular
    edited March 2018
    Changed for security reasons

    Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud on
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