From: Mitchell Porter (mitchtemporarily@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Dec 12 2002 - 18:27:52 MST
Lee Daniel Crocker said:
>I don't think there's anyone knowledgeable in the matter who
>seriously believes the Anthrax letters weren't made and sent by an
>American. Iraqis wanted to kill Tom Daschle? Give me a break.
>They were the work of an oportunistic American dissident who saw
>the chance to fool the public into thinking Arabs did it, and he
>may be right that most of the public still thinks they were the work
>of Arabs, but I don't think US law enforcement was fooled for long.
Palm Beach County, Florida, is the immediate link between the
hijackers and the anthrax. It's where almost half of them were
based at some point, and it was where the anthrax first showed up.
There were social links between hijackers and people associated
with the targeted newspaper. One of the hijackers was treated in
Fort Lauderdale for a skin lesion resembling cutaneous anthrax.
As for the Iraqi connection, the grounded plane south of Baghdad
where defectors say hijacking teams were trained is in the same
district (Salman Pak) as the former center of Iraqi bioweapons
research, to which anthrax was central. Saddam's son Qusay has
been said to be in charge both of WMD development/concealment
and terrorist liaison, so my guess is that the hard work of
preparing the 9/11+anthrax plot was done in facilities in Iraq
that are ultimately under his control (in Salman Pak, and
wherever the anthrax labs are based now).
Why Daschle and Leahy? Iraq might not have a particular grudge
against them, but Al Qaeda might, and Al Qaeda would have had
final control over target selection. Leahy heads the Senate
subcommittee in charge of aid to the Egyptian government, and
Al Qaeda is full of Egyptian Islamists who have been persecuted
by that government. Bin Laden's number two, Zawahiri, has said
that the overthrow of Mubarak is a central strategic aim. The
very date, September 11, is the pre-Islamic ("Coptic") Egyptian
new year, and therefore symbolic of Egyptian apostasy.
>And contrary to another public belief, Anthrax is a pretty shitty
>bio-weapon, and not a serious threat.
It was serious enough to kill people just by being squeezed
out of a sealed envelope by a mail-sorting machine. If I'm right,
it's a mistake to view the letters as an attack. It was more of
a deterrent warning, like a nuclear test ("THIS IS NEXT"), with
Iraq being careful to supply Al Qaeda only with a demonstration
sample.
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