From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Dec 14 2002 - 21:34:56 MST
Mitchell Porter wrote:
> Samantha Atkins said
>
>> Get real. Mysterious insider information not shared with the people
>> when the people are expected to fund the escapade to the tune of
>> hundreds of billions and 250,000 troops? Even if your information was
>> credible this would be soundly against any sane free country model.
>> As it is, the investigations showed pretty conclusively this was US
>> military lab made Anthrax. There is no connection to Iraq here
>> whatsoever. And, as others have mentioned, Anthrax is a pretty
>> ineffective bio-weapon. It cannot credibly "kill millions".
>
>
> The virulent form of Ames strain (which is what was in the letters)
> is known to have been shared with labs in Canada and the UK as well.
> Last I heard, there were about half a dozen labs known to have
> cultures, and genomic analysis had been unable to narrow the field
> further than that. And Iraq has every reason to try to acquire Ames:
> for several years it's been known that the US Army's anthrax vaccine
> is much less effective against Ames than against the Vollum strain,
> which Iraq is known to have acquired from a US repository. Iraq is
> also on record as having tried to obtain Ames from the UK as long
> ago as 1988 (although that may have been a nonvirulent substrain,
> I can't tell).
My understanding is that the evidence pinned the Anthrax down to
the US labs (iirc one specific lab) only. It is a far shot to
get Iraq using that specific batch and only that and then very
ineffectually and small scale. At the most that would tip their
hand with nearly zero gain if (a very large IF) they had any
real capacity to produce this grade of Anthrax. Even then, the
way Anthrax works makes it still very poor as a bio-weapon,
relatively speaking.
>
> Why would the Bush administration not shout from the rooftops that
> it was Iraqi anthrax, at a time when they need public support for
> a war against Iraq? I don't know how reliable the journalist Bob
> Woodward is, but in his new book "Bush At War" (pp248-249) he reports
> a conversation from a National Security Council meeting last October,
> in which Cheney, his chief of staff, and CIA head Tenet discuss the
> anthrax. They agree that it was probably Al Qaeda and probably
> state-sponsored. Tenet says he won't bring up state sponsorship in
> public, and Cheney says "It's good that we don't, because we're not
> ready to do anything about it."
>
This is at the level of raw conspiracy theory. It is utterly
empty as a reason for a supposedly free people to devote lives
and fortunes to an adventure half-way around the world. Do you
not find it ridiculously weak?
> How do you mobilize a society to deal with a threat so great
> that surrender is by far the easiest option?
There is no such threat. If you believe there is then prove it
or withdraw such fear-mongering.
> You frame it as a
> hypothetical risk. You say it is imperative that rogue states not
> be allowed to arm terrorist groups, and you keep 'em guessing as
> to whether that already happened last October.
Would you consider a state that threatens preemptive strikes,
commits assinations within sovereign nations they are not at war
with, bombs civilians within the borders of other nations at its
sole discretion on suspicion a "rogue state"? I certainly do.
Why do you keep the people whose representative you are supposed
to be, who pay your salary, and whose blood and money will fuel
your [mis]adventures "guessing"? We should demand at all times
a strict accounting in such matters. Freedom, if we still
believe in it and wish to regain it and keep it, demands it.
>You have the FBI
> publicly hunt for a domestic anthrax terrorist, while not even
> mentioning the Florida case (with its embarrassing proximity
> to the hijackers) on its Amerithrax homepage. You play up vague
> reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and you have
> anonymous intelligence officials deny repeated assertions from
> Prague that Mohammed Atta met there with an Iraqi spymaster.
>
So in effect you throw up so much chaff that the people rubber
stamp whatever insanity you wish? That is not acceptable.
> A good case can be made for Iraqi sponsorship of earlier episodes
> of terrorism in the USA (see the work of Laurie Mylroie and Jayna
> Davis), so maybe there's also something darker at work. Maybe the
Not a good enough case according to most experts. Certainly not
a case presented to the people cleanly.
> intelligence agencies tried to deal with those earlier attacks
> covertly, but their opponent was only emboldened. However that may
> be, I think the strategic dilemma I've just sketched is in itself
> sufficient to explain why they'd prevaricate.
>
A far simpler explanation is that they want increased powers
around the world for the own ends and that the people will be
fed whatever lies and half-truths allow them to proceed. We
cannot afford to be in the dark about such a committment, its
causes or its consequences.
- samantha
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