From: Mitchell Porter (mitchtemporarily@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Dec 16 2002 - 04:50:03 MST
As I see it, when it comes to the questions "Who sent the anthrax?"
and "Why the focus on Iraq?" there are three theories doing the
rounds. Theory A, the public consensus, says: we don't know who
sent the anthrax, and Iraq is all about preemption. Theory B says
the anthrax was sent by an insider, and Iraq war fever is being
whipped up for reasons unrelated to national security. Theory C
says the anthrax came from Iraq, and Iraq is being targeted
because of that. There are other theories possible (the anthrax
came from Al Qaeda but not from Iraq, it's all about Bush family
pride, etc.), but those three are illustrative of the possibilities.
I regard Theory B as implausible, because of the Florida
connection. I regard Theory A as implausible, because the US
government is clearly choosing not to highlight the Florida
connection. That leaves Theory C.
Samantha Atkins said
>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.
I should have included some sources for everything I was saying.
5 to 12 labs worked with virulent Ames strain...
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/anthraxfocusonlabs.html
... including labs outside USA ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36408-2001Nov29
... and genetic fingerprinting has not narrowed the field
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/769532.asp
Anthrax vaccine works against Vollum strain but not Ames
http://www.house.gov/reform/ns/hearings/testimony/nass2.htm
Iraq used Vollum, sought Ames in 1988, probably has it now
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10804-2001Nov24
History of Iraq's biological weapons program
http://www.iraqwatch.org/wmd/biological.html
The anthrax letters look ineffectual only if you think they were
meant to kill lots of people. They make much more sense if they
are read as a *threat* to kill lots of people, many more than on
9/11, with a little actual anthrax enclosed as proof of concept.
They were ineffectual only in that they failed to halt the attack
on Afghanistan. But I note that there hasn't been an attack on
Iraq yet, despite months of predictions that it's just around
the corner. This is why I think, even if the inspectors turn up
a "material breach", there will be no war, only the destruction
of the exposed facilities.
And I don't understand why people think anthrax is a poor choice
of bioweapon. It kills, you can disperse it in public and people
won't notice, and by the time the symptoms develop it's usually
too late. If the 9/11 hijackers had instead each flown an
anthrax-loaded cropduster over a major city, there could easily
have been a million casualties.
Two worst-case anthrax scenarios:
1-3 million dead in Washington DC (p54)
http://www.anthrax.mil/media/pdf/proliferation.pdf
1 million dead in the Bay Area
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/bioterrorism/bioterrorism.jsp?id=21525100
More anthrax scenarios
http://www.hopkins-biodefense.org/pages/agents/agentanthrax.html
http://www.biohazardnews.net/scen_anthrax.htm
[Bob Woodward: Cheney and Tenet agree not to bring up
state sponsorship]
>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?
I can't tell which conspiracy theory you're criticizing - the
theory that 9/11 had a state sponsor, or the theory that Bush
et al have covered up the evidence of this. The evidence of
state sponsorship is circumstantial but multiple: Palm Beach County
links the hijackers and the anthrax, and Iraq is known to have
liaised with Al Qaeda and to have anthrax weaponization knowhow.
This could have been discussed in public and in detail long ago.
It has not - not by the White House, at any rate. So I conclude
that someone decided not to do so, at least not yet. The question
then is why. I see three possibilities:
(1) They've judged that circumstantial evidence will not be good
enough in the court of world opinion. Maybe they're not even
absolutely certain themselves.
http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/transcripts/2002/sep/020918.ydstie.html
(2) They've decided that it's best to hide the truth for some
strategic reason - the public would make rash demands for
retaliation or capitulation, the world would realize that you
can blackmail a superpower with a handful of dust, or whatever.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/772794/posts?page=27#27
(3) They're covering up something politically embarrassing -
previous cover-ups of Iraqi-sponsored terrorism, covert 1980s
assistance to the Iraqi weapons programs.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-mylroie052902.asp
>So in effect you throw up so much chaff that the people rubber stamp
>whatever insanity you wish? That is not acceptable.
First and foremost, this is just my guess as to the facts, it's
not an apologia for war or an endorsement of the alleged cover-up.
If you think "Iraq did it", of course that makes the case for
war seem a lot stronger, but then if you think that the anthrax
threat is real, most of the pro-war talk seems a little naive.
And I do have some sympathy for the paternalistic possibility (2),
even though it makes a mockery of democracy, because the prospect
of massive bioterrorism *is* grim and terrifying, and it would
be tempting to spare people that fear as much as possible. The
main thing to be said against such a policy of deception is:
surely the people have a right to know that fighting this war
runs the risk of such retaliation. But I think they know that
by now anyway.
Finally, although I do think that the immediate cause of the
stand-off with Iraq is the anthrax, I agree with the original
post in this thread that there's a global strategic dimension
to it as well. WMD proliferation is getting worse and worse,
there was always a potential for someone to cross the line and
use it via terrorism, and Iraq crossed the line first. Iraq
may ultimately be isolated, destabilized, and defanged, but I
doubt that the situation can be reversed entirely. We may end
up with a world in which the larger, older powers (USA, EU,
India, China) have conventional armies and defenses against
unconventional threats, and in which a host of smaller countries
develop chemical and biological weapons as defensive deterrents
which only occasionally see offensive use.
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