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To: The Great Satan
I agree that Cheney wouldn't have made that vague suggestion without having some knowledge.

I still don't believe the anthrax attack was coordinated and executed by Iraq. Frankly, it wasn't very effective. Surely they were hoping to kill more than 5 people.

I believe Iraq supplied the anthrax to Al Qaeda, and those half-morons did the best they could with it. In addition, they had no concerns about safe-handling.

I'm pretty sure the administration is sitting on plenty of incriminating information on Iraq. But I believe most of it is tangential (supporting terrorists) rather than direct (planning and execution of the attacks). Doesn't really matter though, either way they're guilty.

The release of the information will most likely come a week or two before we begin the attack. We'll present it to congress (who will come on board), the UN (who will not, but we don't care) and the media (who will hem and haw and see what the polls say.)

Either way, we're going to retaliate against Iraq. And it will be thorough.

One question I have still though is this - Are the intelligence agencies still confused about Hatfill? Or are they knowingly screwing up his life? Or (most likely to me) is Hatfill willingly allowing himself to be used by the intelligence agencies as a decoy, pretending to be "hurt" by the experience, while actually being an agent. There is evidence in his personal history that would suggest he is a likely candidate to be working covertly for one intelligence agency or another.

60 posted on 09/11/2002 7:55:51 AM PDT by dead
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To: dead; Mitchell; Nogbad; EternalHope; patriciaruth
I still don't believe the anthrax attack was coordinated and executed by Iraq. Frankly, it wasn't very effective. Surely they were hoping to kill more than 5 people.

The letters weren't attacks, but rather exactly what they appear to be: threats designed to intimidate the United States (THIS IS NEXT WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX YOU CAN NOT STOP US). Whoever made the anthrax has the capability to kill millions of Americans at, almost literally, the drop of a hat: the anthrax in those letters is far more dangerous than a nuclear bomb, as a recent RAND corp study noted (Study: 3 million would die in worst-case Calif. terror scenario ). Bush, Cheney et al understood that immediately: the concept of Iraq using its anthrax to blackmail the United States after a terrorist attack is not new to the US military, but has been mooted by Pentagon planners ever since the end of the Gulf War. It's kind of an obvious one-two play.

You'll note that there is one thing Iraq hasn't "crawfished" away from, and that is 9-11. Alone among nations in the world, Iraq endorsed the attacks and bin Laden; it did so again, today. And yet, Saddam occupies a fixed and exposed position. Superficially, he is total vulnerable. But he's acting as if he isn't. Where does he get that moxie? I think I can guess.

The notion that Iraq would cast itself as a bit player in the destruction of the WTC and the Capitol does not pass muster. That would be suicidal, and Saddam is not suicidal. If Saddam was involved, he was the prime mover, and his back-end security was something really special. Which is what we observe.

On the Hatfill question, the behaviour of the government is curious, to say the least. On my theory of the case, I see a spectrum of possibilities, which might be divided into three major scanarios:

  1. The FBI is bungling the case, but Bush, Cheney et al are taking a hands-off attitude because (a) they don't see the anthrax letters as a law enforcement problem and (b) the net effect of the bungling coordinates well with the need to stall the public.

  2. Amerithrax is an active measure conceived by the White House to stall the public while we prepare a response to the threat implicit in those letters, but the Amerithrax agents don't realize this, i.e. the top people just assigned some known deadwood like Bob Roth and Van Arp to that effort, pointed them at USAMRIID and let them spin their wheels uselessly.

  3. Amerithrax is a stall, but awareness of that extends below cabinet level to Amerithrax agents and/or Hatfill himself
On the whole, I favor possibility number 2, but I don't exclude that the truth might be closer to 1 or 3.
61 posted on 09/11/2002 8:31:05 AM PDT by The Great Satan
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