[Merovingian]

could this be a right wing attack on black postal workers?

Extremely unlikely...{if you ask a serious question}...I am very very perplexed about this, though..How come it's the postal workers, and NOT the recipients of the mail ???????

[Don Joe]

"How come it's the postal workers, and NOT the recipients of the mail ???????"

You may be sorry you asked.

Let's say that Abdul the Terrorist takes 250 anthraxed envelopes and drops them into the mailbox.

They get picked up and dropped into a large sack. The sack gets emptied onto a table at the post office.

Fred the Postal Worker then picks each one up, and drops it into the sorting machine.

Each envelope has two things in common: 1) they all go down different routes, to different addresses, handled once by each postal worker along the way, and 2) they each are handled by Fred the Postal Worker.

Fred the Postal Worker receives 250 times the exposure of any other person involved in handling the envelopes. (I did not include the carrier who removed them from the mailbox, because he handled them as a unit, rather than shuffling individual envelopes around.)

Obviously this is A) conjecture, and B) rather simplified from whatever actual procedures are involved. I haven't been a postal worker for over 30 years. But I do believe that there are likely a few people in the handling chain who receive a much greater exposure -- by virtue of handling more than one envelope involved in a mass mailing.

The implication, of course, is that if this scenario is correct, there will be a lot of recipients of tainted envelopes.

As Drudge says, developing...

[cgbg]

How come it's the postal workers, and NOT the recipients of the mail ??????

When a piece of mail goes through the Post Office it goes through a postal sorting machine (anyone want to admit they are a postal worker and explain the process in more detail?) and my understanding is that the machine jostles, shakes, and perhaps squeezes the mail a little.

That would be enough to release highly refined (known to everybody except the FBI as weapons grade) anthrax into the air of the Post Office where air filters can send it all over the place (well, you get the idea).

If a recipient of the letter did not open it or shake it or drop it then their exposure would be less.

[copycat]

...I am very very perplexed about this, though..How come it's the postal workers, and NOT the recipients of the mail ???????

Postal Workers were exposed several DAYS BEFORE those who later received the mail. Give it time. I hear 13 of the 31 tested in Herr Daschle's office tested positive.