Monday, January 09, 2006

Remember the Anthrax? I do

From The Bulldog Manifesto a few choice excerpts:

Anthrax? Hello? Anybody Home? Hello?

Here we are, it's 2006. Anybody remember the Anthrax scare?

Ahhh c'mon, you remember don't you? It was that freaky time in your life when you weren't sure whether the world was about to suddenly come to an end. Remember the days soon after 9/11, when anthrax started appearing everywhere? Do you remember how gas masks were selling on Ebay for hundreds of dollars? Do you remember how you feared for your family's life as your television sold you a bill of goods about these Anthrax letters, reportedly sent by Arabs?

Do you remember how Anthrax was on television, in magazines, in newspapers; seemingly downloaded into your brain at almost every moment of your waking day-- for months? According to a LexisNexis search conducted by TomDispatch.com, "between Oct. 4 and Dec. 4, 2001, 389 stories appeared in the New York Times with "anthrax" in the headline." During the same period, 238 "anthrax" stories appeared in the Washington Post. Think about that for a second. Now consider the noise made by all the other media outlets. Now add all that noise together. That's a lot of noise.

These days though, the silence is deafening.

....

But here is the real gist of it all:

All the anthrax used in the various anthrax attacks in 2001 came from a United States military base. They all came from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick, Maryland. But there were two separate mailings of anthrax letters. One batch of letters was mailed on or about September 18, 2001. This batch went to various media outlets and contained cutaneous anthrax (Ames Strain).

Then on or about October, 9, 2001, the second batch of letters was mailed out. This batch contained a much more lethal "weaponized version" of the Ames strain. These letters were sent to two Democratic Senators.

Hydrocarbon analysis showed that all of the anthrax found in the letters was incubated within two years of the time it was mailed.

....

A Few More Things to Make Your Head Spin
1. Members of the White House (including Bush, Cheney, and the Cabinet) were given the antibiotic CIPRO on September 11, 2001-- seven (7) days prior to the date the first anthrax letter was even mailed. (I wasn't aware that antibiotics could save you from a jumbo jet smashing into your building, cool!)

2. Even after it was determined that the only anthrax to ever be used in a terrorist attack against American citizens came from our own military base, the Bush administration had Colin Powell waving around a vial of faux-anthrax at the United Nations in February of 2003. We invaded and occupied Iraq because, as Colin Powell stated that day, "Saddam Hussein has not verifiably accounted for even one teaspoon-full of this deadly material". (Considering that it was our own anthrax that was used against us in the 2001 anthrax letters, isn't this statement

Continue:
The Bulldog Manifesto

More on The forgotten Anthrax menace at:
moonofalabama

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