#1. The hijackers moved around a lot. And what do you think the odds are that they happened to rent an apartment from the boss of the first man to die of anthrax in October 2001? Slim to none.
#2. I saw the two doctors (different practices) on the network news in October 2001. They were certain the terrorists they treated had cutaneous anthrax. Since they'd never seen it previously, and treated them before 9/11, no one was thinking about something like anthrax.
And Floridian doctors are well aware of what spider bites look like, believe me. LOL
Maybe you missed this from one of the links. It's from a NYT article:
The possibility of a connection between the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent anthrax-laced letters has been explored by officials since the first anthrax cases emerged in October. But a recent memorandum, prepared by experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, and circulated among top government officials, has renewed a debate about the evidence.
The group, which interviewed Dr. Tsonas, concluded that the diagnosis of cutaneous anthrax, which causes skin lesions, was "the most probable and coherent interpretation of the data available." The memorandum added, "Such a conclusion of course raises the possibility that the hijackers were handling anthrax and were the perpetrators of the anthrax letter attacks."
On the other hand, genefromnewjersey has provided some new facts to consider, although I tend to summarize gene's position as follows: gene is simply not willing to draw a conclusion based on the available evidence, including what seems to be additional non-public evidence that might be available to gene.
I think the circumstantial evidence chain is compelling, and logical, that points to the 9/11 hijackers. I think the initial resistance to drawing that conclusion drew together some strange bedfellows:
the MSM and the lefty peace-niks like Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, and the FBI and the Bush administration.
The resistance of the lib MSM and the left is predictable, in that they are not engaged in any honest search for truth.
The resistance of the FBI and the Bush administration can only be explained, in my mind, by the fact that since we consider anthrax to be a WMD, to admit that it WAS deployed against us by another country would REQUIRE the Bush administration to deploy its threatened response -- and to NOT deploy would be a show of weakness, inviting further attacks. So the better path is to pretend to be confused as to the origin of the attack, taking the question of responding/not responding off the table.
By the way, I was always struck by one bit of evidence, not the strongest or most compelling, but strangely fascinating to me:
one of the anthrax letters stated "We have this anthrax." A statement found on a voice recorder from one of the 9/11 planes had the hijacker stating over the intercom, "We have these planes." Strikingly similar speaker with the identical lack of fluency and choice of syntax. I think it's the same person speaking in both messages.
Peach,here's something on skin lesions. ( I had forgotten the name of the condition,but ran across it on ProMed today)
http://www.promedmail.org/pls/askus/f?p=2400:1001:1308312900248144110::NO::F2400_P1001_BACK_PAGE,F2400_P1001_PUB_MAIL_ID:1000,28399
Leishmaniasis is endemic to the Middle East (including Iraq,unfortunately. Some of our troops have contracted it.)