Surprise, surprise.

BTTT

Operation: Just An Isolated Incident.

The article overlooks another attribute of anthrax made in the US and in Russia: resistance to antibiotics. Not so with Iraq's version... ahem.

Time to start following the ant-capitalist peacenicks back to their labratories at the campus, eh?

It's just a matter of time...

THere is no reasons given for why it is unlikely Iraq ia behind it and frankly, the fact it is capable is very suspicious, whether the writer of the article is willing to say so or not. Unlike the USA and Russia, the strains are not drug-resistent. Iraq is behind it. Slam dunk.

At dinner with my husband tonight, I was trying to explain why I think it's eco-terrorists. He's not real political and didn't know about groups like Earth First, ALF, ELF and the other nutball leftists our universities have bred.

I remember a News documentary about a charter jet carrying U.S. servicemen which crashed on New Foundland. At the time, ice on wings was blamed. Later, however, it was turned out to be the work of Iran. But America sat on it because going against Iran was inconvenient. Attacking Iraq now will be inconvenient for U.S. So, if U.S. does well in Afghan, the government will suddenly show extensive collection of evidences against Irq(or other countries) and start attacking.

I'm not convinced. The process to make anthrax an aerosol threat was mastered by the Soviets. This sounds like spin to me. While the short road may lead to Iraq, the long one leads to Russia. Something to be kept quiet.

You can bet Ken Alibek is not getting much sleep these days.

So finally they let the cat out of the bag. It was a state sponsored act. Will someone please apologize to the right wing militia groups?

Indeed.

The United States, the former Soviet Union and Iraq are the only three nations known to have developed the kind of additives that enable anthrax spores to remain suspended in the air, making them more easily inhaled and therefore more deadly, experts said yesterday.

A government official with direct knowledge of the investigation said yesterday that the totality of the evidence in hand suggests that it is unlikely that the spores were originally produced in the former Soviet Union or Iraq.

If I’m reading these statements correctly, the second sentence suggests that the spores were therefore “originally produced” in the US.

I think you're confusing Russia and the Soviet Union. And, by the way, did either of them ever get the Ames, IA strain of anthrax?

Anyway, as long as the immediate source was Iraq, I don't see how it would make any difference that Iraq might at some time in the past have gotten the strain or some item of the technology used from the old Soviet Union.

Could that statement mean anything more than that the Ames, IA strain -- obviously something originally developed in the U.S. -- was used? If that's all it means, we already knew that.

You were asking for evidence of Iraqi culpability in the anthrax attacks. Lookee here.

Spores were mass-produced at a Pine Bluff, Ark., facility, Patrick said. Production stocks were destroyed, but he said he did not know whether "seed stocks" from which new batches could be grown had also been destroyed. Under the terms of an international treaty banning biological weapons, to which the United States is a signatory, small amounts of biological weapons can be produced to conduct defensive research.

Hmmmmmmmm

Are you still up?

Hmm...good point... now I know why they say "Remember the Alamo!"

First, the reporters, Weiss and Eggen, authoritatively identify three possible sources for the spores.

"The United States, the former Soviet Union and Iraq are the only three nations known to have developed the kind of additives that enable anthrax spores to remain suspended in the air, making them more easily inhaled and therefore more deadly, experts said yesterday."

Then, they slip in a claim from an unidentified source that immediately eliminates two of the possibilities.

"A government official with direct knowledge of the investigation said yesterday that the totality of the evidence in hand suggests that it is unlikely that the spores were originally produced in the former Soviet Union or Iraq."

Thus, the story pointedly infers the spores in question were of United States manufacture. If true, this would be a giant discovery -- indeed, a major break in the story.

But, while the rest of the story is fully sourced and every claim backed up with corroborative information, the inference that the U.S. was the source of the anthrax spores is, in fact, a totally unsupported assertion. The source gives us absolutely no reasons why Russia and Iraq are unlikely to have been the original source.

The report fingers a U.S. government lab as the "state-sponsored anthrax lab". Yet, they present no evidence to that effect.

Do the reporters know more than they have written? Or is this just a poorly written report?

It would be nice to know...

I doubt that a college peacenik is capable of doing this. On the other hand, are there any "foreign exchange" grad students in our national microbiology labs? You bet. I doubt background searches are done on these doctoral candidates.