Interesting, insightful article:
New tome: War vs. Saddam hit al-Qaeda hard
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1234284/posts
Beneath all the public reasons for invading Iraq lies a secret war agenda that has paid off in the war on al-Qaeda, according to a leading intelligence analyst.
Friedman's book, ``America's Secret War: Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between America and its Enemies,'' which goes on sale Tuesday, argues that midway through the war on terrorism, America has made major gains while al-Qaeda has failed in most of its goals and is on the defensive. Iraq, he argues, is a keystone of American strategy against al-Qaeda.
America's invasion of Iraq put pressure on the Saudis that forced them to act against al-Qaeda sympathizers within Saudi Arabia in ways the Saudis had been unwilling to do, Friedman said.
``Doing nothing would have been disastrous,'' Friedman said.
Gains against al-Qaeda so far, he said, include:
action to isolate nukes, include undercover special operations agents monitoring Pakistan's nuclear weapons facility;
significant damage to al-Qaeda's fund-raising aparatus.
better cooperation from intelligence agencies in Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
CJD is a prion disease and you can't kill it by autoclaving.
It is claimed that autoclaving is ineffective in destroying the prions that initiate CJD.
Apparently if you autoclave long enough and hot enough you can kill it. Alcohol won't kill it. About 20 years ago there were a couple of cases of people who had EEGs. The electrodes were placed in alcohol after the first patient. Three or four subsequent patients got it. Ugly.
One of my county's female legislators died earlier this year of CJD. But I cannot -- to this day -- confirm if it was the variant form or not.
All news reports and public info ever said was that it was CJD, a rare brain disorder. I understand that there are a few forms of the CJD disease and perhaps the form the lawmaker died from was not related to the variant disease that we like to call mad cow.
To your knowledge, does this make sense?
Then again, if the lawmaker did die of the human form of mad cow, why the heck would they publicize it, right? We know that family members of others who supposedly have died from eating in various restaurants have banded together to try to out what they know and what the public health officals have kept under wraps.
I have always been suspicious since the lawmaker died because of this.
The lawmaker resigned from office one day with a rare and fatal brain disease and the next thing I know she was dead. It all happened terribly fast. Could all be innocent, of course. Just wish I knew.