Trust her she knows.
As I posted earlier today, my prediction is that we will see the anthrax campaign move away from warning letters and cover notes now. Over the next few weeks, we will see surreptitious release of aerosolized anthrax in a variety of indoor public spaces (use your imagination) which will be revealed gradually as a seemingly never-ending series of "isolated incidents," as apparently random clusters of anthrax cases show up. This will virtually paralyze the American economy, although the actual number of casualties will remain below a thousand. The next phase will not involve going directly to antibiotic-resistant strains or massive aerosol releases, because
(a) that could lead to premature exposure of the terrorists through accidental deaths amongst their number and
(b) it could stimulate effective action to clear the terrorists by the government before a showdown with Saddam Hussein occurs, defeating the deterrence potential of the anthrax campaign. A few weeks from now, as the Taliban folds and the administration turns its attention to Iraq, the country will be in a state of almost universal panic (especially with the flu season coming on), as well as economic paralysis. In this context, the terrorists will make it clear to the US government what retaliation will be inflicted upon the US population -- something on the scale of several Hiroshimas in terms of death toll -- and the administration will be faced with the choice of whether to back down, or to attack Iraq and suffer massive suicide attacks with (most likely) Iraq's highly virulent, non-antiobiotic strain of anthrax. My guess is that, despite the widespread panic and demoralization of the public, the Bush administration will decide to launch an attack on Iraq. This will probably start off using conventional weapons, but escalate to a nuclear attack after the terrorists shoot their wad. I do expect this conflict to escalate to something on a par with World War I or World War II, in other words, although that could still be headed off if we take the necessary domestic action to catch the terrorists (unlikely given the principals involved).
In the wider context, this plan, architected by Saddam Hussein over the last ten years, is designed to achieve a radical geopolitical realignment. The hope is that Islamic fundamentalist and pan-Arabic forces will be enraged by America's attack on the Taliban, and emboldened not only by the successful attack on the WTC, but by the subsequent paralysis of the United States by left-field, unconventional warfare. New governments in Pakistan (with nuclear weapons) and Saudi Arabia (with the lion's share of the world's oil wealth) will look to Iraq, the only regional superpower, as the leader of a new Islamacist bloc that will stand at least equal with the hated "Great Satan" on the world stage. It's a crazy plan, of course, on a par with the dreams of Hitler or Tojo, but then, Saddam's that kind of guy and, statistically, this kind of cancer does appear once or twice per century, so we were about due. The end game will most likely be a crushing defeat as the United States and Israel rain down nuclear fire all over the Middle East.
So, that's my best guess right now as to how this thing will pan out. Anybody else want to stick their necks out and make a detailed forecast of how this conflict will develop and conclude? We can all check back in a couple of months and see who had the most insight.