Posted on 12/22/2001 10:10:57 AM PST by OKCSubmariner
The current line from Washington is that the anthrax pestilence responsible for killing five people and making millions more anxious about the daily mail may have been home-grown.
A White House spokesman says evidence indicates that the anthrax may have originated from a domestic source. But spokesman Ari Fleischer came across as less than convincing.
"We're still looking," said Fleischer. "We've all got different feelings about it. We're gathering as much information (as possible)." Though he promised information about the probe would be released at the appropriate time, there is no reason to expect that investigators will be any closer to an answer next month.
Put simply, if they are looking for the source of the anthrax terror campaign in the United States, they are probably looking in the wrong place. A growing number of terrorism experts, from acclaimed consultant and author Yossef Bodansky of the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies to former Israeli intelligence operative William Northrop to author Elliot Goldenberg, say they have good reason to believe the road lined with anthrax spores leads straight to Baghdad.
Indeed, if the anthrax came from Saddam Hussein's suspected biochemical weapons program, which Goldenberg believes was aided by the U.S. government to offset the spread of radical Islamism, primarily from Iran, then the U.S. is unlikely to have the will to do anything about it.
Here's why. CNN reported a few days ago that former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said if the U.S. persists in maintaining its alliance with Israel, it risks "starting World War III."
Despite what Islamic countries indicate publicly, "Anti-Jewishness and anti-Judaism constitute a major political instrument in the hands of both state governments and Islamic terrorist organizations to mobilize the entire region for the destruction of Israel -- irrespective of diplomatic treaties, including the current peace process," Bodansky wrote.
It's the same line of information that U.S. Naval Intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard warned the Israelis about over and over again in the mid-1980s. Though the files that Pollard passed to Israel are still classified, he is the reason the Israeli public began building sealed rooms and stocking gas masks.
Instead of constructing nuclear bomb shelters, as were common in the U.S. during the Cold War, Israeli citizens began building air-tight rooms when documents that Pollard smuggled to their government showed Iraq was steeped in developing weapons of mass destruction.
Pollard, a Jew who grew up in South Bend, felt compelled to furnish Israel with intelligence vital to its security because higher-ups in U.S. intelligence were withholding the information, in spite of the 1983 U.S.-Israel Exchange of Information Agreement. The documents included satellite photos detailing Iraq's burgeoning biochemical weapons program.
"It was Pollard's information, according to my sources, that caused Israel to be on alert over what Saddam Hussein had and was ready to use," said Goldenberg, author of The Hunting Horse. "By the way, the Scuds (missiles) that landed in Tel Aviv were not carrying biochemical weapons. And I believe maybe some of them (that landed) in Saudi Arabia did have biochemical warheads."
If true, that means American GIs who fought during the Gulf War were exposed to biochemical weapons, which Pollard received a life sentence for warning the Israeli government about years earlier.
As everyone knows by now, Pollard was right about Iraq's budding biochemical weapons program. According to The New York Times, in August 1998, United Nations weapons inspectors discovered evidence that Iraq had at one time nearly 200 missiles and bombs with various biochemical warheads, including Botulinum toxin, Aflatoxin and anthrax.
Before scurrying out of town Thursday for Christmas, the House, in a joint resolution passed 392-12, demanded that Iraq allow weapons inspectors back in. Don't hold your breath.
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Patterson is a Star editorial writer. Contact him at 1-317-444-6174
Colby 1974-76 entrepreneur
George Bush 1976-77 ; congressman; ambassador to U.N., China
the attack on the World Trade Center by the Muslims was predicted by God in the Bible.
Woolsey also has little doubt Iraq was implicated in the wave of anthrax letters that hit the US after September 11. As he ironically told the audience at Herzliya: "It is possible that there is no tie between the anthrax mailed in the US and those who perpetrated September 11, that it is entirely the product of, let's say, a crazed, American Nazi Ph.D. microbiologist in a well-equipped laboratory in a cave somewhere under Trenton, N.J. That's possible.But if this crazed microbiolo-gist had nothing to do with September 11, then it is a coincidence that he was ready to mail the anthrax one week later. Or, he was thinking about it and then after September 11 very quickly organized his laboratory and started mailing anthrax in one week.
Now if you think both of those scenarios are pretty unlikely, as I do, then the only other alternative is that September 11 and the anthrax had something to do with one another. And if those who suggest that if there is an American or an independent terrorist group involved, that means that Iraq is not involved, that's nonsense. There is no sole source of contracting requirement for international terrorism. Joint ventures are entirely allowed.
The big problem with biowarfare is that once the genie is out of the bottle, it can't be put back in....and it can infect the perpetrators. Soooo.....look for some pharmacuetical collusion.
And don't forget Hillary's Kennemetal experiment.
Now, sit back.... consider all this, and tell me you believe any of it. Then, I will pay more attention to the intent of this thread, and give it more than short shrift. Frankly, as it stands now, this represents the most ludicrous, convoluted, and implausible conspiracy theory I've read at FR. And that is saying quite a bit.
Concerning your characterization in reply #73 of what you claim I do or do not believe about the extent of former President George Bush's misdeeds with Iraq:
I do not ratify what you wrote in claim #73.
I do think the references in replies #56 and #64 strongly demonstrate that I and others have a sound basis to have grave reservations about whether or not former President George Bush adequately served America's interests with Iraq and Saddam Hussein prior to the Gulf War.
And of course everything that former President Bush did wrong with Saddam does not explain everything that went wrong with Saddam and Iraq.
However, IMHO Bush knew all along that Saddam was a madman when Bush helped approve export licenses for weapons of mass destruction to Iraq. To me that was irresponsible on Bush's part because it was like giving dynamite and matches to a mental patient who is a known killer and is certifiably insane (Saddam).
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