Posted on 04/14/2002 12:45:22 AM PDT by knak
BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered 16 million doses of the smallpox vaccine after US Vice-President Dick Cheney warned Iraq could counter military action with a biological terror onslaught.
The two leaders met at Downing Street on March 12 and exchanged intelligence about the possible threat from Iraq.
Cheney told Blair that intelligence experts had warned that the US and Britain would be the two main targets of biological warfare in the event of a conflict, London's Sunday Telegraph said.
US reports, according to the paper, suggested that Saddam Hussein would use all the weapons at his disposal if he was attacked.
Unlike the Gulf War, where he showed some restraint, this time he would know that the military action is intended to end in his death or capture, it added.
Two days after Cheney and Blair met, six government health officials, including Health Secretary Alan Milburn, met in London and decided to order inoculations against smallpox.
The Sunday Telegraph said that in the event of a war being launched against the West, Iraqi special agents would try to smuggle smallpox into Britain and release it in confined spaces such as the Tube (underground system) or cinemas.
The worst case would be suicide terrorists infected with smallpox, the paper added.
Earlier this year US scientists projected how smallpox infections would spread after a single terrorist strike, according to the paper.
They found that an attack on a train on April 1 would result in 15,000 cases of smallpox, including 2000 deaths, by June. The disease would also spread to four foreign countries, they calculated. BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered 16 million doses of the smallpox vaccine after US Vice-President Dick Cheney warned Iraq could counter military action with a biological terror onslaught.
The two leaders met at Downing Street on March 12 and exchanged intelligence about the possible threat from Iraq.
Cheney told Blair that intelligence experts had warned that the US and Britain would be the two main targets of biological warfare in the event of a conflict, London's Sunday Telegraph said.
US reports, according to the paper, suggested that Saddam Hussein would use all the weapons at his disposal if he was attacked.
Unlike the Gulf War, where he showed some restraint, this time he would know that the military action is intended to end in his death or capture, it added.
Two days after Cheney and Blair met, six government health officials, including Health Secretary Alan Milburn, met in London and decided to order inoculations against smallpox.
The Sunday Telegraph said that in the event of a war being launched against the West, Iraqi special agents would try to smuggle smallpox into Britain and release it in confined spaces such as the Tube (underground system) or cinemas.
The worst case would be suicide terrorists infected with smallpox, the paper added.
Earlier this year US scientists projected how smallpox infections would spread after a single terrorist strike, according to the paper.
They found that an attack on a train on April 1 would result in 15,000 cases of smallpox, including 2000 deaths, by June. The disease would also spread to four foreign countries, they calculated.
I don't see any reason to believe this. It could be as simple as going out into the middle of a field or a wood on a windless day and tipping a prepared pouch into the envelope. Any small amounts of anthrax which escaped would be so diluted by the time humans came into contact with them as to be harmless. As with anything elese, the dose is the poison. The preparers could have protected themselves in whole or in part by using antibiotics, or they could have been prepared immediately before the preparers ploughed hijacked jumbo jets into the WTC.
OTOH, some or all of the letters might very well have been pre-prepared abroad. It seems like a rather inconsequential issue to me. There are an infinite number of exact scenarios for how this was perpetrated. Why does it matter?
The question of whether the donor retains total control
over the supply of the Daschle anthrax is of some importance.
But knowing whether the anthrax letters were stuffed here or abroad wouldn't decide that question one way or another.
Presumably, some of the operatives involved died in the 9-11 "martyrdom operation," given the timing and location of the first anthrax target and the reports concerning the lead hijackers seeking medical treatment for inflamed hands and cutaneous anthrax. Others, we know, are still in the land of the living, because somebody mailed those letters several days after the WTC attacks. In other words, the plot is constructed pretty much like you would expect it to be constructed, given the circumstances. You are welcome to try to infer something substantive about the plot from clues in the public domain. Who knows? Perhaps you will be able to figure out some fatal flaw in the whole scheme, or guess where the sleepers are hanging out, or where the anthrax stash is. I'm not optimistic though. For the last six months, I have watched people spinning their wheels in minute discussions of irrelevancies and imponderables -- such as whether the wording in the anthrax letters reads more like a Muslim fanatic, or somebody pretending to be a Muslim fanatic. As far as I'm concerned, enough already! Let's talk strategy and tactics.
My God! He doesn't even trust his closest people under his ever-present control in his own country.
No. And I think it should be obvious from the spectacular success of the 9-11 attacks that this particular "bunch of psychotics" maintained excellent operational discipline, integrating themselves into US society, learning to fly jet liners at US training schools over the course of a year, and executing the largest and most well-coordinated terrorist attack in the history of the world, simultaneously hijacking four airliners, killing three thousand people, destroying the two tallest buildings in New York City and ploughing one airliner into the Pentagon, using nothing more than box cutters. Nineteen men -- plus a twentieth, apprehended by the authorities even before the attack, but still silent.
Saddam didn't fight his way to the top of the heap in Iraq and maintain his grip there for thirty years using his bare knuckles. He relied on men such as these to get there, and he's relying on them now to save his bacon. As with the 9-11 operation, security of the operation will no doubt be maintained using a cell structure. Supposedly, most of the hijackers didn't even know what their target would be on that day: all they were told was that they were up for a "martyrdom operation." It is perfectly possible that nobody currently in the United States knows where the anthrax is stashed. If I were Saddam Hussein, that's probably how I would do it. It doesn't take a military genius to figure out how to make such an operation virtually foolproof.
This is interesting reasoning, but I'm not so sure.
How do we know that there wasn't environmental contamination? The envelopes could have been filled in a rural location; most of the U.S. is far emptier than city-dwellers imagine.
Moreover, the biggest argument against environmental contamination would be that we don't see extra anthrax cases. But what about Kathy Nguyen and Ottilie Lundgren, maybe even AMI? (No letters were even recovered at CBS or ABC to explain the anthrax cases there either.)
You make the point that it would be difficult to keep the outside of the envelope from being contaminated. Maybe that would explain the degree of cross-contamination? [Although in fact I don't think the outside had significant contamination on mailing, or we would have seen definitive mail-drop contamination.]
It's also possible that the terrorists had access to a lab (with hoods, etc.); this would certainly facilitate filling the envelopes. One or two of the terrorists were observed using a computer at a medical facility in FL; this was never explained, but I would think that there was likely lab equipment in that location too.
Here's a specific argument against the idea that the envelopes were filled abroad and then brought here. If that had happened, the envelopes would have had to have been transported in a plastic bag or something like that. (Remember Allah Rakah?) But the spores would have started to leak from the envelopes in the bag, contaminating the outsides of all the envelopes.
It may be more likely that the anthrax was transported in one or more sealed vials, and only placed in the envelopes shortly before mailing. But I really don't think the evidence is very strong either way on this.
One final question: what happened to the anthrax in the presumed missing letters (CBS, ABC, AMI)? The letters were thrown away. Could anthrax in the trash have contaminated Nguyen and Lundgren? (Hypothetically, Nguyen might have been on the route of the garbage truck, and Lundgren might perhaps have lived near a dump?)
Do you suppose they had a lab built
somewhere out in the forest?
(Keri, if you are you there somewhere,
I would appreciate your opinion on this)
Which is precisely why that is not how this Gulf War will start.
This Gulf War will look nothing like the last one. In its own way, the attack on Saddam will be as unconventional as the attack on the Taliban.
Saddam's forward agents really must be devoted and loyal.
Saddam's own loyal men in Kuwait
surrendered the moment
they saw American soldiers.
Not, I believe, if the envelopes were handled gently.
I understand that the spores started to leak
through the envelopes
when they were processed in the Post Office,
because of the pressure
when they went through the machines
(sorry, I don't know the technical name for them,
hope that doesn't upset muawiyah)
Saddam's own loyal men in Kuwait surrendered the moment they saw American soldiers.
Such silliness! Such infantile, puerile "reasoning."
This is new to me (about the glue). How can the glue not have gotten contaminated if the envelopes were porous enough to let spores through? Wouldn't some spores have gotten on the glue that way?
Also, how would they have put the spores in the envelopes and then sealed them, without disturbing the spores enough for some to bounce and get stuck on the glue? (These are the same uncharged spores that fly easily and don't clump.)
Maybe the spores were placed in the envelopes while still inside some other sealed container? The envelopes would then be sealed, and the inner container would then be destroyed from outside, or maybe the inner container was made of a material that disintegrated. (This is a bit too much like Maxwell Smart, but it could be done.)
Do you suppose they had a lab built somewhere out in the forest?
I'm not convinced that it takes a complex lab to fill envelopes, or to put sealed containers inside envelopes. Certainly the requirements are much less than what's needed to prepare the anthrax spores in the first place.
And there are vast open spaces in the U.S. Mohamed Atta did a lot of traveling in Summer, 2001, for some unknown purpose.
Notice that, after the envelopes were opened, the subsequent contamination was limited. Only a small number of people were infected in a building, and adjacent buildings were not affected at all. (There appear to be only two exceptions to this -- Kathy Nguyen and Ottilie Lundgren.) If the envelopes were filled while on, say, a 50-acre tract, there would be no obvious contamination even if the terrorists had been a bit sloppy.
Even assuming they had vaccinations and prophylactic antibiotics (and that is a fair assumption) every precaution would have been taken.
I think the envelopes were filled in the lab where the spores were produced. There was no charge on the spores, so the question in my mind is not where the envelopes were filled, but how the perps managed to get these spores into the envelopes. Some kind of negative pressure system and a glove-box would be needed, at the least.
It is absurd to think someone could fill paper envelopes with *this* anthrax outside a lab where conditions are not predictable or under control.
I wasn't reasoning, I merely was making an observation.
I know what I would do
if I were Saddam's forward agent in the USA.
I'd sell the stash of anthrax to Al Qaeda for a fortune,
defect, and move to California.
But I am sure Saddam's agents are much more heroic and devoted than me.
If, as I believe,
the donor wanted complete control
over how the anthrax was used,
then 'he' agreed
to have the addressed envelopes filled
in the place where the anthrax was made.
I do not believe
'he' was willing to send off supplies
of raw 'Daschle-grade' anthrax
either to terrorists
to use at their discretion
or even 'agents',
(whoever these mysterious people might be,
somehow loosely connected to Al Qaeda
but exercising control over them)
Thus it may be
that there is no 'stash'
of raw Daschle-grade anthrax
in the USA......yet.
(Some of the lower grade Boca Raton stuff
may be 'floating around' however.)
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