[WFTR]

Thanks for the post. You make reasonable arguments although I don't know whether you are correct. However, your answers raise some questions.

For instance, if the Florida anthrax came from terrorists and was made well enough to be a viable weapon, why didn't more people die? If the terrorists were capable of killing a large number of people last week, I see no reason why they would kill only a few but reveal the fact that they have this weapon. The article's answer to this question would seem to be that if this was a terrorist attack, they didn't have an anthrax source that could be deployed effectively. The article also gives several reasons why this kind of weapon might not be effective.

You think that the Iraqis may have active production of weapons-grade spores. The article says that this situation is unlikely because the technology that came from the Soviet Union would still need Soviet equipment to work. The article cites the fact that Iraqi missiles have rarely carried anthrax but would be expected to carry it if they had a viable supply of weapons-grade spores. Why do you disagree?

Again, I don't come to this argument with a strong opinion. I think that the article seems to make sense, but it could be completely wrong. I just want to explore the information.

WFTR
America's War Options.
Bill

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

Greetings :) I agree with you. I believe they would have taken given us "all they had" if the tools were available and their mission plan was sound. The 'planning' of these 'masterminds' (yeah right) has broken-down once again. I saw an interesting post from a person on another news agency's forum; this person noted nearly 10 failures of the Taliban leadership, including the underestimation of the citizens of the US and their leadership. Furthermore, God bless the victims; they were the only thing between us and the 'evil doers' -- they gave their lives so we could polish the steel and crack our knuckles. It's not over, but I believe their ability to pull off large-scale calamities from here on out is significantly diminished. MM

[Dan Day]

For instance, if the Florida anthrax came from terrorists and was made well enough to be a viable weapon, why didn't more people die?

That's a good question, and to me it indicates that the Anthrax in the Florida case was *not* a weaponized version (or not a competently done one).

One article I've read of an in-depth series of interviews with one of the primary American experts on biological weapons includes an account of a demonstration of a "simulant" of weaponized anthrax. That is, it had the same physical properties of weaponized anthrax (disperal, etc.), but was not actually alive. The reporter said that when the lid was unscrewed from the jar, the superfine powder actually started "crawling" up the walls of the jar and a misty haze started billowing out. When the weapons expert flung some of it in the air, it rapidly expanded into an ever-widening cloud which quickly vanished into the air entirely as the particles spontaneously spread out.

It appears from the description that properly weaponized anthrax both consists of invisibly small particles, and the particles are treated such that they electrostatically repel each other, dispersing automatically.

As such, it "releases" itself whenever it is "uncorked" and expands to fill any available space.

Thus, if a truly weaponized anthrax had been released in the Sun building, it would have been *everywhere*, not just on one guy's keyboard and up only two other people's noses.

It doesn't sound to me as if the Florida case involved Anthrax that had been truly "militarized".