Posted on 08/04/2002 12:27:24 AM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 07/12/2004 3:56:04 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
A political drumbeat is building from the Pentagon to Capitol Hill in support of a pre-emptive military strike against Iraq, but Bush administration officials are split on how to proceed and on whether Congress must first approve an attack.
While Bush officials have assured key lawmakers no U.S. attack on Iraq will occur before the November elections, the issue has moved center stage as the administration seeks to establish a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's terrorist group, al Qaeda.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Weaponizing anthrax - turning it into an aerosol form which is adequately infectious - takes a huge R&D effort (industrial scale) plus lots of time. Only the U.S., the former Soviet Union and Iraq are known to have done this.
Producing weaponized anthrax given the know-how is much easier than developing the know-how. Former Soviet biowar research whiz Ken Abilek (deputy director of the Biopreparat group) says an insider could do it given the equipment. I'm a bit suspicious about his statement.
He is not merely obsessed about anthrax. Great Satan blames Saddam for 9/11. His first post in this thread stated: "Over the next few months, Saddam Hussein's authorship of 9-11 will be incrementally foregrounded into public consciousness."
That's what happened to his credibility.
The most likely theory I have seen is that Saddam was desperate to create a deterrent against Dubya coming after him. So Saddam gave a small amount of anthrax to Al-Qaeda with suggestions on how to use his anthrax spores in order to advertise his capabilities.
Saddam in no way thought that Al-Qaeda would so terminally tick of America.
Weaponizing anthrax - turning it into an aerosol form which is adequately infectious - takes a huge R&D effort (industrial scale) plus lots of time. Only the U.S., the former Soviet Union and Iraq are known to have done this.
Producing weaponized anthrax given the know-how is much easier than developing the know-how. Former Soviet biowar research whiz Ken Abilek (deputy director of the Biopreparat group) says an insider could do it given the equipment. I'm a bit suspicious about his statement.
To Thud:
If you are, "a bit suspicious about his statement," what alternative do you suggest? If it is unlikely an individual could have done this, then there are only three candidates.
It is not necessary for the Bush admin to have dreamed up an elaborate misdirection ploy. It is more likely that the media did the work all by itself. If you follow the Barbara Hatch Rosenberg saga, you already know how pathetically unqualified an "expert" she is. You also know how her story wobbles over time. You also know how the media shamelessly glosses this over.
Likewise, if you follow the Steven Hatfill saga, you already know he has never been accused of anything by the U.S. government. You know Barbara has been beating the drums against him, and that the media has picked up the beat. You also know he is not talking to the press, but that he is cooperating fully with the FBI. You know that the FBI agents involved have taken no precautions to protect themselves while supposedly looking for extremely dangerous stuff.
As a strategist, you know that the timing of an attack on Iraq is dependent on advance preparation. You know how Iraq's geographic situation makes a land attack difficult at best. You also know how reluctant most of Iraq's neighbors are to help, including Saudi Arabia.
Military and political strategy are intertwined. If the Bush administration had immediately blamed Iraq for the anthrax attacks, the pressure to attack Iraq immediately would have been intense. However, it would have been militarily foolish to do so. A large amount of military preparation was essential, and ways needed/need to be found to protect our civilian population against biological attack.
Given the strategic situation, there was simply no way the administration could allow Iraq to be tied too closely to the anthrax attacks. Thankfully, good 'ol Barbara Hatch Rosenberg came along. I do not think the administration could have invented her even if they tried, but she has been the perfect person for the job. Her ideas are the essence of liberal conspiracy theory. Her credentials are unrelated to biowarfare. When the time comes, she and her ideas will be easily shown to be the lunatic ravings of a liberal conspiracy nut. Until then, she is the perfect "useful idiot".
The Bush admin seems to be gradually floating the possibility that Iraq was behind the anthrax attack. Part of this strategy is to let the air out of Rosenberg's right wing domestic nut theory. Publicly investigating, and then clearing, her accused villain is a necessary step along the way. When they deem the time is right, I expect them to make the case much more forcefully.
I do not expect the case to be made for Iraq's direct involvement in the anthrax attack until we are ready to attack. However, it is possible that the administration could be forced into earlier action by domestic political pressures. The liberals are already showing their true spineless natures, and President Bush may need to play some more cards to maintain domestic support for what needs to be done.
"If Saddam was a part of 9/11 thousands if not tens of thousands would have been dead from anthrax. The most likely explanation is that Saddam knew that Al-Qaeda was going to do _Something_. He did not know the details of 9/11, particularly the mass casualty aspects.The most likely theory I have seen is that Saddam was desperate to create a deterrent against Dubya coming after him. So Saddam gave a small amount of anthrax to Al-Qaeda with suggestions on how to use his anthrax spores in order to advertise his capabilities.
Saddam in no way thought that Al-Qaeda would so terminally tick of America."
Do you believe the White House is lying about Atta's trip to Prague to meet with an agent of the Iraqi government? And, if not, what do you think the purpose of that meeting was?
Saddam in no way thought that Al-Qaeda would so terminally tick of America."
Absurd. If 9-11 was but a horrible surprise to Uncle Saddam, inadvertantly painting a target on his forehead, do you really think he'd be praising the "beauty of Osama bin Laden's" face? Do you think he'd be telling us we got we deserved? Do you think he'd still be harboring an indicted conspirator in the 1993 attempt to topple the WTC? No, he'd be running like hell to disassociate himself from bin laden and 9-11.
You seem to be in a state of complete denial. Saddam didn't spot team 9-11 with a bit of weaponized anthrax "just in case" they overstepped the mark and tweaked the Great Satan's tail too hard -- any more than Mohammed Atta rendevoused with an Iraqi agent to exchange Toubouli recipes. He did it because he architected the whole operation and needed a foolproof deterrent to intimidate Bush from pointing the finger.
"I didn't think it possible that Osama sitting up there in the mountains could do it," Musharraf said in an interview in the Aug. 12 edition of the New Yorker magazine, nearly a year after hijacked planes killed more than 3,000 people in New York, Washington and in Pennsylvania. "He was perhaps the sponsor, the financier, the motivating force. But those who executed it were much more modern. They knew the U.S., they knew aviation. I don't think he has the intelligence or the minute planning. The planner was someone else," Musharraf said about the Saudi-born militant.
It is protection for Saddam to have biological and chemical weapons, because, in the final analysis, if pressed, if he is surrounded in Baghdad, he will threaten to use them. He's capable of that. This is a sort of Samson complex--if you push me too hard, I'll bring the house down, on myself and on everyone else. Washington realizes that this is a possibility. For obvious reasons, it's not talked about openly. No one in Washington wants to tell the American people that Saddam is still capable of blackmailing us. They're acting as if he is capable of blackmailing them, but they are not going to admit it openly. -- Said K. AburishTell me, does it offend your sensibilities to think that Saddam Hussein, a punk we supposedly crushed like a bug ten years before 9-11, would have the ingenuity or the daring to pull off the most spectacular surprise attack in human history? If so, I would suggest you start thinking with your intellect, and not your pride.
Not to mention the fact that Hatfill was hired by the Justice Department to a $150,000/yr job on July 1 of this year. That's a bit of a giveaway, isn't it -- if you've got your thinking cap on, at least.
Thanks for a great post.
Saddam Hussein put his troops on their highest military alert since the Gulf War two weeks before the suicide attacks on America, the strongest indication yet that the Iraqi leader knew an atrocity was planned.President Saddam has remained out of the public eye in his network of bunkers since the military alert at the end of August, and moved his two wives away from the presidential palaces in Baghdad to Tikrit.
The CIA also claims to have proof that bin Laden aides were in contact with Iraqi intelligence in the days before the New York outrage.
One intelligence official said that there had been nothing obvious to warrant President Saddam's declaration of "Alert G", Iraq's highest state of readiness. "He was clearly expecting a massive attack, and it leads you to wonder why," he said.
Your post confuses the R&D effort with the production technique.
Money and deals have been a great source of intelligence for centuries.
You can do better than that.
And how precisely do you know that?
The identities of the pre-9/11 investors who short-sold AA, UA, Swiss Re, Munich Re and Morgan Stanley have never been revealed.
The most likely theory I have seen is that Saddam was desperate to create a deterrent against Dubya coming after him. So Saddam gave a small amount of anthrax to Al-Qaeda with suggestions on how to use his anthrax spores in order to advertise his capabilities.
Quite likely. Mohammed Atta comes to mind. The attack itself was designed to warn, not kill. The warning said "We have THIS anthrax." (I added the emphasis, but I am sure our government got the message.) BTW, Dark Wing and The Great Satan are saying the same thing here.
It is not disputed by anybody that Iraq has the capability to make a LOT of weaponized anthrax, and that it has, in fact, done so.
Since it would have been easy to smuggle it into the country in advance, it seems only prudent to assume that it already IS in the country. Likewise it seems only prudent to assume that Saddam has the ability to cause it to be used. My guess is that he has multiple channels available.
Indirect attacks give him potentially useful deniability, so I would expect him to prefer the actual attackers come from the likes of Al Qaida, Islamic Jihad, etc., especially in the early stages. My guess is that he also has some directly controlled assets pre-positioned as well, just in case.
Saddam in no way thought that Al-Qaeda would so terminally tick of America."
You might check out post 53. It seems Saddam was ready for trouble on September 11, BEFORE the attack started.
My guess is that he WANTED to tick us off, but he had no idea we could respond as effectively as we did. For instance, nobody on their side thought the Taliban could be so quickly and decisively defeated.
Saddam is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, but he is not nearly as dumb as we would like him to be. It does not take a strategic genius to figure out how useful it would be to smuggle substantial quantities of weaponized anthrax into the United States.
To sum up the situation:
- 1. We know weaponized anthrax is hard to make. Some say a "mere" million dollars would be all it takes to make some, as long as you already knew how to do it. Others say only the U.S., Russia, and Iraq have the ability to make weaponized anthrax of this quality.
- 2. Either way, we know Saddam has lots of it (not disputed by anyone).
- 3. We know it would have been easy to smuggle into the U.S. (not disputed by anyone).
- 4. We know weapons grade anthrax was mailed to high profile people, in specially sealed envelopes, with warnings enclosed. It was clearly a warning, not an attack.
Applying Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation is that Iraq is the ultimate source, although the actual attack was done indirectly by Mohammed Atta. Not only is this the most likely explanation, abundant additional evidence exists in the public record to support this hypothesis.
To put it differently, does anyone really think that Saddam would NOT smuggle weaponized anthrax into the U.S. if he had the chance?
I think we all agree: If Saddam had weaponized anthrax he could have smuggled it in, and he would if he could. Unfortunately, it is also agreed by all: he has LOTS of anthrax.
It does not take a genius to connect the dots.
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