Riiiight. Refer to tagline.
That's a plausible deduction.
That's a plausible deduction.
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" - I have never been convinced by the folks who say that Iraq and Bin Laden can't cooperate because of religious differences.
I don't know how the WSJ can make such a declarative statement. The first anthrax letter was the one sent to American Media in Florida. It was never recovered, having been discarded before anyone began showing symptoms. For this reason, when it was sent cannot be known.
Recall those horrible days and weeks immediately after 9/11 when the entire nation expected to be hit again at any moment. My personal reaction during that time was to focus like a laser on the then-developing anthrax attacks. I collected every article I could and began building a timeline of the attacks with the intention of posting it here on FR. But anthrax news was breaking almost every day back then, so I kept delaying the posting of information I collected, which was stored on my PC at work, an older machine that was due to be swapped out early in 2002. Unfortunately, I waited too long: the hard drive on that PC crashed. By that time, there was no way to recover all the info I had collected about the anthrax timeline without buying a Lexis-Nexis subscription.
My point is this: the early reporting on the anthrax attacks is burned into my memory. I cannot emphasize enough the fact that AT THE TIME, when their memories were most fresh as to details, American Media personnel said the peculiar letter with the strange brownish-white powder arrived the week of September 8, 2001. (In that year, September 8 was a Saturday.)
In plain English: Based on best evidence, which is contemporaneous statements by the people involved — who, at the time, had every reason to be as accurate as possible in every detail since they believed their own lives were in danger — the first anthrax attack letter was mailed a few days before the September 11, 2001 hijackings. Best evidence also indicates it was mailed in South Florida, since some local postal facilities were contaminated.
Also in plain English: Real, substantive evidence places Atta and several other hijackers in the same vicinity as the American Media building in the build-up period prior to the attacks. Real, substantive evidence has two of Atta's gang being treated for severe skin problems: one for a lesion the doctor who treated him later said was cutaneous anthrax. Real, substantive evidence has Atta checking out crop dusters in the same vicinity. Real, substantive evidence has one or more hijackers taking flying lessons in the same vicinity.
If it waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, and smells like a duck, it sure as hell isn't the all-too-convenient mad scientist stereotype of ancient Hollywood melodramas!!!!
I understand the cat-and-mouse game the Administration has played over the past 17 months. What I don't get — and may I say what is beginning to infuriate me — is why so many in the Democrat Party, in our media, as well as supposed allies like France and Germany, insist on pretending that the Administration is nothing but a bunch of wild-eyed warmongers. These people would have us believe that Saddam Hussein is a pussycat, while Bush, Blair, Powell, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and others of their stature are the real danger. Oh, and just in case Hussein is not a pussycat, but a tiger, they want you, and me, and hundreds of millions of Americans, Brits, Australians, and other hated "infidels" to rely on "containment."
CONTAINMENT!!! [screeching here at the top of my lungs; this morning's UN dog-and-pony show was about it for me] Containment...containment: this in a time when poisons that can kill millions can be smuggled in a two-inch vial or an ordinary aerosol can.