Friday, August 1, 2008

R.I.P. Bruce E. ! You, too, John McCain!

Remember the Anthrax attacks?

One month after 911, John McCain told David Letterman (18-October) that the Iraqis dunnit.


It went down like this:

LETTERMAN:
How are things going in Afghanistan now?
MCCAIN:
I think we’re doing fine …. I think we’ll do fine. The second phase — if I could just make one, very quickly — the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don’t have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq.
LETTERMAN:
Oh, is that right?
MCCAIN:
If that should be the case, that’s when some tough decisions are gonna have to be made.
But we know now that Bruce E. Ivins, a lead scientist in the investigation of the anthrax attacks, done the deed himself. Ivins, it turns out, was mad as a mad hatter.

But in Bush's government, that did not prevent him from winning an 'attaboy' reward for his 'research'..

8 comments:

Petrosexual said...

With respect to Dr. Ivins, you are dealing with facts not in evidence.

Vigilante said...

I think the facts are in. Brucey did a "heckofajob".

Stella by Starlight said...

The facts are clearly in evidence. According to Salon, the recently departed Bruce Ivins is the unresolved question about the anthrax scare.

According to Robert Greenwald: If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab, sent by a top U.S. Army scientist at Ft. Detrick. Without resort to any speculation or inferences at all, it is hard to overstate the significance of that fact. From the beginning, there was a clear intent on the part of the anthrax attacker to create a link between the anthrax attacks and both Islamic radicals and the 9/11 attacks.

ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

ABC News' claim... from "three [allegedly] well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four [allegedly] well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

Raw Story writes it's incredible that now, after three more years, all the White House spokesperson has to say is, "If that comes up, I'm sure he gets an update." Not "he believes the FBI is doing a good job." Not even "that matter remains a priority." Just "if it comes up, he gets an update"...When the Ramsey family was cleared in the JonBenet case, the media went wild. I can only suppose that one more Bush failure is no longer considered newsworthy.

Even Faux Noise places the blame for the anthrax scare on American soil: Anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and severely rattled the post-9/11 nation may have been part of an Army scientist's warped plan to test his cure for the deadly toxin, officials said Friday. The brilliant but troubled scientist committed suicide this week, knowing
prosecutors were closing in.


What we have as evidence is both progressive and conservative media in agreement. How much more evidence do you need? As usual, Petro, you are devoid of facts in evidence.

Boris said...

Thanks, Stella!

DB Cooper said...

P-Sexual, what facts are not evidential or circumstantial?

Messenger said...

Wait until JRE is AG!

Stella by Starlight said...

Messenger is teaching me how to reduce my column inches, but ignorance makes my keyboard hum. Thank you, too, boris.

Blogging4Food said...

This story of the mad scientist should be headline news.