Guest blogged by Brad Jacobson of MediaBloodhound
Do not miss Tom Engelhardt’s article, “Double Standard in the Global War on Terror: Anthrax Department,” in which he poses and explores six questions regarding the anthrax case. These questions, however, are not ones we’re conditioned to ponder.
Prefacing his queries, Engelhardt writes:
His overall thesis is encapsulated in the first question:
Engelhardt first cites the hardships that suspects endured during the course of the investigation:
Under the pressure of FBI “interest,” anthrax specialist and “biodefense insider” Perry Mikesell evidently turned into an alcoholic and drank himself to death. Steven Hatfill, while his life was being turned inside out, had an agent trailing him in a car run over his foot, for which, Broad and Shane add, he, not the agent, was issued a ticket. And finally, of course, Dr. Ivins, growing ever more distressed and evidently ever less balanced, committed suicide on the day his lawyer was meeting with the FBI about a possible plea bargain that could have left him in jail for life, but would have taken the death penalty off the table.
But he then offers a chilling reminder of how Bush’s War on Terror affected those accused of far less than masterminding the deadliest bio-terror attack on U.S. soil in our nation’s history…
Whatever the pressure on Ivins or Hatfill, neither was kidnapped off a street near his house, stripped of his clothes, diapered, blindfolded, shackled, drugged, and “rendered” to the prisons of another country, possibly to be subjected to electric shocks or cut by scalpel by the torturers of a foreign regime. Even though each of the suspects in the anthrax murders was, at some point, believed to have been a terrorist who had committed a heinous crime with a weapon of mass destruction, none were ever declared “enemy combatants.” None were ever imprisoned without charges, or much hope of trial or release, in off-shore, secret, CIA-run “black sites.”
Why not?
His remaining questions include: 2) “Why wasn’t the U.S. military sent in?”; 3) “Once the anthrax threat was identified as coming from U.S. military labs, why did the administration, the FBI, and the media assume that only a single individual was responsible?”; 4) “What of those military labs? Why does their history continue to play little or no part in the story of the anthrax attacks?”; 5) “Were the anthrax attacks the less important ones of 2001?”; and 6) “Who is winning the Global War on Terror?”
Engelhardt not only further exposes the predominantly vapid, deficient and misleading coverage of the Ivins case, but, like most of the writing on TomDispatch, also pushes American citizens to think more deeply about the very real forces at work “in the shadows.”
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Brad Jacobson, a Brooklyn-based freelance writer, media critic, independent journalist and satirist, is the founding editor and writer of MediaBloodhound.
Here’s another question:
Why do intellectuals ask questions that they already know the answers to, but don’t bother saying the answer?
😉
The source of the anthrax was clear in 2001
US Attorney Jeff Taylor characterized a flask in Dr. Ivin’s possession as ‘the murder weapon.’ But a Dec. 12, 2001 article in the Baltimore Sun stated:
“For nearly a decade, U.S. Army scientists at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah have made small quantities of weapons-grade anthrax that is virtually identical to the powdery spores used in the mail attacks that have killed five people.”
The article refers to Dugway as ‘the only site in the United States where weapons-grade anthrax has been made in recent years,’ and also includes this:
“Dugway’s production of weapons-grade anthrax, which has never before been publicly revealed, is apparently the first by the U.S. government since President Richard M. Nixon ordered the U.S. offensive biowarfare program closed in 1969.”
The following day, the Washington Post echoed the Sun article:
“An Army biological and chemical warfare facility in Utah has been quietly developing a virulent, weapons-grade formulation of anthrax spores since at least 1992.”
On Dec 16, 2001, the Washington Post corroborated the Sun report by stating that ‘Dugway is the only facility known in recent years to have processed anthrax spores into the powdery form that is most easily inhaled,’ also stating, ‘Army officials in Washington said yesterday that Fort Detrick does not have the equipment for making dried anthrax spores.’
On September 4, 2001, the New York Times explained:
“Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons “¦ even the [Clinton] White House was unaware of their full scope. The projects, which have not been previously disclosed “¦ have been embraced by the Bush administration, which intends to expand them.”
These projects involve the CIA, Battelle Memorial Laboratories in West Jefferson, Ohio, and the Army at Dugway in Utah.
“[T]he need to keep such projects secret was a significant reason behind President Bush’s recent rejection of a draft agreement to strengthen the germ-weapons treaty, [the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention,] which has been signed by 143 nations.”
Had the treaty been strengthened, the Dugway and West Jefferson sites would have been subject to international inspections. It is important to note that Battelle not only operates its own labs in West Jefferson, but also is contracted by the Army to operate the labs at Dugway.
The DOJ-FBI news conference on August 6, 2008 was a deliberate attempt to divert attention from the secret anthrax weaponization projects by pinning the crimes on a dead man. So far the DOJ-FBI have succeeded in covering up the real perpetrators of the crime, concealing the illegal weapons program, and persuading many that it is time to close the investigation.
read the rest at: http://www.sheilacasey.com/2008...r-the-rug.html
Here’s another question nobody is asking: When is the US going to apologize to the world for falsely accusing Arab Muslims for the anthrax attacks, and for using the anthrax as a pretext for invading an Arab country (Iraq)? Whether or not Ivins did it, the FBI is already openly admitting that Muslims did not.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ““ September 7, 2008“McCain’s Ties to Shadowy Security Company Confirmed”
John McCain makes occasional mention of his friend, Admiral Chuck Larson, whose distinguished career includes the command of nuclear submarines and the management of the Naval Academy.
Not as well known but by no means concealed is Larson’s link to Washington’s ViaGlobal Group, the successor company to ViaFinance and Galway Partners.
[Ed Note: Anybody interested in this can just Google one of the phrases and find this spammed all over the internet. RULES FOR COMMENTING AT BRAD BLOG. –99]