People aren't buying the government's version of the events surrounding the Anthrax attacks.

[arcadian]

On DC 101's 'Elliot in the Morning' show, which is an exercise in media driven pop scatology, they had a segment about a guy who wrote a book on the 'Science of Fear'. The fact this guy was on seemed strange because their normal guests are usually of the musical or sports variety. The author's notion was that most people's fears were completely unfounded, most noticeably, people's fear of terrorism. A local woman called up exclaiming that we should all be afraid and she cited the Anthrax case and went on to completely villify Ivins. This was to be expected.

Then a funny thing happened. They had a news segment where the top story was the Ivins case and they mentioned that the FBI has concluded that Ivins was the sole proprietor of the Anthrax, essentially he was the only person who had access to it therefore, he's guilty. At this point, the host Elliot Segal broke into the news segment and countered with something to the effect that, "It should be mentioned that a lot of people aren't buying this story, namely, Ivins friends and colleagues among others."

Note that DC101 is broadcast in the nation's capital. It is also picked up in Frederick, Maryland, the location of USAMERIID and where Ivins lived. D.C. was also ground zero for a lot of the events that occurred during the 2001 Anthrax attacks.

[crim son]

1. Our government lies.

Our media lies. How can we believe anything we're told any more?

[OmahaBlueDog]

2. It all seems too convenient

The case, as presented in the media, seems circumstantial at best. Nevertheless, the accused commits suicide. We declare him the fall guy based on this evidence, and close the case. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

[arcadian]

4. Again, no trial. Accused is guilty because he's dead.

Who warned the Whitehouse to start taking cipro before the attacks?

[OmahaBlueDog]

10. Speaking of the Cipro???????!!!!

Whatever happened to all those stories after 9-11 of Mohammed Atta and some of his followers going into drug stores to get Cipro and having red blotches on their hands -- the clear inference being that they'd been playing with the weaponized Anthrax? I'm guessing it's more BushCo urban terror myth, but I just remembered that when you mentioned the Cipro.

[EFerrari]

12. Hauer on 9/11. He was CIA, iirc. n/t

[Pastiche423]

18. I see red every time I see his name

Jerome Hauer arranged a job for former FBI Deputy John P. O'Neill as head of security at the World Trade Center in the latter part of August 2001. (Remember who owned the security company?)

For those that do not know, John P. O'Neill was the counter terrorism agent w/the FBI, who was hot on the tail of Osama bin Laden. In the summer of 2001, he was ordered to back off OBL. This following Barabara Bodine, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, denying O'Neill re-entry into Yemen where he was investigating the Cole bombing in October 2000.

Jerome was also the person that identified John P. O'Neill's body, one week following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

John P. O'Neill was "The Man That Knew"

[EFerrari]

19. I didn't know Hauer identified John O'Neill.

It just gets more tidy all the time.

[Pastiche423]

20. Tidy connecting dots, eh?

John was married (and had a g/f) at the time of the attacks. Yet Jerome Hauer was the person that identified the body?

In the months that followed the attacks, I researched John O'Neill. He was an aggressive, dedicated, work-a-holic FBI agent. Unfortunately, that zeal brought about his death by the very government he worked for relentlessly. IMHO.

[EFerrari]

22. Yeah. "They" tried to make him look bad, too.

Crazy, disruptive, alcoholic, promiscuous, combative, absent minded. The usual checklist.

It doesn't seem like him to walk away from a challenge and imho, that's why he wound up at the Towers. What a terrible loss.

[ladjf]

3. We are so accustomed to being lied to by the Government and the

media that no one would believe anything they said, even if it were to be true.

That is a sad commentary on the state of things in America.

[TNOE]

5. Maybe not, if we learn from it

Maybe before the next war - the people will learn to ask more questions and demand more evidence before grabbing the flag and supporting anything the goverment says before offering up their children as sacrificial lambs.

Better yet - maybe there will be no more war.

[ladjf]

6. I like your optimism. Maybe it will turn out that way.

[TNOE]

9. Just having a brief moment of optimism

some days are certainly harder than others.

[ladjf]

11. Even if the political criminality were to be stopped, Americans are

going to be suffering from various mental illnesses for decades.

[Tim4319]

7. This all sounds like a movie to me!

Innocent people are killed using some sort of chemical agent. A person is said to have committed suicide -- come to find out he was actually murdered -- and blamed for the killing of innocent people.

The only thing missing is an overachieving person that stumbled across some information, that proves that the person that supposedly committed suicide is actually innocent. Now it is up to the overachiever to dodge the the mighty government and supply the evidence to someone that can he can actually trust in the government to blow the whistle on the entire operation.

The only thing missing is the closing credits!

Who will that overachiever be? And, what will the outcome be?

[Muttocracy]

8. poll on WSJ

http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=3590

[EFerrari]

13. Wow. 63% aren't buying it.

Good.

[LynnTheDem]

14. Coz We the People aren't quite as dumb as the bush regime thinks we are.

We the People never have been (other than the 70% who thought Iraq did 911; that was one fuck of a US "media" coup).

We the People even had a majority who opposed the bush regime's invasion of Iraq.

We the People still do.

[MiniMe]

15. Front page of the Washington Post, above the fold

Government Asserts Ivins Acted Alone
Officials Detail Evidence, but Questions Linger


Government officials asserted yesterday that a troubled bioweapons scientist acted alone to perpetrate a terrorism scheme that killed five people, a case that centered on a near-perfect match of anthrax spores in his custody and a record of his late-night laboratory work just before the toxic letters were mailed.

/snip

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) called for a "full-blown accounting" of the $15 million investigation, which took nearly seven years and included multiple wrong turns. Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), from whose district the letters were mailed, called for hearings to address questions such as "why investigators are so certain that Ivins acted alone."

Other congressional sources said that the FBI case was compelling but that doubts lingered in part because of the bureau's lengthy and ultimately fruitless pursuit of former Fort Detrick researcher Steven J. Hatfill. In June, the Justice Department agreed to pay Hatfill a $5.8 million settlement to resolve his privacy lawsuit. The only veiled reference to the government's wrong focus came in a footnote in the documents, which said that tests to make a clear genetic link to a specific scientist did not exist in the early years of the investigation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/06/AR2008080601400.html?hpid=artslot

[Muttocracy]

16. "government asserts" - good headline. nt

[EFerrari]

17. Jon Carroll: The Anthrax Perplex (SF Chronicle Columnist)

Thursday, August 7, 2008

I have, of course, no knowledge about the guilt or innocence of Bruce E. Ivins, who apparently committed suicide just as the FBI was preparing to arrest him for the string of anthrax attacks in 2001 that galvanized the country in the wake of 9/11. He was one of a handful of people who had legal access to the substance (he was a government researcher), and there is anecdotal evidence that he was recently behaving in a curious and unbalanced manner.

There is also recently evidence that I've been behaving in a curious and unbalanced manner and that my newly painted blue fingernail is evidence of that. I am not currently under suspicion of anything.

On the other hand, he was a well-known member of his community, a churchgoer who performed a juggling act at local talent shows. He was married, had two kids and volunteered for the Red Cross. In retrospect, of course, very suspicious, because aren't those always the guys, the religious Red Cross volunteers, who turn out to be twisted? Except, of course, for the millions of Red Cross-supporting, God-believing Americans who turn out not to have sent envelopes laced with anthrax to members of Congress.

So apparently the case is closed. Bruce E. Ivins is conveniently dead, unavailable for questioning, unable to come to the phone at this time, and so he can be declared the villain, or the probable villain, and he is unable to sue.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/06/DDQP125HJK.DTL

[ColbertWatcher]

21. It is not the "government" that is lying; it is the GOP administration...

...that's doing the lying!

[EFerrari]

23. That's who the goverment is right now, that's the leadership.

In America, we tend to forget that in a way people in other countries don't -- like Britain, for example. We pretend that when people are elected, they check their politics at the door, a piece of naivete that most democracies don't indulge in.

[ColbertWatcher]

25. I disagree.

The government is people like Joe Wilson and Bunnatine Greenhouse.

The administration is people like Monica Goodling and Cheney.

[EFerrari]

26. That's my point. We associate "our government" with good actors

and for no reason. Wilson and Greenhouse are not in our government at all.

[pleah]

24. Why would anyone believe anything this government said about

anything? After 8 years of lies, torture, and murder, what do you expect?


:shrug: