You made me google:

This lady (chat site) thinks Bush is personally responsible for anthrax mailings, out of vengeance and to intimidate others (e.g., outing Valerie Plame):

http://www.newsgarden.org/columns/anthrax/anthraxtargets.shtml
To identify a murderer the police concentrate on method, opportunity and motive. Other members of the right wing/intelligence community/military cabal might have had the method and opportunity, but only Bush had the motive to hit these particular people. They say a serial murder’s first victim tells more about him than any subsequent killing so let’s examine that first killing.

First anthrax death = Robert Stevens, Sun photo editor — I’m confused if he took the embarrassing photo of Jenna Bush that was printed in the National Enquirer, or if he unluckily opened a letter intended for National Enquirer photo editor, in same St. Petersburg FL building — ? Letter and envelope apparently not recovered (?)

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/Bioter/detect/antdetect_case5.html

First reported case, Robert Stevens, “Sought medical care at a local hospital on October 2 with fever and altered mental status. Despite antibiotic therapy, his clinical condition deteriorated rapidly, and he died on October 5. An autopsy performed on October 6 confirmed the cause of death as inhalational anthrax. An investigation revealed no obvious exposures to B. anthracis. Workplace interviews regarding mail exposure showed that the patient rarely handled or opened workplace mail, but co-workers recalled that he had examined a piece of stationery containing a fine, white, talc-like powder on September 19. The patient was observed holding the stationery close to his face as he looked at it over his computer keyboard.

According to this web site,

http://911review.org/Wiki/AnthraxAttacks.shtml

the Patriot Act was the motivation. I refused to pledge allegiance after they passed it. Haven’t since.

1) The anthrax attacks targeted the US Democrat Senators who opposed Ashcroft’s Patriot Act:

October 2, 2001 (B): The “anti-terrorism” Patriot Act is introduced in Congress, but is not well received by all. [ Patriot Act, 10/2/01]

One day later, Senate Majority Leader and future anthrax target Tom Daschle (D) says he doubts the Senate will take up this bill in the one week timetable the administration wants. As head of the Senate, Daschle has great power to block or slow passage of the bill.

Attorney General Ashcroft accuses Senate Democrats of dragging their feet. [Washington Post, 10/3/01] On October 4, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman and future anthrax target Patrick Leahy (D) accuses the Bush administration of reneging on an agreement on the anti-terrorist bill. Leahy is in a key position to block or slow the bill.

Some warn that “lawmakers are overlooking constitutional flaws in their rush to meet the administration’s timetable.” Two days later, Ashcroft complains about “the rather slow pace ‘over his request for law enforcement powers’ Hard feelings remain.” [Washington Post, 10/4/01]

The anthrax letters to Daschle and Leahy are sent out on October 9 and difficulties in passing the Act continue (see October 9, 2001).

I suppose that is why 14 microbiologists more or less mysteriously ended up suspiciously dead?

I think it was the one following those imaginary airplanes everyone thought hit those buildings in NY and DC. /s

Not only Dana, nearly EVERY reporter has repeated that lie countless times. Lets see if we can find ones who haven’t been. I bet even the most liberal of them have been repeating it.

And I thought they just wanted to bug Democratic offices in congress. Clean up operations sure are useful.

Good link, thanks — actually I think this is the passage EW was referring to at the beginning of her post above, quoting from Glenn Greenwald.

Posted by Andrew Sparrow Thursday 26 November 2009 08.44 GMT
guardian.co.uk

10.37am: Sir Roderic Lyne is asking the questions now. He asks about Colin Powell’s decision to get a new UN security council resolution. Meyer says the White House was not very interested in this.

Lyne wants to know at what point the most senior people in the Bush administration settled on policy of forced removal of Saddam as an objective.

Meyer says it was after the anthrax scare. At the time he did not give much attention to this. But it “really steamed up” the administration. They thought that the last person to use anthrax was Saddam.

Meyer says this is set out in a book called The Bush Tragedy. Cheney was so worried that he considered getting everyone in the US to have a smallpox vacination, even though 20m people could die as a side-effect.

Meyer says the Bush administration became re-animated. Bush had a purpose.

(I wonder what kind of connection there is between anthrax and smallpox? Same vaccination for both? Same company producing the vaccinations? Dunno…)

Ex British Ambassador to Uzbekistan (and sacked torture whistleblower) Craig Murray is commenting on the UK inquiry on his own blog: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/. He’s pretty critical of the setup:

November 24, 2009

Iraq Inquiry: The First Big Lie

Sir John Chilcot was just ten minutes in to the first public session of the Iraq Inquiry when he told the first big lie – and a lie which, when examined, exposes the entire charade.

“My colleagues and I come to this inquiry with an open mind.”

That is demonstrably untrue. Three of the five members – Rod Lyne, Martin Gilbert and Lawrence Freedman – are prominent proponents of the Iraq war. By contrast, nobody on the committee was in public against the invasion of Iraq. How can it be fine to pack the committee with supporters of the invasion, when anyone against the invasion was excluded?

I knew to check Craig Murray because of his recent article, How a Torture Protest Killed a Career:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/102409b.html

We built up an overwhelming dossier of evidence, and I complained to London about the conduct of our ally in rather strong terms including the photos of the boy being boiled alive.

I received a reply from the British Foreign Office. It said, this is a direct quote, “Dear Ambassador, we are concerned that you are perhaps over-focused on human rights to the detriment of commercial interests.”

I was taken aback. I found that extraordinary. But things had gotten much worse because while we were gathering the information about torture, we were also learning what people were forced to confess to under torture.

People aren’t tortured for no reason. They’re tortured in order to extract some information or to get them to admit to things, and normally the reason you torture people is to get them to admit to things that aren’t actually true. They were having to confess to membership in al-Qaeda, to being at training camps in Afghanistan, personally meeting Osama bin Laden.

There was an overwhelming body of evidence that actually people from all over the world were being taken by the CIA to Uzbekistan specifically in order to be tortured.

I’m writing memos saying it’s illegal to torture people, children are being tortured in front of their parents. And they’re writing memos back saying it depends on the definition of complicity under Article Four of the UN Convention.

Lessons Learned

The thing that came out of it most strongly for me is how in a bureaucratic structure, if the government can convince people that there is a serious threat to the nation, ordinary people who are not bad people will go along with things that they know are bad, like torture, like trying to stain an innocent man.

And it’s circular, because the extraordinary thing about it was that the whole point of the intelligence being obtained under torture was to actually exaggerate the terrorist threats and to exaggerate the strength of al-Qaeda.

That was the whole point of why people were being tortured, to confess that they were members of al-Qaeda when they weren’t members of al-Qaeda and to denounce long lists of names of people as members of al-Qaeda who weren’t members of al-Qaeda.