January 4, 2006


Here we are, it's 2006. Anybody remember the Anthrax scare?

Ahhh c'mon, you remember don't you? It was that freaky time in your life when you weren't sure whether the world was about to suddenly come to an end. Remember the days soon after 9/11, when anthrax started appearing everywhere? Do you remember how gas masks were selling on Ebay for hundreds of dollars? Do you remember how you feared for your family's life as your television sold you a bill of goods about these Anthrax letters, reportedly sent by Arabs?

Do you remember how Anthrax was on television, in magazines, in newspapers; seemingly downloaded into your brain at almost every moment of your waking day-- for months? According to a LexisNexis search conducted by TomDispatch.com, "between Oct. 4 and Dec. 4, 2001, 389 stories appeared in the New York Times with "anthrax" in the headline." During the same period, 238 "anthrax" stories appeared in the Washington Post. Think about that for a second. Now consider the noise made by all the other media outlets. Now add all that noise together. That's a lot of noise.

These days though, the silence is deafening.

Anthrax? Are you there? Anybody home?
Have you heard of anthrax lately? Do you know what became of the anthrax investigation? Do you know if anybody was ever arrested? Do you know if the FBI has any leads? What do you know about anthrax? When was the last time you saw an anthrax story in the newspaper?

Yes, the anthrax story is gone. Like Kaiser Soza and Osama bin Laden-- vanished, 'poof', just like that! It served it's purpose (just like Osama). It got us into a war with Iraq. Mission accomplished, as they say.

But here is the real gist of it all:

All the anthrax used in the various anthrax attacks in 2001 came from a United States military base. They all came from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick, Maryland. But there were two separate mailings of anthrax letters. One batch of letters was mailed on or about September 18, 2001. This batch went to various media outlets and contained cutaneous anthrax (Ames Strain).

Then on or about October, 9, 2001, the second batch of letters was mailed out. This batch contained a much more lethal "weaponized version" of the Ames strain. These letters were sent to two Democratic Senators.

Hydrocarbon analysis showed that all of the anthrax found in the letters was incubated within two years of the time it was mailed.

And from CNN on June 26, 2002:

"This discovery lends credence to the theory that whoever mailed the finely milled anthrax spores -- known to be of the Ames strain -- has a current connection to a sophisticated laboratory.

Investigators have long believed the suspect possessed a sophisticated knowledge of anthrax and a high level of training."

Now, here is something everybody seems to miss. If Osama bin Laden is responsible for the 9/11 attacks (yeah right), isn't it somewhat odd that some other group of people with certain ties to the United States government just so happened to pull off the anthrax attacks within a week of 9/11 and again on October 9? Are we supposed to believe that the anthrax attacker(s) were just waiting around with extremely fatal weaponized anthrax in their refrigerators for the right moment? And what about the letters? C'mon, these guys were obviously trying to frame Arabs for the attacks. Isn't this the slightest bit suspicious to anybody in the media?

So let's recap.

The Anthrax came from an American military base.
The Anthrax required sophisticated knowledge and a high level of training.
The Anthrax letters contained feeble minded language to make us all believe they were written by some "stupid Arab".
The letters were mailed within one week of 9/11. (Were they just waiting around for a 9/11-like event to take place or was it all just a big coincidence?)

If the Anthrax attackers are related to the US government, what does that tell us about 9/11? Perhaps this is why the media went to sleep on the anthrax story after it was revealed that the anthrax came from Fort Detrick. Hmmmmm, what do you think? After all, if you connect the dots on anthrax, 9/11 is pretty much a no-brainer, isn't it?

A Few More Things to Make Your Head Spin
1. Members of the White House (including Bush, Cheney, and the Cabinet) were given the antibiotic CIPRO on September 11, 2001-- seven (7) days prior to the date the first anthrax letter was even mailed. (I wasn't aware that antibiotics could save you from a jumbo jet smashing into your building, cool!)

2. Even after it was determined that the only anthrax to ever be used in a terrorist attack against American citizens came from our own military base, the Bush administration had Colin Powell waving around a vial of faux-anthrax at the United Nations in February of 2003. We invaded and occupied Iraq because, as Colin Powell stated that day, "Saddam Hussein has not verifiably accounted for even one teaspoon-full of this deadly material". (Considering that it was our own anthrax that was used against us in the 2001 anthrax letters, isn't this statement just a tad ironic?)

The president loves to make us remember 9/11. Why doesn't he ever remind us of the anthrax attacks? Oh wait......