* Noah Shachtman writes: Did the Anthrax Attacks Kickstart the Iraq War? … Congressman Holt is quoted in Shachtman’s article saying: The anthrax attacks “made it possible to manufacture the argument that there was WMD in Iraq and links to Al-Qaeda” … LMW adds: Here are extracts from my novel CASE CLOSED regarding the potential linkage of “Saddam’s anthrax” to the invasion of Iraq

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Secretary of State Colin Powell at the UN on Feb 5, 2003

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Noah Shachtman writes for WIRED (3/29/11) …

• Did the Anthrax Attacks Kickstart the Iraq War?
• On February 5th, 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the United Nations, to make the case for war in Iraq.
• A central plank of his presentation: the anthrax attacks that killed five people and helped send the country into a panic in the days after 9/11.
• “Less than a teaspoon-full of dry anthrax in an envelope shut down the United States Senate in the fall of 2001. This forced several hundred people to undergo emergency medical treatment and killed two postal workers just from an amount just about this quantity that was inside of an envelope,” Powell said.
• “Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters. If concentrated into this dry form, this amount would be enough to fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons..”
• By the end of the following month, the invasion of Iraq was underway.

The anthrax attacks “made it possible

to manufacture the argument that there was WMD in Iraq

and links to Al-Qaeda,” Rep. Rush Holt said.

• And long after any links between Iraq and the killer spores were disproven, the Bush administration used the mystery surrounding the anthrax mailer to press its case for war.
• a few government officials (most notably, Sen. John McCain) publicly suggested that the Saddam Hussein regime may have been behind the anthrax letters.

read the entire article at … http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/did-the-anthrax-attacks-kickstart-the-iraq-war/#

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LMW COMMENT …

• I have long thought that the anthrax attacks, the invasion of Iraq, and the failed FBI investigation of the anthrax attacks … may in fact be linked.
• Like my characters in the excerpts from my novel CASE CLOSED, written in 2008 … the DOJ/FBI press conference sounded so implausible that it started me thinking about what might have happened.
• I am not making any accusations. My novel is fiction.
• But I do believe it is a possibility worth investigation, because it explains the otherwise inexplicable failure of the FBI to solve a case that should have been solved and then subsequently accusing Dr. Bruce Ivins without any of the evidence that would have been needed to convict him, had he been alive to defend himself.

Here are extracts from my novel CASE CLOSED

regarding the potential linkage of “Saddam’s anthrax”

to the invasion of Iraq

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… “After the nationwide panic caused by the anthrax mailings settled down, pretty much nothing happens in the FBI’s anthrax investigation. The next we hear about anthrax is in February 2003, when Secretary of State Abner Grant goes to the United Nations and holds up a vial of something – it wasn’t actually anthrax – claiming that Saddam can deliver weapons of mass destruction to the eastern seaboard of the U.S.

… Of course, we learn later that Saddam had neither WMD nor any way to reach our shores.

… U.N. arms inspector Blix said something much like that a few days before we invaded Iraq.

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… “What do we know so far?” Hamilton began, ticking off the points on the fingers of his large hand. “One, the FBI took seven years and never proved who prepared and sent the anthrax letters. Two, the President wanted to invade Iraq and was seeking justification. Three, the threat of anthrax from Iraq was used to justify the invasion.

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… “The very best police force in the land is assigned to track down the person or persons who prepared and mailed the lethal envelopes. But even before any evidence is obtained, the great leader announces the desired result – there may be some possible link to Saddam, he says; I wouldn’t put it past him.

“The great vice-leader also chimes in, saying that Saddam had henchmen who were trained how to deploy and use these kinds of substances, so you start to piece it all together.

“I would ask you to note that these instantaneous, unsupported allegations are directed at Saddam; Osama, who sent the planes, is not mentioned.

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… “Time passes. A truly massive investigation is put into ponderous motion by the greatest police force in the land. Although some think there are only a few real suspects who should be investigated, namely those people with the means and the access to actually prepare and send the anthrax laced letters, the best police force in the land looks everyplace but where these suspects are known to be. Not surprisingly, no arrests are made.

“Now why would the best police force in the land look in all the wrong places? You can answer, Aryeh.”

Kauffman answered with a question. “Because they don’t want to solve the crime?”

“Right!” Hamilton said. “At least not until the unsolved anthrax attack can be used to support an invasion of the country still ruled by Saddam. The case for invasion is made from many factors, with WMD first among them; anthrax is prominently mentioned among the supposed weapons of mass destruction. Why, the great and respected Secretary of State even goes to the U.N. and waves what looks like a vial of anthrax, scaring the shit out of everybody.

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… “You can’t prove that the FBI didn’t want to solve the case,” Kauffman said.

“Not yet,” Hamilton said.

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… Marilyn Sowickey spoke first. “So you think the anthrax letters were a purposeful part of the President’s deception to justify the invasion of Iraq, that he intimidated the FBI so they didn’t solve the anthrax case, and that Dr. Ingram was subsequently murdered by our government in order to finally close the case when it no longer suited the President’s need to keep it open.”

“I’m not saying that’s what did happen,” Hamilton said. “I’m suggesting it could have happened, that it’s a hypothesis worth investigating.”

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* buy CASE CLOSED at amazon *

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* If it had become known that the Administration had allowed this infiltration — the Bush Administration would never have won a second term

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The New York Times says the FBI’s anthrax case has “too many loose ends.” Find out where some of those looses ends might have originated in my novel CASE CLOSED. Sure it’s fiction, but many readers, including a highly respected member of the U.S. Intelligence Community, think my premise is actually “quite plausible.”

* buy CASE CLOSED at amazon *

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Al-Timini, Bailey, Card ... Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld

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from DXer’s comment …

• Al-Timimi had been Andrew Card’s assistant.
• He had a letter of commendation from the White House for classified work for the Navy while at the contractor SRA at the same time as Battelle consultant Charles Bailey (the former deputy USAMRIID Commander who turned prolific co-author of Ames research).
• If it had become known that the Administration had allowed this infiltration — the Bush Administration would never have won a second term.
• Al-Timimi’s dad worked at the Iraqi embassy in Washington.

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* lie about Iraq, lie about torture, lie about illegal surveillance, withhold plans which Congress is entitled to know … withhold the truth about the anthrax attacks? … it’s all in the same Bush-Cheney basket for which they must be held accountable

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why did the FBI fail to solve the 2001 anthrax case?

CASE CLOSED offers a “fictional” answer

* buy CASE CLOSED

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lie about Iraq, lie about torture, lie about illegal surveillance, withhold plans which Congress is entitled to know

… withhold the truth about the anthrax attacks?

… it’s all in the same Bush-Cheney basket for which they must be held accountable

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Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane write in the NYT (7-14-09) …

• Since 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency has developed plans to dispatch small teams overseas to kill senior Qaeda terrorists, according to current and former government officials.
• Mr. Panetta scuttled the program, which would have relied on paramilitary teams, shortly after the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center recently informed him of its existence.
• The next day, June 24, he told the two Congressional Intelligence Committees that the plan had been hidden from lawmakers, initially at the instruction of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
• Congressional Democrats were furious that the program had not been shared with the committees.
• The Bush administration took the position that killing members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that has attacked the United States and stated that its goal is to attack again, is no different than shooting enemy soldiers on the battlefield.
• The Obama administration, which has continued to fire missiles from Predator drones on suspected Qaeda members in Pakistan, has taken the same view.

Read the entire article at … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/us/14intel.html?_r=1&hp

LMW COMMENT …

The issue here is not that the U.S. had a plan to find and kill Al Qaeda leaders. Shame on us if we didn’t do everything possible to eliminate those who attacked us and will try to do so again.

The issue is that we are a nation of laws, and we must act in accordance with those laws.

If the laws are counter-productive or overly restrictive, then we should change the laws. But we should never permit an administration to simply act as if the laws did not exist. That is the path to dictatorship; that is the path of a Bush-Cheney administration that had no sense of the restraints which are central to our form of government and our Constitution.

Who can doubt that the Bush-Cheney administration …

• which lied about the reasons to go to its war of choice in Iraq,
• which lied about its illegal surveillance of American citizens
• which lied about torturing prisoners in violation of our own and international laws,
• and which willfully withheld information from Congress in contradiction to laws they chose to ignore,

… would not also restrain the FBI in its investigation of the anthrax case.

When the FBI presents a conclusion that Dr. Bruce Ivins was the sole perpetrator of the anthrax attacks, a conclusion that cannot be supported on the facts of the case, even those limited facts which are so far known, then one must look to the reasons for such a blatant misrepresentation by the FBI, which had to know better.

I invented one such scenario in my novel CASE CLOSED, and I suspect that the truth, if ever known, will incorporate some of the concepts I developed in my novel, if not many of the details.