President Bush has received his smallpox innoculation today. While it’s nice that he’s doing this out of a sense of real leadership, one also wonders what specific threats have been received that warrant this kind of action…
Bush Gets Protected
Published
Maybe Bush has intelligence on Small Pox threats because they, the threats, emanate from within his own criminal administration.
It wouldn’t be the first time a government created or manipulated a threat to promote its agenda and strengthen its hand. Does anyone remember the ‘strategy of tension’ events in Italy in which the CIA and the Italian establishment Right concocted fake, but nevertheless bloody, terrorist attacks to justify a clamp down on the Left there? They actually initiated or greenlighted the killing of innocent civilians in Italy to pursue their goal. In that case it was the Red Brigades that were created and/or used to do the dirty work.
Also consider the recent accusations that the Israelis use inflitrators in Hamas and other groups – not to derail terrorist attacks but to launch them – in pursuit of its murderous agenda.
In Italy it was the left that suffered immediately from Rightist violence and manipulation, but it was Italian liberty that suffered finally. Here it is muslims who are targeted for “registration”. It takes a real stupid smartass “conservative” not to see the threats posed to liberty by Bush’s wars, literal and figurative.
Let’s assume you’re right for a moment and say that the Bush Administration wanted to use some threat to national security to instantiate support for an invasion of Iraq.
Why bother with vague threats of smallpox? In fact, if I were in the position of crafting such a conspiracy I’d be on national TV making the announcement that the anthrax attacks of last year had been linked to Iraq. (Which, to be honest, is something that seems quite likely.) There, you have a clear attack on American soil, with no need to bother with smallpox or anything else. Instant justifcation for war, with little effort needed.
But that’s not what’s going on here. I have the feeling that it’s quite the opposite. The Bush Administration isn’t rolling out the vaccines for nothing – there is some very credible threat out there. (My guess is that we know that the Iraqis have the Aralsk strain of weaponized smallpox from the Russians.) Yet the public health response is being made in such a way as to not cause panic. Not exactly the way to go about it if you want to turn America into a police state.
I suggest you start applying Occam’s Razor before spouting wild theories about the Bush Administration. If they really wanted to turn America into a police state, there’s a hell of a lot of better ways to do it than the current policies of the Bush Administration.
I wasn’t “spouting”, I was stating. And they aren’t “wild” theories, they’re rather tame from gaining such wide (and deserved) currency. So “spouting” and “wild” are your spin. You could call this site Jay’s Spin Zone! My point, which I did not spell out, was not that the small pox story represents some sort of propagandists’ magic bullet, but that it goes well with the long curve of Bush Admininstration terror against the public mind.
I think the Bush Administration have done a savvy job of pushing the country in the direction of a police state – more so than any adminstration since, well, Reagan’s. But then this administration is crawling with crooks and slimeballs from that administration, so I guess it follows.
I notice that when a “wild” conspiracy theory fits the propaganda straight-jacket of the moment, painting the designated enemy in the prescribed negative light, namely the Iraq-did-the-anthrax angle, you state it, or “spout” it with great ease. You don’t even bother to present an argument, much less evidence, that it is true. It fits the propaganda, so it MUST be true, right?
Well, here are some links that might poke a hole in your Iraq-did-it spin:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ARCHIVE/ctnow_com%20SPECIALS.htm
and
http://aztlan.net/zack.htm
and, very importantly
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=134396
All of it together points nowhere near Iraq. Tough break for you guys, huh?
Except the Washington Post reported much more recently
that none of those theories is considered likely. In fact, given the qualities of the anthrax used in the attacks, the only certainty is that it was weaponized to a degree that would require significant amount of time and equipment. No single person working alone could have created it. In fact, the degree of weaponization is so fine that it’s believed that not even the Russians could have created it. (The particles were so well designed that they managed to climb up the walls of a test tube and gather under the lid – something that astonished the USAMRIID scientists who were studying it.)
The only evidence that supposedly disproved an Iraq connection was that the dispersal agent used was silica rather than bentonite. However, the only evidence that the Iraqis used bentonite came from one sample, and there is ample evidence that the Iraq’s had used silica as a dispersal agent in biological weapons before. Granted, it is no smoking gun, but it is a hell of a lot more plausible to believe that Iraq created that anthrax than some disaffected American scientist working in his backyard.
Nice try.
“In fact, given the qualities of the anthrax used in the attacks, the only certainty is that it was weaponized to a degree that would require significant amount of time and equipment.”
And this points to the Iraqis more so than it points to Western agents?
“No single person working alone could have created it.”
I agree. I think the FBI assumption, though we can hardly be sure they were/are showing us all their cards or their full intent, that it was a ‘lone nut’ was silly, a sort of silliness that would be easy to back out of. More likely is the notion that it was this Zack guy with the assistance of others in the intelligence community and military. That the FBI wouldn’t tackle this angle is hardly a refutation of it. Note also that the FBI’s lone-nut theory continues to focus on Hatfill while ignoring Zack, a man caught entering a secure facility (with whose help?) even though he no longer worked there.
“In fact, the degree of weaponization is so fine that it’s believed that not even the Russians could have created it.”
And the Iraqis could have? More and more does it then point to the West.
“The only evidence that supposedly disproved an Iraq connection was that the dispersal agent used was silica rather than bentonite. However, the only evidence that the Iraqis used bentonite came from one sample, and there is ample evidence that the Iraq’s had used silica as a dispersal agent in biological weapons before.”
So some evidence points in both directions. Yet, unlike the notion that it was the Iraqis, the notion that it was some section of the US intelligence community (not merely a “disgruntled scientist”), has the advantage of having a person CAUGHT entering a secure anthrax facility at least once.
“Granted, it is no smoking gun…”
To say the least.
“…but it is a hell of a lot more plausible to believe that Iraq created that anthrax than some disaffected American scientist working in his backyard.”
Yes, it is more plausible, which is why the latter is posed as the alternative to it. The latter is ridiculous, making your unproven version seem reasonable in comparison. Even if it was a “disaffected American scientist” of course he did not do it in his backyard. He did it in a secure, advanced facility, like the one Lt. Col. Phillip Zack was observed entering after he no longer worked there.
Another link:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j032902.html