from OurFuture.org:
The question of right-wing terrorism: anthraxBy Rick Perlstein
August 1st, 2008 - 7:27pm ET
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Glenn Greenwald has put together a must-read account of how panic over the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, and disinformation claiming Saddam Hussein was probably behind them, convinced various members of the media and political elite to get behind the idea of attacking Iraq. His research follows reports that government scientist Bruce E. Ivins committed suicide Tuesday night because he was about to be charged with staging the attacks. Greenwald writes with scrupulous care, and asserts nothing beyond the known facts—but one of those known facts, and Greenwald bottom line, is that ABC News has it within its power to help clear up the mystery, and refuses to do so.
Here's what interested me personally about Greenwald's post (which, really, every American should read): if it was Bruce Ivins who truly bears responsibility, any determination of what his motive might have been will have to consider the strange letters to the editor he wrote to his local paper:
Today we frequently admonish people who oppose abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide or capital punishment to keep their religious, moral, and philosophical beliefs to themselves.
Before dispensing such admonishments in the future, perhaps we should gratefully consider some of our country's most courageous, historical figures who refused to do so.
I read Deborah Carter's column of Nov. 7, "Election blues," and I have three comments for the good woman, and for everybody else, as well.
First, it's clear that views like hers would put Jesus on that cross again. Second, thy loom and churn best be still, come the Sabbath. Third, you can get on board or get left behind, because that Christian Nation Express is pulling out of the station
Rabbi Morris Kosman is entirely correct in summarily rejecting the demands of the Frederick Imam for a "dialogue."
By blood and faith, Jews are God's chosen, and have no need for "dialogue" with any gentile. End of "dialogue."
This guy was no down-the-line conservative ("The Roman Catholic Church should learn from other equally worthy Christian denominations and eagerly welcome female clergy as well as married clergy," he writes in March of 2002), but I hope I don't exaggerate in claiming a decidedly wingnutty tilt to his thinking. If this is the same guy who composed the note framing jihadists for the anthrax attacks ("This is next/Take Penacilin Now/Death To America/Death To Israel/Allah is great"); and, as Greenwald seems to suspect, and if he was the same guy who misled ABC into reporting the presence in the anthrax of a substance that only Iraq had used to create biological weapons, what we may have on our hands here is an American ginning up a causis belli for a Christian jihad against Islam, and killing fellow Americans to do it.
This is very, very heavy stuff. If any of this turns out to be the case, I will, again, take no pleasure in the vindication.
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008083101/question-right-wing-terrorism-anthrax