http://www.truthout.org/article/the-anthrax-attacks-sunlight-is-best-disinfectantMonday 04 August 2008
by: Bill Simpich, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Letter accompanying weapons-grade anthrax in 2001 attacks. (Photo: U.S. Government Archives)
If we've learned anything in the United States during the Bush era, it's that we have to resist rushing to judgment in the face of catastrophic events. The exercise of careful, independent judgment is the best tool available - we should use it. US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who often wrote on the benefits of both privacy and transparency, offered the reminder "sunlight is the best disinfectant."
The impact of the anthrax attacks was at least as damaging to the US as 9/11. The weeks after 9/11 brought the Homeland Security Act and the war in Afghanistan, ostensibly to stop "the bad guys." As shown below, the result of the anthrax attacks was a greatly-toughened Patriot Act and a war in Iraq that destroyed the fabric of life in America as we know it. If 9/11 resulted in Americans suffering from psychic dislocation, the aftermath of the anthrax attacks was the deeply-felt sensation that there was literally no place left to hide anywhere in the United States.