IronLionZion wrote:gungasnake wrote:Setanta wrote:Gunga Din admits of no correction . . . it would not matter to him if one could demonstrate that every single detail of his latest, hysterical, hate-motivated partisan rant were completely false--after all, his object is sneering slander, not truth.
Hate???
EVERYBODY should hate the idea of being forced to waste money.....
Interesting. What about the hundreds of billions of dollars we waste on a war in Iraq, a country with no WMDs and connections to terrorism that are tenuous at best?
Let me guess: that doesn't count, right?
No need to guess: I'll break it straight down for you.
It does not take hundreds of tons of anthrax spores to create havoc. The sum total which was used was a few teaspoons full. In other words, a lifetime supply of that sort of thing for a guy like Saddam Hussein could easily amount to a hundred pounds worth, and I guarantee that I could hide that in a country the size of Iraq so that it would not be found.
The question of whether or not Hussein had 1000 tons of anthrax powder is simply the wrong question. The right questions are, did the guy have the motive, the technical resources, the financial wherewithal, the facilities, and the intel apparatus to play that sort of game, and the answers to all of those questions are obvious.
The first case of anthrax after 9-11 (Bob Stevens) showed up within miles of where several hijackers stayed JUST BEFORE 9/11, a very unlikely coincidence considering that they could have stayed anywhere in the country.
The last previous case of anthrax in a human in the United States prior to 9-11 had been about 30 years prior to that.
There are other coincidences. For instance, the wife of the editor of the sun (where Stevens worked) also had contact with the hijackers in that she rented them the place they stayed.
Atta and the hijackers flew planes out of an airport in the vicinity and asked about crop dusters on more than one occasion. Indeed, Atta sought a loan to try and modify a crop duster.
Atta and several of the hijackers in this group also sought medical aid just prior to 9/11 for skin lesions that the doctors who saw them now say looked like anthrax lesions.
Basically, you either believe in the laws of probability or you don't. Anybody claiming that all these things were coincidences is either totally in denial or does not believe in modern mathematics and probability theory.
While the anthrax in question originally came from a US strain, it isn't too surprising that Iraq might have that strain since that strain was mailed to laboratories around the world years earlier.
http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2004/01/01.html
Nonetheless, it was highly sophisticated, and went through envelope paper as if it weren't even there; many thought it to be not only beyond the capabilities of Hussein but of anybody else on the planet as well including us. Nonetheless, later information showed Husseins programs to be capable of such feats:
Basically, the anthrax attack which followed 9/11 had Saddam Hussein's fingerprints all over it. It was particalized so finely it went right through envelop paper and yet was not weaponized (not hardened against antibiotics). It was basically a warning, saying as much as:
Quote:
"Hey, fools, some of my friends just knocked your two towers down and if you try to do anything about it, this is what could happen. F*** you, and have a nice day!!"
There is no way an American who had had anything to do with that would not be behind bars by now. In fact the one American they originally suspected told investigators that if he'd had anything to do with that stuff, he would either have anthrax or have the antibodies from the preventive medicine in his blood and offered to take a blood test on the spot. That of course was unanswerable.
The basic American notion of a presumption of innocence is not meaningful or useful in cases like that of Saddam Hussein. Even the Japanese had the decency to have their own markings on their aircraft at Pearl Harbor; Nobody had to guess who did it. Saddam Hussein, on the other hand, is like the kid in school who was always standing around snickering when things went bad, but who could never be shown to have had a hand in anything directly. At some point, guys would start to kick that guy's ass periodically on general principles. Likewise, in the case of Saddam Hussein, the reasonable assumption is that he's guilty unless he somehow or other manages to prove himself innocent and, obviously, that did not happen.
At the time, the US military was in such disarray from the eight years of the Clinton regime that there was nothing we could do about it. Even such basic items as machinegun barrels, which we should have warehouses full of, were simply not there. Nonetheless, nobody should think they would get away with such a thing and, apparently, Hussein and his baathists didn't.
Bob Woodward's book "Bush at War" documents some of this:
Quote:
'Cheney?s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, quickly questions the wisdom of mentioning state sponsorship. Tenet, sensitive to the politics of Capitol Hill and the news media, terminates any discussion of state sponsorship
with the clear statement:
Quote:"I'm not going to talk about a state sponsor."
'Vice President Cheney further drives the point home:
Quote:
"It's good that we don't, because we're not ready to do anything about it."</blockquote>
Even simple things like body armor, ammunition, and machinegun barrels which we should have warehouses full of simply weren't there, i.e. they'd been sold off at 40 cents on the dollar for DNC money. A friend of mine called up one of the nation's premier barrel makers about a barrel for a target rifle in early 02 and was told that they were working
24/7 making machinegun barrels and didn't have time for any sort of civilian firearm business.
Now, a president in W's position taking over after the 8 years of total mismanagement and abuse of this perverted Klintler administration had about two choices after 9/11: He could do what he actually did, or he could do what many Americans probably have done, which would be to nuke Mecca, Medina, Rihyad, Falluja, and every other den of slammite
terrorism on the planet and ban the practice of I-slam throughout the world.
A reasonable person would probably like to at least try what W. has first.