Glenn nails it succinctly. Is the FBI the only part of government which is doing its job?

Does anyone know if it's standard procedure for the DOJ or FBI to tip off someone that they are about to be prosecuted? I just can't see an FBI agent saying hey we are about to charge you for with murder, don't you go no where now. It doesn't make much sense if they do.

I'd like to know the answer to this, too.

-- Glenn Greenwald

Mr. Ivins had been a suspect from sometime in 2002. He had been repeatedly questioned. FBI director Mueller very recently had hinted that the case was nearly ready.

The innocent until proven guilty suspect may have been able to see the writing on the wall.

BTW, Dick Cheney worked one Summer during college loading and unloading bags of ... Bentonite. No kidding.

Of course Iraq was a direct and extremely menacing threat to USA and all Americans. Just like Cuba has been since 1959. Like Iran has been since 1979. Or continue with post WW2 list that would include Russia,China,Korea,Vietnam,different South and Central America lands and peoples,Afghanistan and Arab Palestine.

In recent days the Pentagon declared American war of terror on terror must go on for many more years to come. Americans have gone over now since post WW2 to War on Global Red Menace which once ended was to yeild a "peace dividend" for long and deeply taxing post WW2 American militarism.

The "peace dividend" that never came to be.

Americans have been stampeded before. "Remember the Maine!" an earlier example of being put to stampede.

Since end of WW2 Americans picked up in parts of the world where British Empire had become unable to finance or man imperial designs and hegemony.

Iraq came to know American meddling early on post WW2.

Iraq in 2003 surely posed no genuine threat to USA in any economic,military or political ways. Suggesting that Iraq was just such a threat a simple big lie run up the pole by WashingtonDC to set Americans up for American attack on Iraq.

This anthrax "mystery" surely is no more "mysterious" than claims coming out of WashingtonDC in 2002 going into 2003 that Iraq was a "big threat" to USA and Americans.

Known truths and facts history of last 7 years validate over and over that WashingtonDC big lies were fully based on need to get Iraq lined up for American military attack and occupation and follow-up political/economic hegemony.

ABC surely was just one more tool used by some people in WashingtonDC who needed to frame and shape American "valid" attack on a "known menace" Iraq and weave it into post 9/11 WashingtonDC schemes and plays.

Anyone in Congress or U.S.Senate(DC DEMs?)could go after ABC to find out more about where 'Iraqi bentonite' storylines and threads were coming from.

Of course the DC DEMs were to busy bending over as the useless opposition party in WashingtonDC(still are) to do so.

As with so much of what transpired in the lead up to American invasion and occupation of Iraq from early 2002(or was it 2001?) the truth,facts and main culprits remain at large far too often and conveniently in this early 21st century.

So much of what WashingtonDC has done since end of WW2 fails to pass any cursory smell tests. But WashingtonDC conduct in post 9/11 era surely is corrupted more deeply still.

...with an faux-Iraqi-weapons connection lurking in the background.

Anyone remember Dr. David Kelly?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-488667/Why-I-know-weapons-expert-Dr-David-Kelly-murdered-MP-spent-year-investigating-death.html

Where does one draw the line? We accept that the U.S. government put pressure on telecom companies to break the law and conduct illegal activity against U.S. citizens. And we accept that both the U.S. and U.K. governments "ginned up" the case against Iraq, ultimately resulting in hundreds of thousands of needless deaths.

But somewhere in-between we draw a line across which our suspicions are labeled as a "crazy conspiracy theory".

Keep trotting out the same two media reports and some of the rights nuttier bloggers. Very hard hitting. Again, if that's all you read you deserve to be scared.

The fact that Iraq was tagged as the probable culprit is no surprise if, again, you actually pay attention. Bushco was talking hard about Iraq regieme change BEFORE 9/11.

The fact that the Iraq connection quickly went nowhere speaks volumes. I don't know for sure Ivins did it but I'd be willing to put hard cash on it.

Hear are your words from this blog today:

"The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential."

Let's repeat: "One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential."

Start back pedaling.

Keep trotting out the same two media reports and some of the rights nuttier bloggers.

The WSJ Editorial Page and the Weekly Standard are probably the two most influential conservative news outlets in the country. Michael Barone of U.S. News and World Report and Fox News is a highly admired analyst on the Right. They all continued to insist that anthrax was the work of a Middle East country or organization. The fact that you're eager to dismiss them as "nutty bloggers" is understandable, but that isn't how they're treated on the Right.

Let's repeat: "One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential."

If you concentrate hard on the difference between comparing how consequential something is to the "devastation" it wreaks, I'm certain that you can figure it out on your own.

You wrote: No one, except Glenn, thinks the anthrax attacks approach the devastation of 911.

Glenn wrote: One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters -- with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 -- that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after.

Glenn is obviously referring to the anthrax scare as being consequential in formenting the fear that gripped the country after 9/11, not the destructive impact of the attacks. You are bending his words in the least creative and most obvious way imaginable. Good try though. No wait, it wasn't.