The media narrative is now that U.S. government scientist Bruce Ivins, a prominent anthrax researcher, was a lone nut. He is to be painted a "homicidal maniac" who poisoned the five people killed in the 2001 anthrax attacks. It is also told that he was determined to go on another killing spree at his workplace as the Feds closed in on him.

The Times of London headline says, "Mad Anthrax Scientist in Threat to Kill Co-Workers". As Connie would tell you in "Wag the Dog", it is all over. We have it on TV and in the papers. We have our lone nut.

Americans always act as lone nuts and there never is government involvement or conspiracy --- it is well know that only the Arabs go in for conspiracies. And no, you smart asses, Mossad opps are "government operations" which can not be a "conspiracy" by definition. Ah, well, unless an Islamic government does it.

Are Americans stupid enough to buy the polished line and sinker that is the unfolding legend? Does American Idol get ratings?

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13251

Justin Raimondo

... It seems to me a stretch to divorce motive not only from context, but also from important physical evidence in this case, i.e., the letters themselves. Other equally important evidence has been completely ignored. Over the years, I've presented much of this neglected-albeit-fascinating aspect of the anthrax mystery in a series of columns – here, here, here, here, here, and here – in which I related the story of what happened to another Ft. Detrick scientist, Dr. Ayaad Assaad.

Assaad, an American citizen born in Egypt, worked for USAMRIID in the early 1990s and was involved in a conflict with a group of Ft. Detrick employees who dubbed themselves the "Camel Club." As detailed in a series of eye-popping pieces by Dave Altimari and Jack Dolan of the Hartford Courant, this cabal was engaged in systematic harassment of Assaad and other Arab-American employees at the facility, including putting obscene and racist poems on his desk and presenting him with a rubber camel adorned with a sex toy. The Camel Club's harassment of Assaad had a distinctively ideological edge, one that pre-dated the "invade their countries, bomb their cities, and convert them to Christianity" meme that later became so popular with post-9/11 neocons of a Coulterish stripe ...

The "camel club" sounds like suspects to me. The past articles that Justin wrote over the years have hyper-links in the original for easy navigation to them.

All in all, this article is a wonderful recap by someone who has written about this episode many times. I recommend it. As always with Justin, the article is long and fact-filled.

As often happens, Justin Raimondo gives props to Glenn Greenwald for his analysis and work on the case.

to say things Bushies wanted to hear instead of the facts?

I'm mainly questioning what Duley said in the written statement, about Ivins' history since graduate school. She may have misinterpreted the import of she says what Ivins said to her on July 9. I wasn't there and don't know who was and what they heard.

I'll preface this with an apology: I haven't read the comments on this or the previous post, so any redundancy or duncery is totally mine.

"Many other reporters were mad at me but some commentators rightly pointed out that some values -- the obligation of reporters to their readers -- superseded the reporter-source relationship, and that if you used that relationship as a cover for lying, you broke the implicit contract."

The social contract is being broken at so many points in the chain by the Bush administration that I don't know if it can be repaired. I have no reason to think that the anthrax attacks were perpetrated by an entity OTHER than the Bush administration, given the lengthy and ever-growing list of egregious acts its members have wrought upon the Constitution and country.

In th case of the broken social contract, I'll just note that psychologists, physicians and nurses are being used by the US government as agents of abuse and torture, which undermines the patient relationship. Patients by virtue of the public trust and social contract, place life and death decisions into the hands of licensed professionals, who are in turn, charged with keeping the interest and duty to the patient paramount. This is acontextual and is supposed to occur universally, without regard to age, gender, sexual orientation, occupation, religion, beliefs, culture - without regard to anything except the inherent worth and dignity of the individual and the duty to protect and help the patient, or more larger, society, in the case of public health and welfare.

HHS is actively undermining this with proposed rules to treat contraception as abortion and with mandates that force employers to employ without sanction licensed healthcare providers who refuse to provide treatment based on religious or other personal beliefs (as in the case of refusing to provide an emergency abortion in any circumstance, refusing to provide timely and alternative providers who will provide the appropriate service, refusing to fill prescriptions for contraceptives or emergecy contraception, refusing to vaccinate for HPV, refusing to provide education about and treatment alternatives for contraception other than abstinence only (scientifically unsound) advice, failing to provide adequate HIV/AIDS prevention, etc.

Other examples of the US government breaking the social contract include failing to adequately protect the water, air, ground and food supplies from harmful substances, undermining and distorting science and reporting at the CDC, FDA and OSHA, failing to deal in good faith with air traffic controllers, thus chasing over one third from the FAA workforce and directly endangering the flying public and national security, etc.

I find that the common underlying concept in this story of national security, the failure of journalism and worrisome propaganda being used to manipulate the actions and opinions of the public (and just before a critical national election - no coinicidence on the timing of this "suicide" which I will only refer to as a death since suicide has not been irrefutably determined and migrated from "apparent" to statement of fact in the media reportage without concomitant verification, in my view), is just another example of ripping apart the societal contract in one more place.

Break the chain throughout, and eventually, there is nothing left to put back together. Civil society is irreparably broken and no amount of soldering will ever restore it.

I believe the US is at that point.

Another investigative reporter's take of the antrhax investigation is found on the at-largely blog written by Larisa Alexandrovna. Read the posts around this url:

http://www.atlargely.com/2008/08/a-suggestion-to.html