QUOTE (Glenn Greenwald)

Within less than 24 hours, we went from "a New Jersey mailbox used to send the anthrax was less than 100 yards away from a sorority for which Ivins harbored an intense life-long obsession" to "the mailbox was near a storage closet used by a sorority that Ivins used to frequent 27 years ago and by a specific chapter that Ivins appeared to have absolutely nothing to do with."

END QUOTE

This is what I don't understand: why would the FBI expose itself to the ridicule, derision and wrath that are clearly gathering against them in this case? I have trouble believing that the FBI is this incompetent and stupid. Keeping in mind that the FBI was "beaten up" by Bush and Cheney to lay blame for the 9/11 anthrax attacks on Saddam Hussein and Iraq, it is fair to speculate that Bush and Cheney, or their closest advisers, were behind the rush to make false accusations against Bruce Ivins, with the result of doing irreparable harm to the reputation of the FBI. We need an aggressive Congressional investigation to get to the bottom of this mess, and I am betting that high-level FBI officials can't wait to tell the truth about what really happened and who twisted their arms.

Keith Olbermann had a guest on yesterday who claimed that the woman who had requested the restraining order on Ivins had a history of dui and run ins with the law. She mispelt her occupation, therapist, on the form--she was actually a social worker and the facilitator of a support group in which Ivins was involved, not a mental health professional

See Glenn's column on August 4th, 2008 "Additional key facts re: the anthrax investigation"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/04/anthrax/index.html

That facet is covered in detail, with charts and records.

Linked at sig.

Glenn Greenwald, 2008:

Given everything that has happened over the last seven years -- not just with the anthrax attacks but with countless episodes of Government deceit and corruption -- it's astonishing (and more than a little disturbing) how many people are willing, even eager, to assume that the Government's accusations against Ivins are accurate even without seeing a shred of evidence to support those claims.

Scientific American, June 1958 (via June 2008 issue)

PASSIVE NATION--"Poll after poll among our youngsters has given statistical confirmation of the phenomenon of American life which David Riesman, in his book The Lonely Crowd, named 'other-direction'--extreme sensitivity to the opinions of others, with a concomitant conformity. As a nation we seem to have a syndrome characterized by atrophy of the will, hypertrophy of the ego and dystrophy of the intellectual musculature. This rather unpleasant portrait is an inescapable conclusion from the mass of data on the attitudes of the younger generation. More than half believe that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the local police should be allowed to use wiretapping at will, that the police should be permitted to use the 'third degree,' that people who refuse to testify against themselves should be forced to do so."

Our slide towards authoritarianism has old roots. The chickens have come home to roost.

I like reading a number of your posts. But you do seem to try to goad on a few here.

Do we really need to now see all the links that your post will now generate to try and show why their views are legit?

Next up, you'll have to gratuitously bash Ron Paul and get a few others all riled up and ready to take you to task.

Come on, take this fight back to the last few threads where it already took over.

My two cents and my last comment on this.

It is also possible that the leaks--released for good or ill, info or disinfo--are themselves spun by media to generate more sensation and create hot front page stories.

I can't help feeling that way a lot, too. They're so eager to advance the narrative, they probably don't need a whole lot of pushing or show much skepticism

"Who gave you this scoop"

"Oh, the night-time janitor at the lab"

"The janitor?"

"Yes, but he's a government janitor"

"And sort of a scientist, if you think about it!"

The story needs ivestigating for the obvious reasons that Glenn has been writing about, but it also needs investigating because unanswered questions are going to generate suspicion and conspiracy which will undermine people's confidence in democratic government.

Hell, the post I just wrote about this sounds conspiratorial even though that was not my intention.

http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/08/slam-dunk-case-for-impeachment.html

When it comes to finding out how it came to be that domestic anthrax attacks - mailed to "liberal" figures - which originated from a military lab were used to help sell an invasion of Iraq despite those anthrax letters having nothing to do with Iraq; and when it comes to investigating whether or not the White House attempted to retroactively fabricate evidence linking al Qaeda and Iraq - is it possible that as a nation we might take an interest in such matters that is equal to, at least, that which we take in Britney Spears or the children of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt?

The anthrax letters thing is just disturbing that we still don't know what happened. And this is in relation to an event that hints at the possibility that it wouldn't be all that difficult to generate our own Reichstag fire like event, especially since we've already got a lower threshold for the abrogation of the rule of law than the Weimar Republic did.

Take note: I am not implying any sort of conspiracy, I am merely pointing out what is obvious from the above stories - if such an event as the anthrax attacks (which were taken advantage of to garner public approval for a war with a country that had nothing to do with the anthrax) or the Suskind charge of retroactive intelligence fabrication can occur without the press, Congress, and the public bothering to get to the bottom of it; then it is possible that such events can be utilized towards achieving undemocratic ends.

The "lower threshold ..." bit links to this

http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2007/05/president-bush-thinks-of-another-way-to.html