Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
All of this leads me to meditate on the many tv shows that obsess over the benevolent prowess of our police state: CIA, FBI, Homicide Unit, beat cops, secret agent men, mathematicians, statisticians and, of course, the forensics unit. All of these shows telegraph a singular message. We are in charge and we will find and prosecute the guilty party, even if we have to discover the truth from a single, solitary strand of hair left on a candy wrapper in an abandoned parking lot. We are just that good! But not to worry. We don't beat suspects unless they are actually guilty. And we don't force false confessions unless they have it coming.
Americans have a hard-on for "benevolent" authority. You read stories like that of Bruce Ivins and you realize just how far from reality these tv shows are. Meanwhile a crime lab in Houston, Texas, is found to be so overwhelmingly corrupt that it has to be shut down, all the evidence has to be tossed and court cases going back over a decade have to be reassessed. So much for benevolence.
We should ask ourselves just what it is that we are doing in this country. Our penal system is a full-blown industry! From the law enforcement officers, to the defense attorneys and attending bureaucracy, to the massive prison industrial complex. All this time we could have been funding education and instead we're getting tough on crime in a way that has done nothing to stop it. The drug war has ruined lives and destroyed families.
The reason why nobody blinks an eye at the case of Ivins is because they have been taught through ritualistic story telling that the FBI and their law enforcement brethren always do things for a good reason. The FBI wouldn't have pursued him if they didn't have actual evidence of guilt. All you have to do is imagine some street-hardened, wise cracking FBI agent with a strong gut feeling to calm your doubts.
A terrorist is not a high-clearance military research scientist.
If a terrorist is not middle eastern and has to be an American, then it has to be a drug or alcohol-abusing, sex-crazed psychopath.
The story, at its simplest: an American-sourced bioweapon was unleashed by an American, possibly one working at a supposedly secure military bioweapons facility, contributing to the genesis of the so-called "war" on "terror".
Doesn't really play into the epic war of civilization crap, does it? We have found the existential threat - and he is us.
We should remember though, that a DUI conviction or two delegitimizes that other woman as a credible witness.
"borrowed from a bioweapons lab that fall freeze-drying equipment that allows scientists to quickly convert wet germ cultures into dry spores" and that "the drying device, known as a lyopholizer, could help investigators explain how he might have been able to send letters containing deadly anthrax spores to U.S. senators and news organizations." The article further claims that "the device was not commonly used by researchers at the Army's sprawling biodefense complex at Fort Detrick, Md."
The phrase quickly convert wet germ cultures into dry spores is absolutely false. The wet germ cultures contains multiple components, the feeder cells to the anthrax bacilli, the anthrax bacilli, and the anthrax spores. These components must be separated with large centrifuges, which are not mentioned. The isolated spores would would have to be dried and milled. All of this would have to have been done in a "Level 3" containment facility. It could not have been done in a normal home.
Was his wife and family inoculated against anthrax as Ivins presumably was? If Ivins made anthrax at home, everyone around who was not inoculated would have been susceptible to infection.
... as a creepy, porn-loving drunk suggests that their actual evidence is far from convincing. (GG)
This is the first thing that our government agencies do; they demonize the intended target. This is especially true when they have nothing on the intended target, as in the Case of Iran and perhaps in the case of Ivins.
We see certain commenters here go for the smear and guilt by rumor or association often; so often that it is SOP with them. I wonder why it is allowed in our federal agencies; or by individuals here.
See what happens when you miss a day? Glenn seems to have been on top of the social worker issue, like I should have wondered even.
However, on the issue of whether there is a tendency to conspiracy theory here: I would counter that this is not nine eleven. The issue is not as emotionally loaded, and the government's own investigation has itself been put on display as a result of its own copious ineptitude. Not one, but two American citizens, in good standing till the day their lives were affected, have suffered while at the same time never having been charged with anything. Whether or not there was a conspiracy of any kind, that kind of performance by our country's national law enforcement body is simpy intolerable. If anything, any investigation should be focused on why and how the FBI so badly bungled the investigation and the individuals that were behind that bungling. As a result of that, I'm sure, many other details would come to light in any case.
By all means, L.W.M., stop reading this blog and go back to more intellectually challenging sites like Free Republic, Little Green Footballs and Atlas Shrugs. Your posts are consistently disruptive and irrelevant to the Greenwald articles under discussion here. You're trolling.
See Hume's Ghost:
imperative need for full accounting of this
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.
You have your baileywick. I have mine. I think you are confusing "bash" with "ridicule".
It is only implied that the scientist officially borrowed the equipment to take home. It is more apparent that he officially borrowed the unit to take from one approved lab, to another in the same area.
Scientist aren't allowed to just move equipment from one lab area to another, and Ivin's didn't.
The leaks so far are designed to be vague but sinister. This is just one more instance of the same.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
