You know what's so hilarious about the accusations of "pack trolling" and "sock-puppets" and innuendos (they might be insinuations, but let's be flexible) is this: First they make the most appalling accusations, and claim that the entire content of a posters letters is a game to frustrate and anger them, and a co-ordinated effort to destroy the website is in progress!

Than they get over it. Yup, just drop it, and go on corresponding with the same people they just declared not to exist! Until something sets them off, and then the accusations fly again.

If you have an issue with a poster, and think their posts fit the description in the letters page, you should show enough consideration for Salon to write the Editors at the e-mail address on the page. I sort of doubt they do that.

Please don't talk bad about me to the Editors, though. I've got enough problems, really.

We all know that therapist = the rapist, but hang down your head, Tom's sister couldn't be one of those because the kappa kappa gamelans are all still dewy-pantied virgins (after 27 years).

That's where "theripist" comes in. Because the gov't treatment of this whole matter is the "ripist" pile of BS I have read in a long time. This is similar to 3 day-old fish (LWM), but I believe Timberman took all of those with him.

Did Ivins do it, and did he act alone if he did? In reviewing not only the media accounts of the FBI release and press conference and also the commentaries of those diligently flyspecking the “materials” as well as the generalized criticisms, I’m struck by a couple of things.

First, there does seem to be a bunch of individually circumstantial “evidence”, each item of which is subject to scrutiny and even criticism. I’m less impressed by the weight of the criticisms that “the FBI has screwed this kind of thing up before/ what took them so long (and the ironic converse, why did they rush to publicized their findings here)/ they’re only telling us what they want us to hear” than I am impressed by how, well, grasping I find some of the individualized criticisms/scrutinizes I am hearing.

That Ivins may have been something of a closet psycho – to use a term way loosely – does not seem as unlikely to me as it apparently seems to many. This guy was very smart and he chose to enter a profession working with scary, scary bio-shit, both developing it and developing “cures” to defend against it. The mindset there would have to be more than a little bit susceptible to pretty complex stresses and/or neuroses, since your whole existence is subject to isolation, secrecy and the pervasive presence of stuff that could kill you and lots of others, without even being seen. Delusions of grandeur? “The fools! All I’d have to do is spill one small vial in a WalMart…” “They could never understand the power and the importance of what I do…” And on a daily basis. So, yeah, might he snap? Isn’t it a little amazing that there aren’t more stories of guys like this snapping more often? Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove?

That others who knew him well think he would not be likely to do something like this? Well, if they all thought otherwise he would have been out of a job more than a little while back, no? Isn’t the “seemed like a nice guy neighbor interview” all too common after somebody gets arrested for a grisly crime? Not to say these people aren’t right in Irvins’ case, but does a friend or neighbor’s incredulity necessarily undercut other circumstantial evidence?

So while I certainly don’t rule out the possibilities surrounding “it wasn’t him”, let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the FBI really thinks they’ve got the one and only guy. Where does that leave us if they’re correct? Believing that terrorists couldn’t pull this kind of thing off? Confident that US officials didn’t manipulate public opinion toward war based upon knowingly false characterizations of known facts or diversionary mis-direction and dilatory, motive-driven wild goose chases? Relieved to learn we are being protected throughout the chain of bio-weapons research and through competent police work? None of the above, it seems to me.

The arguably best thing I see in all of this is that the Bush Administration did not “rendish” this guy as a “citizen enemy combatant.” But I see no reason to be happy about that because I think it is far more likely the Bush Administration itself hasn’t given a rat’s ass about paying attention to the “anthrax problem” since they were told the source appeared domestic, they already had reaped all the mileage toward war with Iraq they needed and, what the heck, memories of anthrax only served to feed the fear frenzy that has been so adroitly manipulated to serve the Bush evisceration of our civil liberties and the Constitution. The Bush Administration has no actual use for a resolution to the anthrax attacks that doesn’t further a fear of Islamic Terror doctrine.

The vindication I really want to see now – even as the public analysis of the FBI’s media conviction of Ivins is continued – is the revelation of the real story of the Bush Administration’s use of the anthrax incident to fuel the Iraq war. The bentonite “link” (Ross’s haughty interview about this was appalling and cannot be allow to pass unnoticed), the numerous public references to Iraq (even McCain on Letterman at the time), tied into Suskind’s disclosures, Libby’s connection to bio-tech even as he and the White House lied about involvement in outing Plame, the list is too long to allow “continuing investigation” to be erected as a “can’t go there” bar to the anthrax situation.

And let’s impeach that bastard before the Pakistanis can impeach Musharref.

Please stop telling people that they shouldn't go look at anything by certain posters (e.g. Fanzone). But if you have anything to comment about the facts in the article I linked to, please post it. Hint: Read the article first. I'll put the link in my sig just for you, one more time.

Hey, bud. I never told you not to read and particular poster's comments. I will tell you that where Cargo Cult denigrated Ed Lake's work based on theoretical bias (Lake's theory conflicts with Cargo Cult's) no credible researcher in this field or out will do anything but smirk when you mention Dr. Horowitz.

Those are just the facts. Charlie Manson thought he was a prophet, too. Dr. Horowitz is just another LA con artist, like Charlie. He may fool the airheads in Hollywood, like Madonna, (That's not legit Kabbalah, honey and they sell water too, so does the Catholic Church) but if you want people to laugh at you, rather than with you, be my guest.