2001 anthrax attack murk

This week Bruce Ivins allegedly committed suicide. If you don't know who he is, you'd be far from alone. Remember the letters containing anthrax that were sent to the US Congress and several prominent journalists in 2001 shortly after 9/11?

After a 7 year investigation the US Justice Department was about to pin the crime on Bruce Ivins. Ivins was a US government scientist who worked in the lab where they stored anthrax. Shortly after Ivins' lawyer was informed of the impending charges, Bruce Ivins was found dead, having consumed a massive dose of Tylenol mixed with codeine.

Running alongside that sad event is the story about the renewed fallout from the 2001 ABC News reports that "four separate sources" had told ABC the anthrax attacks were connected with Iraq. If Bruce Ivins really is the guilty party, then those four sources were clearly lying.

For ABC - and any journalist - the question is: Do you protect sources who lied to you?

One would think if a source lied, you owe them nothing. If anything, the risk of being exposed would be a useful way to keep sources honest. In this case, the people who may have mislead ABC News were using the anthrax attacks to back an agenda for war in Iraq. We should know who these people were. If what they said was true, they may have information about the anthrax attacks that might clear the late Mr. Ivins. if they have no such evidence, then they will stand revealed as liars and should be held to account.

As for Mr. Ivins' guilt or innocence, the FBI seems to feel they had an unbeatable case against him, leaving ABC News' sources in a vulnerable position.

Hopefully....the truth will out. Soon. It's been 7 years already.

Terrorism's other names: "Bush" and "covert ops"

Seymour Hersh reports in the The New Yorker magazine that last year the US Congress authorised US President Bush's $400M dollars for covert operations in Iran aimed at destabilising the country and undermining the current regime.

"scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded."

That may explain why car bombs have started going off in Tehran. This mosque exploding in April, killing 9, was probably just one more covert op directed at regime change.

US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker uses weasel words to deny the report:

However, US ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker on Sunday flatly refuted the allegation in The New Yorker that Washington is conducting cross-border operations from Iraq into Iran.

"I can tell you flatly that US forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran," he told CNN television.

So US soldiers aren't blowing up cars and mosques. The US is funding OTHER people to do it for them.

As with Iraq, President Bush has ignored a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) - the conclusion of diverse US intelligence agencies:

The Bush administration's request for funding came around the same time as the December 2007 release of the National Intelligence Estimate, which said the Iran halted nuclear weapons work in 2003.

US President Bush is obviously a terrorist leading a global web of terrorist organisations. He has admitted as much to the US Congress and they have approved funding for it. He and they should ultimately be treated by the global community as terrorists.

Note that they have not proven any of their claims about a nuclear programme in Iran, just as their claims about iraqi WMD were found to be fabrications. Bush and the US Congress have ignored their own intelligences agencies who advised them there is no Iranian nuclear weapons programme.

Yet they persist, funding bombings in Iran and killing innocent people. If that isn't terrorism, the word has no meaning at all.