British Remember Importance of Anthrax Attacks

Our friends the British have begun an investigation this week into their involvement into the Iraq War, one to which we should pay more close attention.

Glenn Greenwald, for example, reviews testimony yesterday that should remind us of how important the anthrax attacks which followed the September 11, 2001 attacks were to creating the climate of fear in the United States that fed into the Iraq invasion and so many other horrible policies. Yes, those same anthrax attacks so quickly deleted from our collective memory.

Yesterday, the former U.K. Ambassador to the U.S., Sir Christopher Meyer, testified as to the importance of the anthrax attacks, as Greenwald summarizes:

Meyer said attitudes towards Iraq were influenced to an extent not appreciated by him at the time by the anthrax scare in the US soon after 9/11. US senators and others were sent anthrax spores in the post, a crime that led to the death of five people, prompting policymakers to claim links to Saddam Hussein. . . .

On 9/11 Condoleezza Rice, then the US national security adviser, told Meyer she was in "no doubt: it was an al-Qaida operation" . . . It seemed that Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's deputy, argued for retaliation to include Iraq, Meyer said. . . .

But the anthrax scare had "steamed up" policy makers in Bush's administration and helped swing attitudes against Saddam, who the administration believed had been the last person to use anthrax. (emphasis by Greenwald)

As Greenwald then reminds us, the anthrax attacks remain "unresolved and uninvestigated." How the hell is that acceptable given how important they were? He reviews, with links, all of the sources that have serious questions for about the FBI's conclusion to this case.

I simply do not understand how we have left the anthrax attacks unresolved and wiped from our collective memory. They directly impacted more people than the September 11 attacks. They created more fear. (To this day, how many of us get training on the proper way to open mail?)

Some things deserve more of our attention. That's why I encourage you to go read Greenwald's post and restart your memory by clicking on his post's links.