| Saturday,
October 27, 2001 I have two columns to do: the regular
BYTE.COM column, and one for the special paper -- printed, BYTE in PRINT
again! -- edition. So I have my work cut out...
I got a letter from a colleague suggesting that
the anthrax attack are right wing efforts. I withhold the name since the
letter was sent to a mailing list and not just to me:
Much as I dislike it, I'm still unconvinced that
it's external terrorism.
If it is external state sponsored terrorism, the
techniques and methods don't make much sense; it _would_ be better to use
the amount that has been distributed in a single attack.
If it is _internal_, specifically
conservative/libertarian, terrorists, the methods become more
understandable. The envelopes then become the functional _equivalent_ of
letter bombs, but are both easier to make and have a greater likelihood of
doing widespread damage.
However, that widespread damage would still be
_focused_ on groups they don't like. And it has so far avoided (with the
arguable exception of Fox News) groups that they _do_ like.
When one is delivered to the American Enterprise
Institute or the Cato Association I'll become more sanguine.
I wrote a reply, and after I wrote it decided it
needed to be here as well. I've also added a bit to it:
Oh come now. If you were a left wing group that wanted to draw
attention, you'd target the media. Since the media are almost all liberal,
with the arguable exception of Fox News, you'd have few choices. Then you
want to target government institutions.
I don't know much about libertarians, but conservatives like
government. We don't much like the way it has been going, but none of us
want to abolish Congress or the Presidency or the Supreme Court, and we
rather like checks and balances and such. We certainly don't like chaos and anarchy.
Conservatives, if they were to wish a plague on anyone, would wish it
on specific government agencies which we see as both misusing their power
and being incompetent at the same time. It is this fourth branch of
government that operates a long way outside the Constitution that rouses
conservative ire. The fact that some 40 Federal agencies have SWAT teams
without any discernable need can get conservatives unhappy. Not Congress
and the Supreme Court which, despite all, are still the best hope we have
of getting the Philadelphia Constitution back. But mass terrorism isn't a
useful way to get the Constitution back anyway: times of stress strengthen
government and give it powers it needs to meet the crisis but shouldn't
ordinarily have. The conservative objection to the new anti-terrorist
legislation isn't the laws but the fact that they are imposed in peace
time: we need a Declaration of War, so that when the war is over we go
back to normal constitutional government. One problem with the Cold War,
or Seventy Years War as I call it, is that once it was over, it left a
great number of residual powers the government no longer needs and in fact
should not have. Had there been an actual War, then those would go away.
Increasing anarchy is no way to get conservative government.
This doesn't look like an attack by any conservative group likely to
have been able to obtain the biological weapons employed. Those took a
fair degree of sophistication. I'd be willing to bet on Iraq as the
source. I would make smaller bets that they were obtained from Iraq
without the Iraqi government's knowledge or consent: not that this matters
in holding Iraq responsible for developing them.
Many readers have sent this link. I laughed a lot. My wife found it
hilarious:
http://www.gotlaughs.com/funpages/bin2.swf
Bush on bongos, Colin Powell as Belafonte...
And Roland sends this totally bizarre case:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/breaking/1026costlysnake-ON.html
the snake in question is a garter snake, of the kind that my friends
and I regularly captured and kept as pets when I was a kid...
This just in. New prize:
* SWALLOW THE MONEY PRIZE -- Barbara Walters
and ABC The panel on "The View" program broke into a chorus of
the "M'm M'm good" jingle when Walters asked, "Didn't we
grow up eating Campbell's soup?" It was all according to plan. In
November, blurring the line between programming and advertising, parts of
eight episodes of ABC's daytime chat show became paid infomercials for
Campbell's. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Walters and her panel
agreed to "try to weave a soup message into their regular on-air
banter." An ABC News executive defended the hucksterism of Walters, a
news personality, by saying that "The View" is an entertainment
show and that "people wear many hats."
And here is a wonderful quote:
"I have certain misgivings about what
we're doing," said Stephen M. Walt, a professor at the John F.
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. "There's no
evidence thus far that Taliban is unraveling as an administrative
structure, and no sign as of right now that the Northern Alliance or
anybody else is going to be able to defeat them militarily in the short
term."
Gosh. They didn't come apart in a couple of weeks! Shame on the US.
And Bob Woodward has his theories:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59509-2001Oct26.html
but I note that he has no named sources. Just the usual anonymous
people, who tell him that this must have been some anthrax that a bunch of
right wing extremists just happened to have, and decided to use it now
when the country is at war. When he quotes someone, it's more likely to be
"Cooper and officials at the Southern
Poverty Law Project, which monitors U.S. hate groups, said they have seen
no evidence of a domestic group capable of launching a sophisticated
anthrax attack."
Now it's not impossible that some Aryan Nation outfit has got hold of
this stuff, but it's not very likely. The most likely explanation of an
act of war against the US is that it is a strike by the people who are at
war with us. But given the extreme competence of our officials who do not
seem able to find their feet with both hands, perhaps this sort of smoke
screen is to be expected. It isn't impossible that Woodward is correct and
this is a bunch of right wing extremists, but I sure wouldn't bet it that
way. Just as when Earl Warren rushed to announce that extremists had
killed President Kennedy.
Here's a little more from Woodward (way down below the fold). The
headline is that
FBI and CIA Suspect Domestic
Extremists
Officials Doubt Any Links to Bin Laden
but far down in the article he says
"One of the challenges that a would-be
terrorist faces is learning how to alter the anthrax so that it will float
in the air and disperse widely. The Washington Post reported this week
that the spores in the Daschle letter had been treated with a chemical
additive using technology so sophisticated that it almost certainly came
from the United States, Iraq or the former Soviet Union.
"White House spokesman Ari Fleischer
said yesterday, however, that investigators believe a broad range of
people are capable of the crime. "The quality anthrax sent to Senator
Daschle's office could be produced by a Ph.D. microbiologist and a
sophisticated laboratory," he told reporters."
Now we all know that the Aryan Nation must have a Ph.D. Microbiologist
and a sophisticated laboratory all hidden away. Well, perhaps so, but
again, the way to bet it is that this stuff came from Iraq; whether the
Iraqi top people knew it was going to be used against the US I don't care
to speculate.
TOP
|
CLICK HERE for
a Special Request. 
