By Captain Eric H. May
Military-Political Editor
The Lone Star Iconoclast

Bush League Bioterror


After 9/11 and before the passage of the Patriot Act a month later, our great national terror was the anthrax attacks waged against the mainstream media and Congress. Democratic Senators Daschle and Leahy, both targeted, had been well positioned to oppose the Patriot Act on constitutional grounds, and perhaps lead their party to do the same. The anthrax attacks changed all that, putting Bush and Cheney in total control.

As with so many things under the Bush administration, the political reality of what had happened was transparent, but the political reporting remained vague. The writing was already on the wall for members of the power elite, and folks were starting to hide from their duty behind the Voltaire phrase that it was a dangerous thing to be right when your country was wrong.

Accordingly, the mainstream media pretended not to notice that the worthies who should have impeded the unconstitutional Bush League power grab had been threatened with the kind of diseased death that befell several of their staffers. Congress itself was closed for a week and its offices were taken over by federal forces in hazmat suits. When staffers finally returned, they supposed that their sensitive files had been gone over by the FBI, and that whatever could be used to harm them was now in the possession of the "unitary executive," as Bush Leaguers began to call their boy George.

Later the same mainstream media didn't report much or investigate at all when the official story began to fall apart. It turned out that all the various anthrax spores used in all the various anthrax attacks had originated from the same batch -- at the Defense Department's biowarfare facility in Fort Dietrich, Maryland. Nor did hesitant reporters pay much attention when it turned out that the "Muslim terrorists" said to have sent the poisoned letters -- promising death to America, death to Israel and praise to Allah -- were a fabrication by Christians or Jews, a Neocon "false flag" operation to help the Bush League expand its newfangled "Global War on Terror."

The mainstream media refused to report all the damning details; the FBI political police refused to answer questions about them; and our Congress refused to ask questions, beginning a long slide by all these parties from doing their duty that continues to this very day, with the sudden appearance of an FBI solution of the anthrax attacks.

Friday FBI officials somehow kept straight faces as they announced that Dr. Bruce E. Ivins, an award-winning employee at Fort Dietrich, had become the focus of their seven-year do-nothing investigation. He was very near to being formally charged with the crime, they averred. Alas, they added after a pause, Dr. Ivins had committed suicide rather than face prosecution. That was too bad, because they really had wanted to tell us the truth of the anthrax attacks between 9/11 and the Patriot Act -- attacks that had just happened to help the Bush administration achieve its political goals.

DELETE the PRESS

I have always thought that nonmilitary folks were being a bit too cute with their pronouncements that military intelligence is an oxymoron. Though the American officer corps has not frequently profited from the kind of first-rate minds so prominent in European and especially ancient history, we are no dummies. The first thing we learned in military intelligence is the last thing I forget: trust no one.

Using this wise dictum to trust no one, a couple of decades ago I became an Army specialist in the erstwhile USSR, absorbing its history, language and literature. I did it all from an abundance of patriotism and through the generosity of the American taxpayer. Although I loved the Russian people, generally speaking, I didn't believe a word of the crap the Russian government was telling its citizens through its official media.

Time has made me older, wiser and sadder. Nowadays I take the same view of our current government and its official media that I once took of the Soviet Union's nomenklatura and their vicious apparatchiki -- which is that they are a self-serving elite who feel free to misinform or murder others to achieve their political purpose. If there is any truth to be had in contemporary America, then it must be found in the samizdat of the Internet.

Those who wish to understand human affairs and national history -- no matter who the person or what the country -- would do well to look at them with my jaded perspective. Granted, skepticism and cynicism are dark lenses through which to perceive the world, but when we wear them, we won't be stunned and stupefied by the brilliance of official bullshit.

The word for the wise: the FBI attempt to make Bruce E. Ivins the Lee Harvey Oswald of the anthrax attacks is obscurantism. Rather than swallowing a shallow "mad scientist" story, consider another: The Bush League has decided that, in these waning days of his reign, their King George needs to clean up his mess of dirty operations, and all the king's men in the FBI are simply wiping up the mess by wiping out a patsy, then you pronouncing the case closed.

In this day of the Internet, the inquisitive reader can find many parallels to Dr. Ivins. Below is a list of the "top 10 hits" that I have observed and written about, often after being contacted by the victims' families. They are listed according to the date of their assassinations and can be found in my archives:

Senator Paul Wellstone, October 25, 2002
Rachel Corrie, March 16, 2003
Dr. David Kelly, July 17, 2003
Specialist Alyssa Peterson, September 15, 2003
Margie Schroedinger, September 22, 2003
Specialist Pat Tillman, April 22, 2004
Colonel Ted Westhusing, June 5, 2005
David Rosenbaum, January 6, 2006
General William Odom, May 30, 2008
Tim Russert, June 13, 2008

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Captain Eric H. May Is a former Army intelligence and public affairs officer, as well as a former NBC editorial writer. His essays have appeared in the Houston Chronicle, the Wall Street Journal and Military Intelligence Magazine. His homepage is: www.spiritone.com/~pazuu/pow-mia/Ghost_Troop_Captain_Eric_H_May.htm