Unfinished business

With all the attention these days on Iraq, few are still asking this important question: Who mailed the anthrax during fall 2001? I scanned recent news stories using google and nobody seems to know anything concrete.

However, that didn't stop the Washington Times (cough, cough, I cannot believe I've linked to them for the second time this week), from running an op-ed on October 21, 2003 that should sound familiar to regular readers of this blog. Columnist and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Jack Kelly (he served under Reagan) approvingly cites Laurie Mylroie's latest book, which discusses the anthrax attacks and includes a theory.

The neocon Myrloie, as I've explained before, thinks all major anti-US terrorism of the past decade or so can be traced to Iraq.. That includes 9/11 and the anthrax attacks.

I know, I know, there he goes...again.

On the other end of the conspiracy spectrum, some like to argue that the primary suspect is an "ardent Zionist." Just as Mylroie blames a lot of terror on Iraq, this author implies that Israel might behind Vince Foster's murder, TWA Flight 800...the Kennedy assassination.

Pick your poison?

As I've blogged before, lack of transparency in government just feeds this kind of conspiracy theorizing.

In addition to too much secrecy (the 28 pages on the Saudis, for example), one major problem with current US foreign and security policy is that it is narrowly focused on rogue states (Iran, Iraq and North Korea). Too often, the US ignores or downplays relatively more important security threats. These other threats aren't as sexy as WMD (well, maybe loose Russian nukes are), and would require much more serious domestic security expenditures.

As I've noted before, $87 billion would buy a lot of domestic security, among other things.