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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   16408 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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We've collectively memory-holed the anthrax attack on the US in the days after 9/11, which at the the time was a major reason for the WMD claim:

The 2001 Anthrax Attacks were a critical factor in the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) claims that sparked the Iraq War. Despite its significance, little systematic work has been done regarding the topic. Existing studies primarily focus on the role of the Military Industrial Complex and intelligence failures as the primary explanations for the origins of the Iraq War. These explanations are limited, as they rely on hindsight biases. This thesis contends that anthrax was the catalyst for WMD claims that sparked the Iraq War. The 2001 Anthrax Attacks reinforced the belief that Iraq harbored WMDs and posed a threat to the U.S. These attacks have often been overshadowed by the 9/11 tragedy and the inability to find WMDs in Iraq. This thesis finds that the Bush Administration viewed these attacks as a significant threat to the U.S. They seized the opportunity that the 2001 Anthrax Attacks presented to formulate WMD allegations and present Iraq as an imminent threat when a direct link between 9/11 and Iraq couldn't be established.

So why were the anthrax attacks tied to Iraq? There were intelligence reports that a 9/11 hijacker was supplied with anthrax by Al-Qaeda at a meeting at the Iraqi consulate in Prague. Never happened, he was never even in Prague at this time. Yet Dick Cheney repeated the allegation as the nation prepared for war with Iraq:

It's been pretty well confirmed that (Atta) did go to Prague, and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in (the Czech Republic) last April, several months before the attack.

Ostensibly the source for this lie was Czech intelligence. But LATimes reported something different back in October 2001:

Atta, an Egyptian, is suspected of flying one of the two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center. Iraq has vehemently denied any connection to the attacks and has said that Atta and Ani never met....

“This meeting did not take place,” Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz told The Times in Baghdad last week. “It is a lie. We checked with him: ‘Did you ever meet somebody called Atta?’ ” ...

Israeli intelligence officials also reportedly have been pushing the possibility of an Iraqi connection to the terrorist attacks. It could be in Israel’s security interests to see the U.S. take a more aggressive stance against Iraq.

Germany’s mass-circulation Bild newspaper Thursday quoted unidentified Israeli intelligence sources as saying Atta received anthrax spores from Iraqi agents in Prague.

But a U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition that he not be further identified, said Friday that Washington has found no evidence indicating that Iraq had provided anthrax to Atta or that Iraq is involved in the bioterrorism attacks.

This is October 27th 2001, less than 2 months after 9/11. Lies about Iraqi WMDs and Iraqi/Al Qaeda connection less than two months after the attack.

Yes, the WMDs were lies manufactured by people with an interest in having the US overthrow Saddam. There is no other reason for a fabrication like this. They lied about WMDs they were not mistaken. Or at least, the key provocateurs lied and traitors like Dick Cheney were just duped. But that's not being "mistaken" that's being lied to at best or at worst knowingly perpetuating the lie as a false pretext for war.

By the way, the consensus is now that the origin of the Anthrax spores was not Iraq, it was from a specific batch of the "Ames" strain that originated from a U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland. But in October 2001 we have these intelligence reports claiming it was supplied by Iraq. Really makes you think...

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