Do you remember the neocon propaganda about the 'anthrax letter' attacks? Need a laugh? ?

Question

Back in 2002 Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard published the article linked below which stated that the FBI was stubbornly holding onto its 'lone American' despite the supposed evidence and concluded:

"...Based on the publicly available evidence, there appears to be no convincing rationale for the FBI's nearly exclusive concentration on American suspects. And the possibility is far from foreclosed that the anthrax bioterrorist was just who he said he was: a Muslim, impliedly from overseas, who thought the events of "09-11-01" were something to be celebrated--and who would have been doubly pleased to see "you die now."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/147vnjgh.asp

In view of recent events, it seems the FBI was spot on in concluding early that a disgruntled American scientist was the culprit and the Weekly Standard was blowing smoke in pointing its finger at 'muslim terrorists.'

Do you remember when the punditry and opinion makers get it so wrong? Doesn't anyone wonder why the neoconservative agenda includes an apparent need to villify muslims and paint them all as our enemies? What is really going on? Expound please.

Answer 1

Since when was Bill Kristol taken with any more seriousness than, say, Maureen Dowd?  Wacko writers exist on both sides of the aisle and whatever they say should be ignored or, at least, taken with a grain of salt.  You could get a lot more mileage chasing after someone like, um, Ann Coulter than Bill Kristol.

Liberals shouldn't take pundits so seriously- most of them have no clue about the subject matter in which they write; regardless of ideology.

Answer 2

I received two anthrax laced letters from Muslim terrorist and almost died.

Answer 3

"These guys" are presented as what they are... news COMMENTATORS. They give opinions. It's all fine for you to point fingers NOW. 20:20 hindsight is a wonderful thing, but its also very easy to do. That some commentators drew a connection between terrorist activity so soon after 9/11 is certainly not a stretch and very understandable.

I bet you give great advice to NFL coaches too from your recliner in front of the TV.

Edit: I reread the article to make sure I didn't miss anything? Apparently, YOU missed that it was written 6 months (not over a year) after the last anthrax letter. Considering an investigation of that scale, I'd still call that armchair quarterbacking... even if it WAS written a year later.  A second review of the article gives me no reason to change my original statements. That a possible connection between the letters and terrorist activity after 9/11 was made is hardly surprising. In fact, it would have been incomprehensible to think otherwise, given the timeframe.

But apparently you are willing to discount someone's, such as Krystol, opinion for eternity for the simple reason that they happened to support the war in Iraq. The evidence going into the war was compelling. You can deny it, but it was. Even the all-knowing Libs AND the most high Bill Clinton felt Saddam was a threat. Whether when history finally can look back on this conflict objectively... it turns out he did not have WMDs... that he presented himself as a real and serious threat is incontrovertible.

I have lived in the Middle East and I now live in an area with the highest population of Kurds in America. They will argue to their last dying breath that Saddam was a threat no only to his own people, to the Middle East, and to the world.

Edit: I don't claim to be a defender of Kristol. I only hear him once in a great while on TV and NEVER read his articles. So, my answers are on a much more general sense. My point has always been in this discussion that we have 7 years of hindsight to look back on what could have been or should have been. AT THE TIME, we had no way of knowing who was responsible for the anthrax letters. And I would remind you, that even though the FBI speculated that the person responsible was American (and were ultimately proven to be correct), that didn't negate the possibility that he was American and a extremist Muslim terrorist. The two are not mutually exclusive. They weren't then and they aren't now.