Last week, Bruce Ivins, a government scientist who researched anthrax and was expected to be charged in connection with the 2001 attacks, reportedly committed suicide. As Glenn Greenwald has noted, President Bush and his administration initially attempted to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq.
The New York Daily News has a new twist in the administration’s attempt to peg the anthrax attacks to its own bellicose aims. Immediately after 9/11, the Daily News reports, “White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda,” according to a former FBI official:
After the Oct. 5, 2001, death from anthrax exposure of Sun photo editor Robert Stevens, Mueller was “beaten up” during President Bush’s morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide.
“They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East,” the retired senior FBI official told The News.
As the Daily News noted, similar to its efforts with Iraq, the White House on multiple occasions suggested that the anthrax attacks were tied to al Qaeda operatives abroad:
On October 15, 2001, President Bush said, “There may be some possible link” to Bin Laden, adding, “I wouldn’t put it past him.” Vice President Cheney also said Bin Laden’s henchmen were trained “how to deploy and use these kinds of substances, so you start to piece it all together.”
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) claimed “some of this anthrax may…have come from Iraq,” suggesting that the “second phase” of the war on terror may be in Iraq.
The claims, however, were quickly rejected by experts, who “told us this was not something some guy in a cave could come up with,” the former FBI official said. “They couldn’t go from box cutters one week to weapons-grade anthrax the next.”
As press reports have indicated, while the source of the attacks is still unknown, a large body of evidence points towards Ivins’s lab in Ft. Detrick, Maryland. For the Bush administration, however, the evidence doesn’t seem to matter until after the case for war is made.
Just as they did last Friday, a group of House Republicans will engage in political theater on the floor tomorrow, staging a fake session on gas prices. Congress adjourned last week, but some conservatives remained behind to clamor in the dark chamber for a vote on oil drilling. Politico reports that “Republicans felt they got a lot of good press out of Friday’s ‘revolt,’ so they will be back at it again.”
UPDATE: Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said last Friday: “In a week where Exxon Mobil made the largest quarterly profits by a U.S. corporation, Republicans are staying in Washington to argue that Big Oil deserves more taxpayer lands. Republicans must think Big Oil is paying them by the hour.”
UPDATE II: On Fox News’ Beltway Boys, Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes admitted the move by the House conservatives was a “stunt.” “It’s a stunt, but sometimes stunts work,” he said. Watch it:
Yesterday, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) appeared on a C-SPAN Newsmakers roundtable and defended Exxon Mobil’s recent record-setting quarterly profit of $11.7 billion. Blunt tried to minimize the wealth and influence of Exxon, then went on to blast the company’s critics, saying they should be overjoyed that an “American company made money”:
[T]hey’re the 14th biggest oil company in the world, and the only U.S. company in the top 20. So in all likelihood, the 13 companies bigger than them made a whole more money than that, and that all went somewhere besides the United States. That went to Saudi Arabia, that went to Russia. […]
We can complain all we want to about American stockholders and American company made money. That’s what our friends want to do — the Democrats.
Watch it:
It’s not clear where Blunt is getting his numbers to downplay Exxon’s over-sized influence. According to Petroleum Intelligence Weekly’s 2007 ranking of the world’s 50 largest oil companies, Exxon ranked third. It beat out state-owned companies such as CNPC (China) and Gazprom (Russia). In Fortune’s 2008 list of America’s top corporations, Exxon ranked second overall and first among petroleum refiners.
It’s astonishing that Blunt could claim, with a straight face, that Exxon’s massive profits are good for America. Sure, the company’s stockholders are getting rich. But most Americans continue to pay skyrocketing gas prices. Exxon is certainly not giving back to the American public either. ABC recently reported that the company has invested just 1 percent of its profits on alternative energy sources.
Even more appalling than Exxon’s record profits, however, is the fact that conservatives feel the need to boost the company with massive tax breaks. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), whom Blunt supports, has a plan to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. It would give nearly $4 billion in tax breaks to the six largest oil companies.
Seeking closure of the bitter dispute that rocked Florida's Democratic primary,
presumptive nominee Barack Obama asked the national party Sunday to let the
state's delegates cast full votes at the convention in Denver.
Practically speaking, whether Florida delegates have full or half votes won't
matter because Obama won enough delegates in the primaries to claim the nomination.
Still, Democratic leaders welcomed the gesture.
The growing ranks of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will have
a lot to say about who becomes president. And what they are saying isn't what
you might expect.
In theory, John McCain, with his long record of service as a Navy pilot and
prisoner of war story from Vietnam, should have the market cornered on the military
vote.
Instead, he has drawn opposition from many veterans because of his voting record
in the Senate. Sen.
Last week, Bruce Ivins, a government scientist who researched anthrax and was 
