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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FaultLine who wrote (4350)	10/11/2001 5:33:25 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I say flop because 1 vs. thousands is a big difference. In addition, the terrorists depend on widespread publicity but this one fellow could have died and no one would have ever really known about the cause if not for a heads-up medical diagnosis If it was an attack I still think it may not be a flop. Again, even if only the person that opens or handles the mail item gets infected, that would be enough to spread panic. Terror. As long as you mail enough letters and packages out... The attack doesn't need to kill wide numbers in order to slow down mail/courier borne commerce dramatically. In larger organizations much of the mail is opened in a central location. Business receives millions of mail items each day. The launch point of any attack could be any mailbox in the country, or even from outside the country. I saw the same report on the uselessness of Liquid form Anthrax that you are commenting on; what's to say modern day terrorists with a PC don't have the same, simple skills to search the Internet. Imagine that, Google is terrors best friend. Open information sharing does us in. Imagine further that they have someone that knows a little about biowar on their side. I'm picturing a strategy session in my mind here. -- Biowar Expert (BE): Osama, Osama, Osama, try as we might we can't get the Anthrax to spread far. Only a couple of people very close to ground zero are picking up an infection. We'll never be able to kill millions this way. OBL: Hmnn, while stroking beard. BE: I tell you its crazy, we would do better shoving a spoonful of the stuff in their mouths than using a plane or a missile. Getting it to them is the problem... OBL: Strokes some more. "Lets FedEX it to them." It will freak them out, grace be to God. -- Not so far fetched. At any rate I am not trying to start panic or display any that I don't have, but I think the latest attack shows that they've raised the stakes dramatically; that they recognize how important the economy is to the power base of the US/free world (my assumption granted); and that they have no fear that reprisal will stop or stall their plan. Unless there are deranged anti National Enquirer crazies out there with access to Anthrax, just waiting for a good cover (9-11) to extract their revenge on American Media, I have to believe the odds favour the Anthrax attack is related to 9-11. So an attempt to further distrupt the economy (and the ugly thing is if this is a plan, it can be executed against any country in the world fairly easily and in a timed manner) via mail/courier distruption doesn't seem that far fetched. Testing, testing, 1,2,3 comes to mind... Sorry for all the off-topic (mostly)