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Ten years later, the anthrax attacks seems an act of 9 / 11. But we forget how George Bush has used to push the war in Iraq

We forget that less than a month after 9 / 11, Americans felt besieged. This time the danger came from the anthrax powder sent in small quantities but deadly. ;. The number of letters with Anthrax - five people and sickened 17 - was a fraction of the figure of 11.9, but the letters do not echo on the radar screen that looks like a decade later

Anthrax letters helped to legitimize a political hysteria. In a nervous nation, the letters took on a life of its own, paving the way for war with Iraq.

For most Americans, the threat of anthrax became a reality October 5, 2001, when Robert Stevens, photo editor for 63 years in the American Media tabloid, the Sun, pulmonary anthrax died three days after entering a hospital in West Palm Beach. Doctors at night which saw Stevens has first suspected anthrax. With good reason. United States, there were only 18 cases reported in the disease by inhalation in the 20th century, and cases often come from workers who have been exposed to animals infected with anthrax.

When a co-worker of Stevens Anthrax test, too, the panic was on. It was impossible to believe that two cases of anthrax among office workers in Florida have been a coincidence, and the following week, the Anthrax cases reported in New York. An employee of NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw tested positive for anthrax, as well as an editorial assistant at the New York Post. More threatening in terms of media, October 15 mixed with the anthrax letter arrived at the Capitol office of Senate Democratic, Tom Daschle, majority leader from South Dakota.

"We have this anthrax. You're dead now. Are you afraid? Death to America ", the letter to Mr. Daschle said.

make anthrax spores has been difficult, but he showed the letter by email to disperse them was easy. In November, the entire country could be sure that the Anthrax poses a danger is that no one was sure. The fatality was the fifth and final Anthrax widow age 94 who lived alone in the small rural town of Oxford, Connecticut.

Who would do that? Shortly after the death of Robert Stevens, two widely respected foreign policy experts, not directly related to the Bush administration offered their answers to opinion pieces that appeared on the same day and focus on Iraq . In his editorial in the Wall Street Journal, "The connection Iraq," the former CIA director James Woolsey said Iraq was the state "more likely" to support an anthrax attack against the United States and urged the government not to require "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" to make Iraq their home. "Saddam was a bitter feeling of revenge for his humiliation in the Gulf War," said Woolsey.

The problem was that Bush stuck for the rest of 2002 and continued in 2003 when the February 3 in a speech at the National Institutes of Health, promised that if Saddam Hussein does not disarm, the United States "will lead a coalition to disarm him." With a little over a month before the invasion of Iraq, was maintained only for the Secretary of State Colin Powell, the moderate foreign policy in the Bush administration, if the Security Council for the possible war with Iraq.

The word
Powell gave George Tenet, the CIA director, sitting behind it uses satellite photos and graphics, but its most dramatic moment came when Powell picked up a bottle of white powder equivalent a teaspoon of anthrax. Less than a teaspoon of dried coal had closed the U. Senate S. in 2001, told UN delegates. Iraq, then quickly said, "could have produced 25,000 liters" of Anthrax in accordance with the UN inspectors, but there was "verifiable represented even a teaspoonful of this deadly substance." It was a persuasive speech that opened a series of liberal next to Powell, columnist Mary McGrory, whose, who wrote in the Washington Post, "All I can say to convince me, and I was as strong as France to convince. " Information