Anthrax, Osama, Valerie & Libby

Whatever happened to the Anthrax investigation? Ever notice how Bush terror investigations just sort of fizzle into nothing? The hunt for Osama; like the hunt for the Anthrax attacker, started with lots of tough cowboy talk and then - nothing. Notice how once BushCo got their war in Iraq and no longer needed the boogeymen of Osama and the Anthrax attacker, they seemed to quit even trying to pretend to find them? In fact, they developed a truly remarkable lack of concern for finding those responsible for attacking and killing so many Americans.

Now that Bush has saved Libby from jail, everyone is suddenly reviewing Bush's past attitude towards justice, clemency and punishment. And the consensus is that Bush likes harsh punishments and doesn't like anyone getting off lightly for their crimes - unless he says so.

How does Bush's tough stance on punishment square with letting Osama go free? Or giving up on trying to find the Anthrax attacker? Why did he allow that when he's such a tough guy on crime?

We know the Bush Administration can be relentless against adversaries when they want to because they went after Valerie Plame with the kind of single-minded vengeance they might have applied to Osama. Plame; who didn't bomb anyone, didn't mail anthrax, didn't commit perjury, obstruct justice or endanger national security, and whose job it was to track WMD's and who might have had some knowledge that could have greatly helped in Bush's alleged War on Terror, got more of their attention as a target than the Anthrax attacker.

Doesn't that seem like an inappropriate use of their attention and resources? There really was absolutely no reason for her to have been brought into the Bush Administration's campaign to discredit Joe Wilson at all. Going after her instead of her husband was more than a little fishy. Why did they put so much effort into it?

So what if Joe Wilson wrote an op-ed? Lots of people do. Even if the Bushies felt they had to respond to him, why not just go after him? They could have attacked him the way they tried with Richard Clarke and all the other critics. And what other critics of Bush's false war rationales had a family member attacked the way Joe Wilson's undercover CIA agent wife was? Why would they do that? Why attack and ruin the work of an expert on tracking WMDs at the same time they were claiming we were in extreme danger from WMDs?

Anyway, back to the anthrax scare. Once they had the Patriot Act signed, the Bushies gradually lost interest in the Anthrax attacks. Which seems odd considering that they supposedly had no idea whether there would ever be any more anthrax attacks. Shouldn't it have been their priority to keep making an effort to find whoever had sent poison to Congressional offices? Apparently not, because they just…...stopped looking. It's almost as if they knew there would be no more anthrax mailings. But, even so, you'd think Sheriff Bush would have wanted the perpetrator caught.

Same with Osama. If he was truly responsible for 9/11 and if there was even the smallest chance of him being able to attack and even if there wasn't; wouldn't a president who believes in harsh punishments and who believes that Osama was responsible for 9/11 have kept going until Osama was caught? 

In all these cases, the Bushies just quit trying. They never got Osama, they never got the anthrax attacker, they never found the WMDs; and they never really seemed to care about any of it either.

Let's face facts: the Bushies do not act as if they are afraid of another attack. They act like criminals; lying, hiding evidence, obstructing investigations - not just into their actions, but into the actions of those who have attacked us. Hiding and covering up is their highest priority; higher than Osama, the Anthrax attacker, obeying the law, even over the deaths of Americans.