Guilt by hunch

By GottaLaff

How many times has this happened? It doesn't matter whether it's during campaign season, or if it's just easier to blame someone for a crime in order to appease a nervous nation, or even protect the actual guilty party.

Here's the headline on the New York Times website:

Portrait Emerges of Anthrax Suspect’s Troubled Life

The anthrax investigation yielded nothing more than a strong hunch that Dr. Bruce E. Ivins was the perpetrator, a Times examination found.

Guilt by hunch. Destruction of lives, reputations and credibility. Spread the rumors and misinformation, then retract when nobody is listening. That's what we've become.

Anthrax investigation: A letter from a Bruce Ivins co-worker

By GottaLaff

Ver-r-ry inter-esting:

Re "Suspect stood to gain from anthrax panic," Aug. 2

From 1992 to 1994, I worked with Bruce Ivins at Ft. Detrick, Md., where he helped me develop anthrax vaccines during my postdoctoral research. Ivins is accused of performing the 2001 anthrax attacks so he could profit from a vaccine he patented. This accusation is preposterous. The government routinely patents work that might eventually be marketable, and these products almost never become developed or sold. Even if one of his vaccines had been mass-produced, the primary beneficiaries would have been the producer and the government, not Bruce. I never heard Bruce talk about money or getting rich. His life was about the work that he loved and the people he loved. The collapse of the Soviet Union and its biological weapons program did lead to cutbacks at Ft. Detrick; however, Bruce's job was never in danger.

The government has followed one trail but only looked for what it wanted to find. I want to see the government's evidence because I believe that a critical analysis of it will show that it stopped far too soon and pushed an innocent man to his death.

John Barnard

This story has BushCo written all over it.