McCain, Anthrax & the Afghan Blunder

Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995

By Robert Parry

The scene of John McCain – during the anthrax attacks in October 2001 – opining to David Letterman that Iraq might be responsible underscores McCain's central role in what may go down as one of the biggest strategic blunders in U.S. military history, the premature pivot from Afghanistan to Iraq.

Not only has it been clear for many years that McCain's speculation about Iraq's role in the anthrax attacks was reckless – made even more apparent by the FBI now pinning the crime on dead U.S. bio-defense scientist Bruce Ivins – but McCain also told Letterman in that Oct. 18, 2001, interview that "the second phase is Iraq."

In other words, barely a month after the 9/11 attacks and while the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan was still underway, McCain was already eying a war against Iraq.

McCain opened his appearance with the joke, "What is Osama bin Laden going to be for Halloween?" and then gave the punch line: "Dead."

However, bin Laden managed to survive that Halloween – and apparently six others – in part because President George W. Bush didn't commit enough U.S. ground forces to the battle of Tora Bora, allowing bin Laden and other key al-Qaeda leaders to escape.

Then, instead of staying focused on the challenge in Afghanistan and finishing the hunt for bin Laden, Bush heeded the advice of McCain and other neocons and shifted the attention of the CIA and the U.S. military toward Iraq.

Though federal investigators cast aside McCain's suspicion of an Iraqi link to the anthrax attacks, McCain continued to pin other false charges on Saddam Hussein's government, including allegations about illicit WMD and supposed operational ties to al-Qaeda.

For instance, on Feb. 2, 2002, McCain addressed the Munich Conference on Security Policy, giving a speech with the ambitious title, "From Crisis to Opportunity: American Internationalism and the New Atlantic Order."

In it, McCain laid out the full neoconservative case for turning U.S. attention quickly toward Iraq.

 "The next front is apparent, and we should not shirk from acknowledging it," McCain said. "A terrorist resides in Baghdad, with the resources of an entire state at his disposal, flush with cash from illicit oil revenues and proud of a decade-long record of defying the international community's demands that he come clean on his programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.

"A day of reckoning is approaching."

http://consortiumnews.com/2008/080208.html