McCain Among The Earliest Promoters Of False Iraqi Anthrax Link

John McCain played an early role in the conservative effort to blame Iraq and lay the groundwork for a subsequent invasion.

If you can recall shortly after 9/11, many were pinning the blame for the anthrax attacks on Iraq. After the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, the anthrax letters - the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 – stoked the fear levels and helped to created the climate that has been prevalent in the United States for the past several years.

The letters sent to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT), NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and other media outlets created a mindset that western society itself was threatened by Islamic radicalism. John McCain was among the first politicians to link the anthrax letters to Iraq. On October 18, 2001, one month after that first letter was sent McCain appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman.



LETTERMAN: How are things going in Afghanistan now?

MCCAIN: I think we’re doing fine. I think we’ll do fine. The second phase - if I could just make one, very quickly - the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don’t have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may - and I emphasize may - have come from Iraq.

LETTERMAN: Oh is that right?

MCCAIN: If that should be the case, that’s when some tough decisions are gonna have to be made.



Later in the interview McCain joked, that Congress members should “bring out their dead!” This was in reference to the House adjourning in order for the Capitol to be cleared of the anthrax threat. Less than a week later, two US Postal Service employees, Joseph P. Curseen, 47 and Thomas L. Morris Jr., 55, both of Washington, DC and both workers in a mail sorting facility in the district would actually be dead. That joke was extremely tasteless because almost a month before that Robert Stevens, 63, of West Palm Beach, Florida had died of anthrax inhalation. As a Senator, he must have known that before his Letterman appearance. Two more American citizens, Kathy Nguyen, 61, of the Bronx, NY and Ottilie Lundgren, 94, of Oxford, CT. would soon be dead.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/258150