‘I had the feeling they were high-five-ing each other’

September 15, 2006

To follow up on yesterday’s item about the anthrax letters for a moment, Jonathan Schwarz emailed me a terrific tip from Hubris on this very subject:

In October 2001, [Wayne] Downing, [Paul] Wolfowitz, and other proponents of a war with Iraq thought they had yet more ammunition for the case against Saddam. A series of deadly anthrax-laced letters had been sent to the Capitol Hill offices of Senator Daschle and Senator Patrick Leahy and to several newsrooms. Mylroie asserted that Saddam was behind the mailings. An early forensic test of the anthrax letters (which was later disputed) appeared to show that the anthrax spores were highly refined and “weaponized.”

To the Iraq hawks, the news was electric. “This is definitely Saddam!” Downing shouted to several White House aides. One of these aides later recalled overhearing Downing excitedly sharing the news over the phone with Wolfowitz and Feith. “I had the feeling they were high-five-ing each other,” the White House official said.

As a rule, those who celebrate terrorist attacks are not well.

And as Schwarz added, “[H]ow lovely that after Wolfowitz & co. found they couldn’t use the murder of their fellow Americans to start a war, they lost all interest in who actually HAD killed them.”

I have really never gotten clear in my mind why Paul Wolfo-twit wanted to attack Iraq, and I thought we should have gone to Bahgdad in 1990 and torn the country into pieces just for being such a-holes.

Neo-cons are just weird.

  • I once heard Wolf wanted to invade the headquarters of the RNC and NRA because Timothy McVeigh was a registered member of the Republican Party and the National Rifle Association. Then he found out McVeigh was Catholic and scrapped the idea. Could have been a rumor.

  • I think it was one of those cases where all the circumstantial evidence pointed to one guy, but there was no proof.

    I think it was Richard Jewel.

  • Aren’t these the same people (or part of a group) that like to say that because Democrats disagree with the administration on some point or other, that we are encouraging another terrorist attack (or some such nonsense) and are somehow happy when American soldiers die in Afghanistan.

  • And as Schwarz added, “[H]ow lovely that after Wolfowitz & co. found they couldn’t use the murder of their fellow Americans to start a war, they lost all interest in who actually HAD killed them.”

    Has anyone ever searched Judy Miller’s house?

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