Web Letters: Six Questions About Anthrax

In some societies, 9/11 would've been reason for the President to resign if not to commit hara-kiri.

Our culture allowed Bush to become a warrior, as though we were a clan of Vikings, and in spite of the fact that we'd been paying Bush for his ability to use more than 300 years' worth of sophisticated and costly defenses--not all of them military--and which were not only penetrated but which seem to have gone unused if they weren't overlooked altogether.

Nations such as Poland should be skeptical of how much and what the United States can give them. We who are the US still have in place the same Congress of Vikings who were snookered by Bush into making war against a nation of strangers instead of trying him at least for criminal negligence.

Cameron Jones

Indiana, PA

Mr. Englehardt's article is long on insinuation and oft-heard critiques of the government's conduct in the wake of 9/11. It is short of clear what immediately presents as very direct answers to the portentious six great questions. These would be my responses:

1. The Administration approached the anthrax attack as a domestic law enforcement matter because it is a domestic law-enforcement matter and that was determined as soon as it was clear that the anthrax was government-issue; the continuous comparison of foreign persons in arms against the US on foreign soil to US criminal defendants won't wash; a Waffen SS trooper was a foreign combatant and didn't get nice US-type treament, whereas the full panoply of US protections were afforded to the Rosenbergs, however squalid the outcome--do you get now?

2. The military didn't take Fort Detrick by coup de main because, well, they already had it, no?; and the group of potential suspects were Americans, and, well, silliness aside, you know the rest; look at number 1, above;

3. Ah, you were finally onto something here; however, we do not know for sure that the government assumed from the outset that only one person was involved.

4. This one is pure nonsense; we really know nothing about secret military activities--they are secret, you see; we really don't know what happened, but we assume a bad guy or girl unleashed this stuff for a reason we don't know; yes, it's all disturbing, but I do love the point about a "conceptual" threat; is Keanu Reeves in the house?

5. And the best for last: was 9/11 the more important attacks of 2001?; please, such fatuousness amuses more than shocks at this point in the article. OK, we get it, you hate Bush, but must we park all sense with the hatcheck?

Steven Marshall

Eatontown, NJ