Jose Padilla, Dr. Bruce Ivins (inset)
With the recent apparent suicide of Army anthrax expert Dr. Bruce Ivins, the FBI appears to be ready to draw to a close their investigation of the anthrax attacks which terrorized America after 9/11 in September and October of 2001. The swirling controversies and seemingly bungled investigation of Dr. Ivins, and his death will likely fuel more questions and conspiracy theories than we will ever have any hope of shedding light upon... my thoughts here are probably not going to help.
I'm always interested in behavior and find that it is much more revealing of what is going on within a person’s, or for that matter a government’s collective head... submitted for your consideration, the case of one of Dr. Ivins supposed contemporaries, José Padilla, the infamous dirty bomber, arrested in May of 2002. After he was arrested, he was allegedly tortured through sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, enforced stress positions, and administered cocktails reportedly including LSD and PCP. By many accounts, six years of torture have left Mr. Padilla mentally incompetent...
We have in Mr. Padilla a man merely accused of preliminarily plotting something that by all accounts he never had the capacity to accomplish by any flight of fancy... subsequently wrongfully imprisoned and tortured for over six years.
If the FBI is to be believed, Dr. Ivins not only plotted but actually succeeded in killing five people and terrorizing an entire nation. Granted, it can be argued that they wound up spending about $6 million in recompense to the wrong guy, Dr. Hatfill, whom they chased for four years... but, again, if they are to be believed, they've been hot on the trail of Dr. Ivins for the last 18 months. Accounts from Dr. Ivins neighbors confirm that the "black SUVs" were well-known in the neighborhood for quite some time.
In summary, here's the irony, or massive cognitive dissonance, if you will:
Lightweight, inept plotter is swept up and tortured for six years; highly intelligent, successful mass murderer is closely observed for 18 months and subsequently commits suicide.
Not that I condone any form of torture or such behavior, but we are a country supposedly of equal rights... why, I wonder, were not Dr. Hatfill or Dr. Ivins simply thrown into a black SUV and rendered somewhere in the name of American safety and security? One could perhaps attempt to argue that they fell under the jurisdiction of the FBI, who, to their credit, has long expressed disdain for the torture that the Bush administration and other "agencies" have so eagerly adopted... but they investigated Padilla also.
Perhaps this is the point that I should produce the "race card card" and point out that Drs. Hatfill and Ivins are more equally white while Mr. Padilla has much darker skin?
Perhaps the two doctors were a little too smart and more intimidating to their pursuers?
Perhaps the FBI was simply trying to find out how deep Dr. Ivins rabbit hole went...
Perhaps this is all simply the consistently glaring incompetence of the Bush administration and what they've done to struggling intelligence agencies in their ongoing efforts to drown the federal government in a bathtub.
What do you trust, words and explanations, or behavior that you can observe with your own two eyes? If the FBI is to be believed and Dr. Ivins is a serial killer and terrorist, why was he allowed to roam free for 18 months... or seven years for that matter? Shouldn't the truth have been beaten out of him?