and the anthrax case over at Ace, here and here.
No scientist, am I. I do tend to agree with Ace, that
To suggest that this silly shit constitutes evidence of any sort makes me doubt the strength of the rest of their case. If they're offering this nonsense as evidence, how strong can the rest of their evidence really be?
I always operate on the assumption that no one offers weak "evidence" if they have strong evidence at hand, and if they're offering the weak stuff, well, that must mean they don't have anything much stronger than that.
Which, as he says, makes the rest of the stuff suspect.
2 comments:
The evidence I've seen so far seems plausible enough to justify a criminal trial. In particular, the DNA evidence provides a rather reliable connection between the mailed anthrax and a particular batch at USAMRIID. Yes, the evidence is circumstantial, but even a witness stand confession is circumstantial (false memories). The FBI seems to have done tolerably decent police work.
The trouble is that convictions are mostly irrelevant in this matter. It was an act of war! The priority should have been protecting our strategic interest by preventing future attacks. Instead what we got is:
1. The precious information in Bruce Ivins' mind is lost forever. His accomplices and caches are lost to us.
2. The folks at USAMRIID are thoroughly scared and disillusioned. Ivins cannot now exonerate them so their situation will not improve rapidly.
3. Our enemies have received a reverse profiling lesson: how to create an investigation target that the FBI can't bring themselves to let go of. Anybody named Bruce Hatfill should just kill themselves now.
4. Should the anthrax attacks resume, this exercise will have been a pooch-screw of Soviet proportions. With severe political consequences at a time when we need a trustworthy FBI (financial prosecutions).
It may well have been solid enough to convince a jury in a fair trial; indeed, he might well have been guilty.
As you say, if he was guilty, his death lost a lot of information. And his death, from the sound of it, was at least partly due to the feebs pushing him-and his family, which can be worse to a lot of people- too hard, and from the sound of it for stupid reasons.
And if he wasn't guilty...
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