Biodefense weapons?

As Ebola is a hot item in the news these days,  this piece seems appropriate.
According to the review below, it looks like Dr. Graeme MacQueen of McMaster University has written a fascinating book on the Anthrax incidents following the 9/11 attacks.

Janet Phelan writing at NEO:
US Biodefense: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. 

 ...However, the book claims that the purpose of the anthrax letters was to compel Congress to pass the USA PATRIOT Act does not, to my thinking, provide an adequate explanation for the U.S. government’s covert involvement in these attacks. As MacQueen himself admits, both Senators Leahy and Daschle were already standing behind the passage of the PATRIOT Act even before their offices received the spore-laden letters.

The USA PATRIOT Act, passed by Congress and signed into law on October 26, 2001, did indeed change the face of America.  The resultant NSA surveillance scandals are, however, only one aspect of the changes wrought by this piece of legislation. MacQueen fails to mention the relevant Section 817 of the USA PATRIOT Act—The Expansion of the Biological Weapons Statute—in which the US changed its existing biological weapons statute to give itself immunity from violating its own biological weapons laws. The implications of this alteration cannot be emphasized enough.

And while MacQueen mentions in passing that a U.S. Commission stated that a “serious bioterrorism event” was expected by the end of 2013, MacQueen does not detail the chorus of insiders—including U.S. Senators, members of the Department of Homeland Security, vaccine manufacturers and high ranking officers in the US military—who have also made this exact, disturbing prediction. There is reason to believe that such predictions point to another bioweapons attack, and this evidence of fore- knowledge deserves further scrutiny.

Equally, MacQueen only provides mention that the U.S. has pumped $70 billion into a “biodefense” program in the ten year period from 2001 to 2011. MacQueen fails to question the nature of this shadowy “biodefense” program, which many commentators now consider to be a covert offensive (weapons) program.

These are concerns which go directly to the question of motive behind the anthrax attacks. If it is true that the U.S. government used the anthrax attacks—indeed, launched the anthrax attacks– in order to ramp up a highly illegal and covert program of biological warfare, then the entire world has been put at grave risk.

Rather than following the “bug” trail, MacQueen chooses to focus on Bush’s decision to withdraw from the (nuclear) ABM treaty, announced in December of 2001, thus giving weight to a potential nuclear agenda and threat. By choosing to place his focus here, MacQueen in effect drops the ball right before the goal......