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After 9/11 itself,
the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event
of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case
that they were actually more consequential.
The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country,
but in the absence of the anthrax attacks,
9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event.
It was really the anthrax letters -- with the first one sent on September 18,
just one week after 9/11 -- that severely ratcheted up the fear levels
and created the climate that would dominate in this country for
the next several years after. It was anthrax -- sent directly
into the heart of the country's elite political and media institutions,
to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt),
NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and other leading media outlets --
that created the impression that social order itself
was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.
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