Do We Believe These Guys?

When is WMD like BSE?

BSE = bovine spongiform encephalopathy, i.e., mad cow disease.

About WMD (weapons of mass destruction), the Bush Administration greatly exaggerated the threat to justify a war in Iraq.

About BSE, the Bush Administration is greatly minimizing the threat to our health, to win an election.

Sure we believe 'em. Yeah, right!

When the mad cow outbreak became news during Christmas, the chief veterinarian of the Bush Dept. of Agriculture warned that it could be days, weeks, or even months before his guys could trace where the cow came from. Then as if by magic, on Dec. 27th they were fingering Canada as the culprit and happy-talking about how all this presents no particular threat to human health. Secretary of Agriculture Anne Venneman had already cheerily announced she was serving beef for Christmas.

(Visions of the British agriculture minister years ago force-feeding a hamburger to his darling daughter to prove how safe British beef was, just prior to being proven tragically wrong on that boast!)

Discrepancies about the age of the diseased cow, between supposed U.S. records and Canadian records, doesn't exactly reassure us that they have even traced the right animal.

Bottomline: that diseased cow was slaughtered and her meat was delivered to the consuming public. And in that cow's herd were 73 other calves that presumably ate the same feed, and none of those 73 carcasses are accounted for. (Click here for the most recent update) And, far as we know, "mad cow disease has no cure. It has no preventive vaccine. Everyone who gets it dies, without exception, a gruesomely painful death."

But nobody's reporting that currently in the press. Nobody!

And we're expected to take the word of an administration that wants us to take in just a smidgen more arsenic in our drinking water, just a tiny bit more mercury in our air ... wants to relax every environmental reg in sight. Comes right down to it ... we don't believe a word out of their mouths!