Remember yesterday when I spoke about the threat of smallpox?

Well, it seems Josh has once again beaten me to the punch.

My sources put me on to this a few days before the German stories broke.

Most of the conversation we had was about a certain island (that isn't an island anymore--you know, that research project of mine this summer?) in the Aral Sea and a 1971 outbreak of smallpox in Aralsk. Some claim that this strain of smallpox has made its way to the Iraqis. I'm going to post on this a bit more, later.

First I want to address the ramifications of this development. I think Schroeder is going down. The time is not long. This may be the catalyst for his downfall. I also think this will shame the Germans into backing us up with the war effort in Iraq and go a long way towards changing some German public opinion. The diplomatic maneuvers that we've been seeing the last few days seem to point this way.

What suprises me more than anything is the perfidy of the Schroeder government here. I would have been screaming at the top of my lungs if Bush had done something like this (oh, wait, he has--remember North Korea). Just so no one gets the idea that there are double standards around here, this kind of behavior is shameful--for any government. Holding back material information before an election is just plain wrong, not to mention dumb.

I think I may have been wrong about the motives of the Schroeder government. It depends upon what else emerges.

Clearly quite a few people in Germany were effected by Rumsfeld's threat. Are any other leaks forthcoming?