The Defense Department had a couple of anthrax scares this week in two of its mail rooms. Luckily, they turned out to be false alarms. The actual danger exposed, however, was how the Department of Defense mishandled the situation.

The Pentagon kept crucial branches of the government completely in the dark. The Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, were left out of the loop for hours. Local police weren’t told about the possible first incident until after the second incident was discovered.

Instead, the Pentagon decided to use an outside private contractor. The company they picked neglected to shut the mail system down, letting letters circulate before establishing things were safe. It also messed up the tests and came up with a false positive.

Fighting terrorism is no place for go-it-alone cowboys. The 9/11 Commission’s Report placed a large share of the blame for not stopping the attacks squarely on the lack of coordination between government agencies. On page 353 of the report, the commissioners stated: “Information was not shared … analysis was not pooled. Effective operations were not launched…. However the specific problems are labeled, we believe they are symptoms of the government’s broader inability to adapt how it manages problems.”

The key lesson: protecting America against terrorism takes coordination. The Department of Defense can’t go it alone.

Secretary Rice put on her kid gloves with Musharraf today:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday praised Pakistan’s progress in instituting democratic reforms leading to elections in 2007 and its cooperation in the war on terrorism.

“This is not the Pakistan of Sept. 11. It is not even the Pakistan of 2002,” Rice said at a news conference.

The top U.S. diplomat gave no indication that she pressed President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, about giving up his control of the armed forces, a longstanding U.S. demand.

Asked about Musharraf’s status, Rice declined to answer, focusing instead on the country’s move toward reform.

Rice is correct, Pakistan has changed since 2002. Here’s an update on the “democratic reforms” Musharraf has instituted recently, from the State Department’s Human Rights Report:

In December 2003, the National and Provincial Assemblies passed the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. The Amendment transfers a number of powers from the Office of Prime Minister to the President, affirms Musharraf’s presidency through 2007, sets the terms under which the President could dissolve the National Assembly, and exempts Musharraf from a prohibition on holding two offices of state until the end of the year, allowing him to remain as Chief of Army Staff. In October, over opposition protests, Parliament passed another bill that exploits a loophole in the Constitution to extend the exemption until 2007. The judiciary was nominally independent but remained subject to corruption and political pressure.

World leaders and development experts recoiled in unison at the prospect of neocon hawk Paul Wolfowitz running the World Bank. ThinkProgress catalogues their responses:

Government Officials

Sources close to the World Bank board said Wolfowitz’s name was informally circulated several weeks ago among the 23-member board, which represents the bank’s 184 member countries, and the reaction was made clear to U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow. “Mr. Snow knows that the reaction from the board was unfavorable,” one source said. “Mr. Wolfowitz’s nomination today tells us the U.S. couldn’t care less what the rest of the world thinks.” [Reuters]

Recalling Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s dismissive term for countries opposed to the war, German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said the “storm of enthusiasm in old Europe is muted.” [Bloomberg]

In Germany, Michael Mƒ¼ller, the Social Democrats’ deputy parliamentary leader, described the choice as “horrifying.” “Wolfowitz is a hawk who has repeatedly proved that he is a firebrand,” he went on. [Deutche Welle]

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