Federation vs. Empire:Worse Underbelly?

[NecronLord]

If anything, I expect the death of the founders would make every Jem'Hadar everywhere gear their ships up for the seventy thousand light year journey to clobber the scum in the Alpha Quadrant, even if they couldn't navigate the wormhole. If Voyager can try it, they can. And with nothing to do but punish, I expect they'd at the very least blow up Sol (the Dominion did have a trilithium weapon at some stage IIRC) when they arrived.

[Darth Wong]

Oh for fuck's sake, they didn't have any hard evidence, but they had plenty of circumstantial evidence. They got infected by some kind of bioweapon while they were at war with the Federation! Is that supposed to be coincidental? The fact that they were obviously focused on finding a cure rather than proving the Federation did it (as if they would bother with some kind of elaborate police-style investigation) does not mean they would not have blamed the Federation and instructed their attack dogs to act accordingly if they died out.

They would have had to know that they became infected before the war began since the female Founder on Cardassia was infected, and she'd been cut off from the rest of the Founders in the Gamma Quadrant since before the war began.

It's possible they would link the Federation to the disease, but up until the end of the series they hadn't done that. So if it's such an obvious conclusion to draw and they had at least a half years knowledge about the disease, why didn't we ever hear them say they suspected the Federation or anyone else of causing it? Nothing in their war plans seemed guided by getting answers from the Federation about the disease. It looks like they just didn't link the Federation to it at all.

So? The show didn't really mention anything whatsoever that they were doing with regard to the disease, because it was focused on the Federation. Does this mean they were just passively waiting to die? The fact is that if they don't win the war, they can't exactly force the Federation to give them a cure, can they? And why would they even assume the Federation has a cure at all? It's not as if the act of creating a bioweapon naturally involves the ability to make an antidote.

[The Nomad]

Section 31 had modified Odos test results to cover up the fact that they had infected him. If not for Bashirs genetically enhanced mind, he would have never realized the coverup.

Bashir did just isolate the virus when he analyzed a sample of Odo in order to research dial-an-organ therapeutic goo, and calculated Odo's viral count, then derived his date of infection from available data. It was all done IIRC with a few instructions to the computer (indicating that it's well within their standard abilities), and there is zero proof that Bashir alone could have done it.

No one outside Section 31 knew about this until Bashir figured it out and he told everyone.

Bashir had access to samples of infected Founder goo, which is more that we can say for 100% of the Galaxy save the Dominion itself. It's hardly surprising that he found out, and in no way indicates that his supergenius abilities were the cause of discovery. As Darth Wong said, there is a compelling amount of evidence that points out to Odo being the cause of the infection. Odo who, surprise, lives on a Federation station, and has been in Starfleet's headquarters at least once.

[NecronLord]

For that matter, there's not much reason to think Bashir is any better than Vorta scientists. What with the Dominion extensively employing genetic engineering to improve its servants, and being of a generally higher technology level.