[Mb-civic] Bush military bird flu role slammed

[Mike Blaxill]

Bush military bird flu role slammed

Wednesday, October 5, 2005; Posted: 9:19 p.m. EDT
(01:19 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A call by President George W.
Bush for Congress to give him the power to use
the military in law enforcement roles in the
event of a bird flu pandemic has been criticized
as akin to introducing martial law.

Bush said aggressive action would be needed to
prevent a potentially disastrous U.S. outbreak of
the disease that is sweeping through Asian
poultry and which experts fear could mutate to
pass between humans.

Such a deadly event would raise difficult
questions, such as how a quarantine might be
enforced, the president said.

"I'm concerned about what an avian flu outbreak
could mean for the United States and the world,"
he told reporters during a Rose Garden news
conference on Tuesday.

"One option is the use of a military that's able
to plan and move," he said. "So that's why I put
it on the table. I think it's an important debate
for Congress to have."

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 bans the military
from participating in police-type activity on
U.S. soil.

But Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of
Columbia University's Mailman School of Public
Health and director of its National Center for
Disaster Preparedness, told The Associated Press
the president's suggestion was dangerous.

Giving the military a law enforcement role would
be an "extraordinarily Draconian measure" that
would be unnecessary if the nation had built the
capability for rapid vaccine production, ensured
a large supply of anti-virals like Tamiflu and
not allowed the degradation of the public health
system.

"The translation of this is martial law in the
United States," Redlener said.

And Gene Healy, a senior editor at the
conservative Cato Institute, said Bush would risk
undermining "a fundamental principle of American
law" by tinkering with the act, which does not
hinder the military's ability to respond to a
crisis.

"What it does is set a high bar for the use of
federal troops in a policing role," he wrote in a
commentary on the group's Web site. "That
reflects America's traditional distrust of using
standing armies to enforce order at home, a
distrust that's well-justified."

Healy said soldiers are not trained as police
officers, and putting them in a civilian law
enforcement role "can result in serious
collateral damage to American life and liberty."

People who catch the worst strain of avian flu
can die of viral pneumonia and acute respiratory
distress, according to mayoclinic.com.

The disease has killed tens of millions of birds
in Asia.

Last week, the U.N.'s health agency, the World
Health Organization, sought to ease fears that
the disease could kill as many as 150 million
people worldwide.

"We're not going to know how lethal the next
pandemic is going to be until the pandemic
begins," WHO influenza spokesman Dick Thompson
said, according to The Associated Press.

The consequences of an outbreak in the United
States need to be addressed before catastrophe
strikes, Bush said.

The president said he saw things differently than
he did as governor of Texas. "I didn't want the
president telling me how to be the commander in
chief of the Texas Guard," he said.

"But Congress needs to take a look at
circumstances that may need to vest the capacity
of the president to move beyond that debate. And
one such catastrophe or one such challenge could
be an avian flu outbreak."

Should avian flu mutate and gain the ability to
spread easily from human to human, world leaders
and scientists would need rapid access to
accurate information to be able to stem its
spread, he said.

"We need to know, on a real-time basis, the
facts, so the world's scientific community could
analyze the facts," he said.

Bush said he had spoken to Anthony Fauci,
director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases, about work towards a
vaccine, but that means of prevention remained a
distant hope.

"I take this issue very seriously," Bush said.
"I'm not predicting an outbreak, but just
suggesting to you we ought to be thinking about
it, and we are."

Absent an effective vaccine, public health
officials likely would try to stem the disease's
spread by isolating people who had been exposed
to it. Such a move could require the military, he
said.

"I think the president ought to have all options
on the table," Bush said, then corrected himself,
"all assets on the table -- to be able to deal
with something this significant."

Katrina lessons

Bush began discussing the possibility of changing
the law banning the military from participating
in police-type activity last month, in the
aftermath of the government's sluggish response
to civil unrest following Hurricane Katrina.

"I want there to be a robust discussion about the
best way for the federal government, in certain
extreme circumstances, to be able to rally assets
for the good of the people," he told reporters
September 26.

Last month, White House spokesman Scott McClellan
said Bush "wants to make sure that we learn the
lessons from Hurricane Katrina," including the
use of the military in "a severe,
catastrophic-type event."

"The Department of Defense would assume the
responsibility for the situation, and come in
with an overwhelming amount of resources and
assets, to help stabilize the situation,"
McClellan said.

The World Health Organization has reported 116
cases of avian flu in humans, all of them in
Asia. More than half of them have been fatal, it
said.

On Thursday, the Senate added $4 billion to a
Pentagon spending bill to head off the threat of
an outbreak of avian flu among humans. The bulk
of the money -- $3 billion -- would be used to
stockpile Tamiflu, an antiviral drug that has
proved effective against the H5N1 virus -- the
strain blamed for six deaths in Indonesia last
week.

U.S. health agencies have about 2 million doses
of Tamiflu, enough to treat about 1 percent of
the population. The money added by the Senate
would build that stockpile to cover about 50
percent of the population.

CNN's Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/05/bush.reax/index.html