DoD to 'augment civilian law' during pandemic or bioterror attack

[rec_report]

DoD to 'augment civilian law' during pandemic or bioterror attack 11 May 2007

Is Bush is getting ready to play the Bioterror Card? The GOP cannot steal an inevitable Democratic landslide in November 2008. Will the Bush regime continue its illegitimate rule and empire by implementing a full-blown police state, in the aftermath of an avian flu pandemic or (Bush-engendered) bioterror attack?

From the 'people' who brought you the response to Hurricane Katrina (blown levees): US military begins planning for avian flu pandemic 10 May 2007 The US military has begun to plan for a possible avian flu pandemic that could kill as many as three million people in the United States in as little as six weeks, a Pentagon planning document said. The Defense Department's "Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza," which was posted Wednesday on a Pentagon website, lays out guidelines and planning assumptions for US military services and combatant commands. Possible scenarios include US troops being called in to put down riots, guard pharmaceutical plants and shipments, and help restrict the movement of people inside the country and across its borders. "When directed by the president, DoD will provide support to civil authorities in the event of a civil disturbance," the document said."DoD will augment civilian law enforcement efforts to restore and maintain order in accordance with existing statutes." The military also may assist civil authorities in "isolating and/or quarantining groups of people in order to minimize the spread of disease during an influenza pandemic," it said. (Bye bye, Posse Comitatus! KBR's $385M detention center contract will be expanded and renewed.)

<snip>

Scientists Recreate 1918 Flu and See Parallels to Bird Flu --In 2005, U.S. Army scientists reconstructed Spanish flu virus by extracting genetic fragments from the bodies of victims exhumed from the Alaskan permafrost. 18 Jan 2007 Scientists infected monkeys with a virus that caused the 1918-19 influenza pandemic and said in the Jan. 18 issue of the journal Nature that it caused an illness like that suffered by patients with the bird flu now spreading in Asia.

Killer flu recreated in the lab 07 Oct 2004 UK Scientists have shown that tiny changes to modern flu viruses could render them as deadly as the 1918 strain which killed millions. A US team added two genes from a sample of the 1918 virus to a modern strain known to have no effect on mice. Animals exposed to this composite were dying within days of symptoms similar to those found in human victims of the 1918 pandemic.

Flu 'Oddities'

[havocmom]

1. I see cheney is getting very nervous

and not willing to go without taking the whole country with him

Bye bye Miss American pie....

[rec_report]

3. Good point about sociopath Cheney. n/t

[Kelly Rupert]

2. Seems reasonable enough.

Were there a serious (1918-style) flu pandemic, there would likely be mass chaos. People would be fleeing hotspots, afraid to engage with other people, and hoarding food and possible weapons. Civil disturbances would be possible, especially if police start fearing to go outside as well.

Were there to be a worst-case flu scenario, I would hope the government would consider bringing in soldiers to guard pharma plants/shipments, to prevent mass migration out of hotspots (therefore hastening the spread of disease and making it harder to locate people for aid), and to quell riots, exactly as the article states.

I don't really see anything here that's outside the ordinary for mass-disaster planning.

[Mojorabbit]

4. As much as I hate to say

it I agree too. We have not stockpiled enough supplies and have only an experimental vaccine that may or may not work. If we have a pandemic like 1918 the hospitals which are overwhelmed in ER's now on a normal night will be overrun. I can imagine scenarios of people with sick children not being able to get any care getting mighty upset.

Here is a video clip of what national sherrifs assoc had to say
http://www.new-fields.com/birdflu3/video_list.asp#
scroll down to the fifth clip

The table top exercise results reports from all over the world are not too encouraging on how it would play out. It would be Katrina but all over the world all at once.
The problem would be in getting things back to normal afterwards.

[rec_report]

6. The contractors who made a killing on 9/11, Iraq, and Katrina...

are going to be the same contractors who make a killing on an avian flu pandemic or a (Bush-engendered) bioterror attack.
Polar Bear

[rec_report]

5. It may not be 'outside the ordinary,' but can you imagine the...

Bush regime running the show during a bird flu pandemic?
Imagine the cronyism and incompetence of the Hurricane Katrina response, multiplied by one thousand.
Polar Bear

[Kelly Rupert]

7. So you think that

they're incompetent fools who couldn't put together a plan if their lives depended on it? Then wouldn't you welcome them showing some planning for once? And why do you fear a coup engineered by the keystone kops?

[rec_report]

8. I actually have a deeper, more sinister view on it. According the BBC,

The New York Times, and other mainstream sources, the US Army has been trying to recreate the 1918 flu. See: "Killer flu recreated in the lab," BBC News, 07 Oct. 2004,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3719990.stm
Now, you tell me why they would do that.
And please - don't say that al-Qaeda (al-CIAduh) might use avian flu as a bioweapon.
But, Kofi Annan, Russia, and Canada have all stated that bird flu could be synthesized in a lab and used as a bioweapon. It's the *US* that is working on the project. That's a fact.
Most of those articles have been pulled, but the summaries of the original items can be found here:
http://www.legitgov.org/flu_oddities.html
Bush is preparing to play the bioterror card. If he does, the neo-cons get *everything* on their wish list.
As to ethics: there is nothing beneath these 'people,' in terms of tactics that they would employ to secure their goals ($$$, power).
Polar Bear

[Kelly Rupert]

9. Biologists

have long been trying to determine what exactly made the 1918 flu so virulent. We still don't really know. If we don't know what caused it to be so contagious and so deadly, we won't have any idea how to go about fighting the next major influenza outbreak. Now, I haven't read anything about the Army being involved; the original Nature study in which this is published shows me Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the Public Health Agency of Canada (in Winnipeg), the WHO (in labs in the Netherlands), and Harvard Medical School, among others. Doesn't sound like a US Army plot to me. If the Army does contribute some resources or funding, of course, it would be because (as you said) someone might use it as a bioweapon, and to fight a virus or bacterium, you must have a viable sample of it.