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Date Posted: 09:48:20 10/05/05 Wed
Author: Mary
Subject: Military may have to help if bird flu breaks out

Subject: Bush: Military may have to help if bird flu breaks out

CNN.com
Tuesday, October 4, 2005; Posted: 10:31 p.m. EDT

Bush: Military may have to help if bird flu breaks out
President wants Congress to discuss how to use armed
forces

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush said Tuesday that the
possibility of an avian flu pandemic is among the reasons
he wants Congress to give him the power to use the
nation's military in law enforcement roles in the United
States.

"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.

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

"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."

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 that he sees 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 has spoken with Anthony Fauci, director of
the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,
about work toward a vaccine, but that means of prevention
remains 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."

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

Bush began discussing the possibility of changing the law
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.

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."

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.

Copyright 2005 CNN. Associated Press contributed to this
report.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/04/bush.avianflu/index.html

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