Excuse these paranoic outpourings, but to paraphrase George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove, "I smell a big, fat neocon rat!"

After an increasingly disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq, with nary a weapon of mass destruction to be found, but lots and lots and lots of old-fashioned weapons of individual destruction, and with a three-year-old case of domestic terrorism-by-Anthrax still unbelievably unsolved, and rather astonishly unmentionable by the media, suddenly neocon-in-chief Paul Wolfowitz has intelligence about an impending - and oh so timely - anthrax attack on the way.

Now won't that rally the doubters on the homefront! "By George, Martha, G.W. was right all along! That Saddam fellow must have been the terrorist behind those anthrax-laced letters to Leahy and Daschle!"

Also be aware the author of the book “Vaccine A” published Oct 2004 alleges that: “The two-fold serial dilution of squalene, Tulane’s antibodies, the autoimmune diseases in troops that are known [to follow] injection with oil adjuvants, and the dramatic rise in adverse reactions to the vaccine in the 1990s — specifically allergic and autoimmune reactions — all point to an experiment with an oil adjuvant that the Army has been using in its new anthrax vaccine from 1987 to the present day....” An Army Times article reported that: "Some members of the 436th Airlift Wing at Dover Air Force Base, Del., received anthrax shots from one of the lots found to contain squalene.

The wing’s former commander, retired Air Force Col. Felix Grieder, temporarily halted Dover’s vaccination program in 1999. In an interview, he said the scientific evidence points to experimentation and called for an independent investigation."

http://www.armytimes.com/print.php?f=1-213079-474330.php

In a just world many members of the Bush administration would be in jail or swinging from a rope. I'd gladly kick the chair from beneath any of them.

The problem is that there is no evidence of a statistically-significant link between anthrax vaccination and medical disorders; nor is there any consensus on whether anti-squalene antibodies are themselves pathogenic; or even if they were caused by exposure to squalene within the vaccines. Furthermore, the use of MF59 in Europe without reported adverse effects casts doubts upon the squalene-contamination theory.

In other words, there's no reliable data to make decisions with at this time. Now, I'm of the opinion that the vaccine shouldn't be used until the FDA has followed proper procedures in vetting it, and I don't buy Rumsfeld's/Wolfowitz's argument that national security compels the forced vaccination of troops, any more than I bought that argument during Clinton. But without anything firmer than anecdotal evidence of problems, I think there is only a legal, not medical, argument to be made against administration.

Steve,WB,

Is anybody making money off this deal, if so, who? I'm kinda wondering where's the fire, or perhaps as DK suggests the purpose is to create some smoke to obscure George The Second's Iraq debacle.

Is the vaccine made by a company owned by one connected with the administration? That should be an easy question to answer.

Yes, I'm with S Brennan and slothrop. Any journalist worth his salt would at least follow the money and report on the money trail . . .

Steve - you may not be an expert on the anthrax vaccine program but I am (see my web site at http://www.armchairgeneralist.typepad.com). At the least, you and the other readers here should examine the DOD's side at http://www.anthrax.osd.mil. Here are some facts:

Anthrax is the number 1 BW agent of choice for any country with a BW program, and there are at least a half dozen countries that have it. It's easily weaponized, very lethal, can be stored for a long time, disperses well on the battlefield, and is very hardy and persistent. It is the megaton bomb of the BW sector.

If you become infected with inhalation anthrax, you have about 48-72 hours tops to be treated. If you aren't treated BEFORE signs and symptoms emerge, you die. Period. Remember the first postal worker that was infected in Oct 01? He went to the hospital complaining of flu-like symptoms, etc, and was on the news when he was diagnosed for anthrax. I turned to my wife and said, "see that guy? He's a walking dead man." He died less than 24 hours later.

The FDA is on record as saying the current vaccine is safe and effective no matter the route of anthrax exposure (cutaneous or pulmunary). By Jan 2004, more than 3.7 million doses were given to more than 1 million personnel. Yes there are side effects, but very low compared to any other vaccine - smallpox vaccine, for instance, has the potential side effect of DEATH for a small percentage of users. Even the vaccine for lyme disease has more serious side effects, and yet people use it. 18 human safety studies, seven independent reviews, including the National Review Council's Institute of Medicine.

Let's be clear about who's going to court. There are those individuals that have actually had serious side effects (and do the math, please - even if there are a hundred cases (and it's far smaller), that's 1 in 10,000 vaccinated cases), and there are those that haven't received the vaccine and are deliberately defying military orders. Most of the court cases are the latter, and most are AF reservists that are afraid their commercial pilot licenses will be in jeopardy. These are not patriots or people concerned with the welfare of their compatriots.

Look at the IoM study, "The Anthrax Vaccine: Is It Safe? Does It Work?" from the National Academy Press. Once you read the true facts and not the junk science that this federal judge has swallowed, if you have any other questions, contact me. But this fear-mongering should stop. Anthrax is a real threat, and we need to focus on that even if you (and I) don't like the current DOD leadership. Don't forget the vaccination program started in 1998 under Clinton... only after a 3 year intense study on other options.

BTW, the sole manufacturer of anthrax vaccine adsorbed (AVA, the military vaccine) is BioPort, a private company in Michigan. They bought the company in 1998 from Michigan Biologic Products Institute. One of the members of the board was ADM (retired) William Crowe, former Chairman of the JCS and Clinton/Kerry supporter.

Right now, the Bush administration's BioShield program is pumping nearly a billion dollars into VaxGen for millions of doses of its untested anthrax vaccine, which may be available for distribution in 2006. Maybe you could focus some vitrol against them...

Don't be a freeper! (see http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b12516e4594.htm)

Seems to me this back in forth on whether or not the shot should be taken goes to the issue of trust. Do the soldiers trust the military leadership to give them the straight dope on whether or not the shot is save or not? sounds to me like a lot of people in uniform ain't all that trusting.

Whose fault is that?

Where mistrust lives; fear-mongering results...

oops! the military leadership's credibility is showing...like a cheap slip on a call girl. Haha

Just the other day I was talking to my son about a news story. One politician was saying one thing about an issue and another (Democrat) claimed the exact opposite. My son said he couldn't tell who was lying. I told him I could not either. He asked how men could lie with such ease; "PRACTICE" I told him. These men have lots of practice in lying.

Is the anthrax save or not? Who knows because there are too many well practiced lairs at work...
They are a disgrace to my generation but we deserve these clowns; they are only giving us what we (the majority in the electorate ask for) we want to have our own hypocracy spewed back at us so we feel like good people.

I'm not at all sure why slapping a Dem name of something makes it more trustworthy.

Steve put a personal face on this issue (Paul Wolfowitz’s face to be specific).

In the spirit of the holiday season, it might be nice to share a bit of Wolfowitzian gossip that everyone inside the Beltway already knows, but that might bring cheer to far-flung readers in locales where the capital gossip arrives late.

Paul’s main squeeze is a distinguished Arab divorcee who is a bit younger than he is. He shares his pillow-talk visions for a new Middle East with the elegant Ms Shaha Ali Riza, a senior World Bank staffmember.

Shaha was born in Tunis, grew up in Saudi Arabia and holds an international relations masters degree from St Anthony’s College, Oxford, so she can hold her own with the Cornell and Chicago trained Mr Wolfowitz.

Shaha is known about town here as a keen supporter of Paul’s transformational vision for the Arab World, although this writer hasn’t encountered any inside info on Ms Ali Reza’s thoughts about Anthrax.
****JohnStuart

two questions:

How did she get out of Saudi? Did she give him any inside baseball how the chaos in Iraq could have been prevented?

If you are interrested in the "money trail", one needs to look no further than The Carlyle Group (investors include Frank Carlucci, John Major, and George HW Bush), who owns a signifigant portion of bioport stock. Another interresting google topic is "Admiral William J. Crowe", a 22.5% shareholder whom also happened to be the Government's Signatory on the origional contract awarding Bioport the sole contract to produce AVA.

Anthrax production would be dangerous and pose as great a potential threat to people making and deploying it as it would to American troops in Iraq. Collateral damage to Iraqis (unvaccinated?) would be horrendous. No way it could be used in an urban setting. The contamination would be difficult to clean up. The insurgents want to force the US out of Iraq. Pissing in their drinking water is not a viable strategy. The Iraq terrorists don't seem to need to resort to anthrax. They are creating plenty of terror with videos of hacking off heads with a dull knife and blowing up people with the looted plastic explosives we forgot to guard. Why go to all the trouble of producing anthrax and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and maybe themselves to kill a few US soldiers when car bombs and IEDs seem to be just as effective with a lot less effort?

The risk that anthrax would be used against US troops has to be pretty darn low. Any government that produced anthrax and delivered it to terrorists would be subject to retaliation and international war crimes, because the numbers of dead innocent civilians would be staggering.

One wonders why the US military is messing around with this anthrax crap. Everyone seems to think that the anthrax attacks after 911 came from our own MF military bio weapons labs. We are apparently victims of blowback from our own MF program. The military geniuses make all this crap that they never use and it does not occur to them that this crap is a threat to our own population. Nuke waste from weapons production contaminates, SC, WA, CO and who knows where else. Our military geniuses are sitting on tons of nerve gas that they don't know how to dispose safely. It is costing hundreds of thousands PER DAY and is more of a threat to citizens here in the USA than it ever was to foreign enemies. WTF Our military geniuses are wasting 10s of Billions of dollars on missile defense that does not work when everyone knows that terrorists are much more likely to use a shipping container than a missile. No one would dare launch a missile at the US because they and their country would not exist tomorrow. So why are we wasting all this money on anthrax vaccines and missile defense when the threat is from shipping containers and IEDs?

As for vaccines, are they necessary? (see above). Any vacciine is going to have side effects. All vaccines cause some health problems in some people. However, we accept this because the number of diseases and deaths prevented by the vaccine far outweighs the few injuries that do result. This is true for polio, DPT, tetanus, etc. So why risk the health of our soldiers to guard against an unlikely threat like anthrax and let them get blown up in unarmored trucks and Humvees?

Bakho:

Calm down a minute. This anthrax vaccine request is not being made because DOD thinks Iraqi insurgents are going to use it. There are other nation states besides Russia and USA that can and do make this stuff, safely and efficiently. They do it because it's nasty stuff and in many cases, their neighbor-states are making it.

Re: Oct 01 anthrax, that was not "blow-back" from US stocks, the first few letters were crude stuff, then he/she got better. Focus on the Unibomber profile for a more likely candidate. Re: "military geniuses sitting on tons of nerve gas that they don't know how to dispose of safely" is just wrong. The particular incineration technology used at Johnston Island, Tooele, Anniston, and Umatilla works just great, it's Congress and a few nutso activist groups that are preventing safe destruction of the chemical weapons.

As for vaccines vs IED protection, why does it have to be either or? You need six shots over 18 months to get full protection, then annual boosters, and that has to be done for the entire deployable force, at least those in "high threat" areas. That's why Wolfie wants to get back on track. You might as well ask "why 12 aircraft carriers? why Joint Strike Fighter? why not spend that money on armor kits?" The armor kits are being built and sent out, which is more than what can be said about the poorly-understood anthrax vaccine.

I'm not sure that anthrax is the "megaton" bomb threat that another poster stated.

Environmental conditions (such as rain and wind) make it an imprecise weapon to deploy on a large scale. A shell can be filled and fired, but because of the incubation period (48-72 hours, as stated above) it has limited tactical battlefield value.

I assume that the military has monitoring tools in place to identify whether or not a biological weapons attack is taking place. If one were to happen, area troops could be evacuated for evaluation and treatment before symptoms manifested themselves.

I have difficulty thinking of a scenario where anthrax could be effectively deployed on such a scale where a sizeable portion of target troops would require medical aid. With the resources of the US military I cannot think of a likely opponent who would have adequate control of a portion of the battlespace to be able to deliver a chemical or biological weapon.

Anthrax's use as a weapon is best illustrated with the attack on the Senate. Concentrated exposure (via a powder-filled envelope) will result in death within days, as the above poster pointed out.

It seems to me that it is an effective weapon for individual attacks where the target is unprepared and unprotected (essentially terrorist attacks). I don't see why we must inoculate the entire military for such a limited threat. A more cost-effective approach to mitigating the risk would be in agent detection and accelerated treatment for affected troops.

Other chemical weapons such as mustard gas do have an immediate tactical impact. However, their utility is limited because if they were to be deployed on a vast scale they are just as likely to affect the attacker as well as the attacked.

Iraq's use of chemical weapons against its Kurdish citizens and Iranian Revolutionary Guards while horrific never reached the "mass" scale (i.e. tens of thousands of victims from a single attack - Hallabja required multiple air sorties over days, for example, and resulted in perhaps 5000 deaths).

Depending on the biological weapon used, delivery can become even more difficult. An infectious agent needs to be introduced into the target population. This may be possible in a terrorist scenario, but it is highly unlikely that troops would allow an enemy to walk up and sneeze on them, for example. A less facetious example would be a shell filled with an ebola-like virus. But just because the shell is delivered does not necessitate infection amongst the target.

This is not to minimize the risk, but as with anthrax it is more effective to monitor for signs of infection and have treatment (including quarantine) ready.

The threat from chemical and biological weapons is at its most acute in the sphere of terrorism, not conventional warfare.

Biological and chemical weapons are NOT weapons of mass destruction of the same caliber as nuclear weapons. While one vial of some horrible substance may be enough to wipe out thousands, there still remains the problem of a reliable delivery system. The best way to mitigate that threat is to have freely available medical care.

One warhead really can wipe out millions and the delivery systems are well-tested. That is a weapon of mass destruction.

I can only guess as to why the administration has spent so much time and effort on the danger of anthrax. I suppose it has something to do with maintaining the fiction that Iraq really was a "gathering threat".

Al, the army was all set to start disposal last fall, then they found out that their VX had a different stabilizer than the one they thought they had and it would take them additional time to do each batch. This is a significant delay. The cost estimate is $300,000+ PER DAY for every day that they delay. This is just a stupid waste of money.

Here is what the army says:
http://www.cma.army.mil/map.aspx

Tests: Spill Did Not Contain VX (Thank God)
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2372013

Waste may contain traces of VX
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2397466

This is not environmental whacko stuff. This is a serious complicated chemical engineering process that cannot afford a SNAFU like Bhopal.

Al,
I don't care who makes the anthrax stuff. Any country that attacks another country with bioweapons deserves to have its leaders tried as war criminals and their country bombed in retaliation. In the US incident, it was the press, the Post Office and some innocent people that got hit, not the military.

Then there was attack on the Senate. Do Senators all have anthrax vaccines? What about the general population? I think you go with a treaty to ban the stuff period.

Why do you want the government to waste my tax dollars on unnecessary Pentagon boondoggles? Are we any safer spending $450 billion/y on our military today than when we were only spending $300 Billion/y? Do you feel $150 Billion safer today? I don't.

To vietjim:

I agree that CB weapons are not WMDs, my reference to anthrax was that it was the premier BW agent existing - much more deadly than tularemia, brucellosis, SEB toxin, etc. Persistent, very lethal, good dispersion, just excellent as an operational weapon. No one uses BW agents for tactical purposes, but they can impact the theater of operations. Point is that IF anthrax vaccination was voluntary and, say North Korea popped it over the DMZ, there would either have to be a massive logistics push to get the vaccine - not cipro, a temporary fix - to the affected troops, or they would have to evac within 24 hours to the rear. Not an optimal situation.

The US and former Soviet Union had done lots of weapons tests with agent and simulant - weather aside, CB weapons can be very effective with modern delivery systems (as opposed to how well they worked in WW I).

Bakho - I am very very familiar with the chem demil program, I do some work for it in DC. The Newport facility IS a wacko environmentalist issue, the only reason it is behind schedule is because a small group of "no emissions" activists that hate any form of incineration, no matter how safe (and yes there are monitors that detect to EPA levels all over the place) got Congress to force the Army to go to an "alternative technology" of neutralization. This alt tech will actually cost more and develop more waste products while not being safer than incineration.

It is a stupid and criminal waste of money that ignores science facts and established engineering processes, but Congress said "do it" and the Army must comply. I agree with you on the size of the defense budget, but there are other, more appropriate targets to aim for rather than this anthrax vaccine. DOD spends about $50 mill a year, maybe, on production. That's a rounding error for OSD. Aim higher, go for the Cold War projects and the many many bases being held open by politicians. About a third of that budget is infrastructure costs, a third is paying for military personnel, and a third for R&D and procurement. Pick your target.

Has anthrax ever been used in warfare? Just asking.

Perhaps the analogous superweapon is nuclear missiles. Anthrax as deterrent of actual CBW. So then the vaccine is analogous to all those moments I spent under my desk in elementary school...

As for the FDA's seal of approval giving me confidence, wait while I get done throwing away all my COX2 painkillers and I'll get back to you on that one.

Al, what's the word behind the rush towards VaxGen, anyway? After all, Vical's bivalent DNA vaccine is doing well in animal trials, and AVANT has, if I recall, an injectable vaccine in human trials and an oral vaccine in development. All of these seem, from what I've seen, to be varying combinations of [safer|more convenient|more effective] than the VaxGen stuff.

In any case, I suspect that our troops in the SE Asian theater are in far more danger from H5N1 than anthrax (It's pantropic! It's zoonotic! You can't incubate it! It's avian flu!). If BioShield is to be our biological defense initiative, I fear for our future.

Al, no matter how they finally destroy the nerve gas at Newport, the point is that they never should have made it in the first place. The US could never have used it because of the political costs. The expense is ridiculous and the threat to the US population is unacceptable. Incineration would be a better option IF the incineration were done in a remote location. Incineration is fine as long as nothing goes wrong. However, the consequences of something going wrong during incineration would be greater than an accident during neutralization. Incineration in a remote location is not an option because transportation would be far riskier than either incineration on site or neutralization. At any rate, what is done is done. The faster they get started destroying the nerve gas, the safer we all will be.

The military has some of the worst toxic waste dumps in the US and a terrible environmental record. The military needs to scrutinize its programs according to a cost benefit analysis that includes harm or potential harm to its own citizens of pursuing some technologies.

I would make the same argument against anthrax production in the US (although the small amounts would be much easier to destroy.) US support for research futhers the knowledge of its use and makes use more likely. Despite efforts to keep some knowledge secret, it can leak out. At the minimum knowledge of how to weaponize anthrax, developed by our military has leaked even if the anthrax itself was not stolen.

IF NK were to lob anthrax over the DMZ, it would be shooting war anyway with massive bombing of NK. NK would be forced to vaccinate all their troops and vaccinate any civilians that were to occupy the DMZ for a long time to come. Scorched earth is not a good tactic for them. Even if all military personnel were vaccinated, lobbing anthrax into the DMZ would create a civilian crisis and cripple logistics. Vaccination is not the deterrent. Retaliation is the deterrent.

Aunt Deb - funny thing is with the exception of the Japanese military in 1936, BW agents have never been used in war (and the Japanese use was fairly ineffective). Its ability to cover large areas with a delayed effect does make it an operational weapon that is almost equivalent to a tactical nuke, but much quieter... I think no one uses anthrax, smallpox or plague as weapons (although many nations have developed them) because the nukes are there for retaliation. I think also many people forget there are other BW agents that are not lethal but have military applications out there that would not result in a nuclear exchange. My view is that these countries develop CBW agents to counter their aggressive neighbors more than to counter the U.S. or Russia.

Watchful, I don't have a good insight on BioShield other than to say its products are intended for the general public and not the military. I have heard nothing good about DHHS and its ability to manage vaccine production (they have zero experience in other than giving out grants). My view is that BioShield was a kneejerk reaction to show there was "something" substantial being done for homeland security. Many talking heads preach that bioterrorism is the biggest HLS threat and there isn't enough being done, but it's all rhetoric and little productive analysis. All the billions being poured into BioShield and BioWatch are wasted effort to try to get "something" in place right now, when much more could be done with other efforts and energy. I bet VaxGen got their funding through good political connections and snazzy brochures and promises, but I don't know.

Bakho buddy we will have to agree to disagree. The chem demil program and why the U.S. developed CB weapons is more complex than a blind "we should have never built them and besides CB weapons are stupid" argument. May I recommend two books, "Chemical-Biological Warfare: A Reference Handbook" by ABC-Clio and "Chemical Demilitarization: Public Policy Aspects" by Praeger Publishers.

Al, One reason for the ban on above ground nuke testing was that we were contaminating our own country. The French were busy contaminating the South Pacific. The Russians contaminated whole cities. The British contaminated the seas. There are mechanisms that do not lead to producing this crap. They are called treaties. Treaties importantly protect us from ourselves as well as from our enemies.

makes you long for global thermonuclear war.

so clear.

we all go. incandescently. instantly.

if we can just start it in all the capitals of the fascist globe...washington, london, riyadh, moscow, beijing, tel aviv.

Albert - you forgot Paris and Berlin. And don't forget Warsaw.

P.S.: To all others - the above is facetious.

dyncorp makes an anthrax vaccine. i would guess they are the ones behind the push. http://educate-yourself.org/vcd/vcdanthraxvaclabyrinth16oct01.shtml

My son had the anthrax vaccine and now has a autoimmune disease called vasculitis. It's kind of like lupus and attacks your organs. He had to have part of his intestine taken out, his kidneys failed and he was on dialysis for 9 months. He knees won't bend either and he just had a high risk surgey done by Mayo Clinic to try to get them to bend. Al, don't you tell me about the anthrax vaccine - our family has been thru hell for the last 2 years - you are a jerk. Bioport, Walter Reed Vacine Center, the Military, and all kinds of doctor and scientists call us all the time. They are worried and my son is not the only one - I really dislike people like you that think you know everything. My son is only 24 years old and the VA ruled he is 100% disabled for life.