A new anthrax vaccine refusal story, Army Times editorial and NYT article follow

[HARDCORE]

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Ohio National Guard Member Charged For Refusing Anthrax Vaccine
http://www.wcpo.com/news/2004/local/01/25/anthrax.html
Reported by: AP News
Web produced by: Neil Relyea
Photographed by: 9News
1/25/04 11:05:57 PM

An Ohio National Guard member has been charged by the Army with disobeying a lawful order after he again refused to take the anthrax vaccine....

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http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f...ER-2558997.php

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.p...ER-2558960.php

http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f...ER-2561850.php

http://www.marinetimes.com/story.php...ER-2559432.php

Issue Date: January 26, 2004
Editorial
Make vaccine voluntary


Five years after the Defense Department began forcing service members to roll up their sleeves for the anthrax vaccine, the battle over whether the shots are safe, effective or even legal still rages.

But there?s another question that gets far less attention: Has anyone reassessed the potential threat that prompted the vaccine program in the first place?

More than eight months after major combat operations ended in Iraq, U.S. officials have failed to find a single drop of the anthrax supposedly stockpiled by Saddam Hussein. In fact, the teams charged with searching for anthrax and other weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were pulled out and sent home Jan. 7.

The Army said then that anything worth finding had been found and, if necessary, destroyed.

Surely, if the legions of enemy combatants still fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan had such weapons, they would have used them against U.S. troops by now.

So why does DoD continue to force this vaccine on troops and to destroy their careers if they refuse? Is it fear that admitting there is little or no threat now might invite embarrassing questions about whether the threat ever existed?

Three years ago, when anthrax vaccine shortages forced defense officials to stop inoculating troops going to South Korea, they conveniently dropped that region from the Pentagon?s list of ?high-threat? areas. After that, it stopped publicly identifying any regions as being on its ?high-threat? list.

The Pentagon doesn?t say what the threat is. Rather, officials say, in effect, ?Take our word for it.? If only the Defense Department had a better track record on such matters of troop health and safety.

If defense officials won?t make a clearer case for why mandatory anthrax shots are necessary, then a fundamental revision of the program ? starting with making it voluntary ? is in order.

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EXCERPTS (from a long article)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/26/in.../26KAY.html?hp
C.I.A. Had Only Very Little Data on Iraqi Arms, Ex-Inspector Says
By JAMES RISEN
New York Times
January 26, 2004

WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 ? American intelligence agencies failed to detect that Iraq's unconventional weapons programs were in a state of disarray in recent years under the increasingly erratic leadership of Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A.`s former chief weapons inspector said in an interview late Saturday.

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The inspector, David A. Kay, who led the government's efforts to find evidence of Iraq's illicit weapons programs until he resigned on Friday, said the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies did not realize that Iraqi scientists had presented ambitious but fanciful weapons programs to Mr. Hussein and had then used the money for other purposes....



...Mr. Kay said analysts had come to him, "almost in tears, saying they felt so badly that we weren't finding what they had thought we were going to find ? I have had analysts apologizing for reaching the conclusions that they did." ...



...Mr. Kay said that based on his team's interviews with Iraqi scientists, reviews of Iraqi documents and examinations of facilities and other materials, the administration was also almost certainly wrong in its prewar belief that Iraq had any significant stockpiles of illicit weapons....



...While it is possible Iraq kept developing "test amounts" of chemical weapons and was working on improved methods of production, he said, the evidence is strong that "they did not produce large amounts of chemical weapons throughout the 1990's."

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Regarding biological weapons, he said there was evidence that the Iraqis continued research and development "right up until the end" to improve their ability to produce ricin. "They were mostly researching better methods for weaponization," Dr. Kay said. "They were maintaining an infrastructure, but they didn't have large-scale production under way."