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.)

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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'