Although Vice President Dick Cheney recently warned Prime Minister Tony Blair to prepare Britain for possible smallpox attacks, I can't tell you for sure if Iraq's Saddam Hussein or other lowlifes have a basic load of the stuff. Or if those fanatic fruitcakes have sleepers deployed in the USA standing ready, on order, to spread that deadly plague in our subways, malls, movie theaters and other fun places.
But my military-trained mind and almost six decades of experience fighting and writing about terrorism lead me to make these assumptions:
- There could well be smallpox virus in place – packed by Muslim martyr-mules brainwashed like the 9-11 kamikazes or the Palestinian bombers – to kill still more infidels in the get-the-Christians-and-Jews crusade. Think that's impossible? If 1 percent of 1 percent of all the cocaine smuggled into the USA during the past six months were weaponized smallpox, that would be enough to wipe out millions.
- Terrorist leadership either has smallpox stock or is busily developing it along with other weapons of mass destruction and will use them just as gleefully as Saddam employed chemical weapons on the Kurds.
It's a fact that Soviet scientists produced barrels of smallpox in powder form – and folks, much as I hate to alarm you, a lot of it is AWOL, along with several of the Doctor Dooms who made it. It's also a fact that deep-pocketed haters like Osama bin Laden have long had WMD on their shopping lists, and that our new best friend Russia provided two of Dubya's evil-empire rogue states – Iraq and North Korea – with its favorite smallpox recipe in the 1990s.
True, George Bush has prudently spent millions of our bucks buying gallons of smallpox vaccine, but be warned that the Washington Beltwayites are now hotly debating when, if ever, we roll up our sleeves. It's scary that these self-appointed experts are deciding if you and I should be inoculated, and if a national vaccination program outweighs the risk of a smallpox attack, which most of these wonders in their infinite wisdom consider low. In the months ahead, these pass-the-buck pols and civil servants are planning public meetings to see how the average Joe and Jane feel about it all – if they can break away from their discussion groups long enough to follow through.
These are the same Big Brother types who couldn't get it right over a few cases of anthrax last September – pieces of work who initially said the poor soul in Florida who was the first to die from anthrax got it from drinking stream water. Bet on it – Health honcho Tommy Thompson and his whiz kids will screw up a vaccination program faster than you bought Cipro.
There are countless layers of government functionaries committed to allowing little, if anything, to be done fast and efficiently. If a kid were drowning in a neighbor's swimming pool, you and I would leap the fence, outrun the dog and dive in – while our government reps would still be debating a procedural vote.
No way should we allow these bureaucrats to be responsible for our families' health, especially when the worst-case scenario envisions millions dying before the rapid-spreading epidemic can be brought under control.
What we should do:
- Vaccinate first-responders – medics, firemen, police, warriors – ASAP.
- Store vaccine in our family doctors' offices immediately. The 300 million smallpox immunizations should be available locally – it's flat nuts for us all to rely on assurances that the red-tape-wrapped Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is capable of getting the vaccine to outbreaks at five or 5,000 places across the nation in time for effective administering.
The CDC should also be ready to announce timely warnings of smallpox so nonimmune citizens can hole up, reducing their exposure. Because when our docs have the vaccine, it should be up to each of us to weigh the health risks of being inoculated – not some Washington types whose track records concerning terrorism at airports, controlling our borders or handling aliens and anthrax since 9-11 have been so bad that a good Army top kick would have inflicted maximum pain on most of these losers.
OK. Enough said. Go back to the Robert Blake show.