GOP representative:
Congress won't halt anthrax vaccinations
Pentagon stresses need to have all U.S. forces inoculated
By James W. Brosnan
Scripps Howard News Service
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WASHINGTON — Congress will not intervene to halt controversial anthrax vaccinations, despite complaints from "pampered" pilots in the Air National Guard, the chairman of a key subcommittee said Thursday.
Rep. Stephen Buyer, R-Ind., chairman of the House Armed Services military personnel subcommittee, said he would not bring up legislation either to halt the shots or make them voluntary.
Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, head of the U.S. Central Command, said the Pentagon has had "positive proof" since September 1997 that Iraq has produced and "weaponized" anthrax spores. If the United States and its allies were to withdraw from the "no-fly zone" over southern Iraq, a single Iraqi plane flying near the Kuwaiti border could leave enough spray to infect the entire country, he said.
"I need every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine to be able to function. I can't afford to have part of the force that can't perform," Zinni said.
When other panel members noted that U.S. allies like Great Britain have a voluntary anthrax vaccination program, Zinni responded, "I wouldn't put U.S. forces where they would be dependent on coalition forces that aren't inoculated."
Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre admitted that in a push to inoculate the regular forces involved in the Middle East, "we did not do a good enough job explaining" the shots to the Guard and Reserve forces.
Some commercial airline pilots in the National Guard fear that adverse reactions to anthrax shots will end their careers. Pentagon officials say that of the first 340,000 people who started the series of six shots, only 72 had to be hospitalized or lost more than a day of work.
Maj. Jeff Jeffords of the 164th Airlift Wing in Memphis, Tenn., testified that as many as 15 of the unit's 50 pilots will quit rather than take the first shot by a Sunday deadline.
In contrast, Col. Myron Ashcraft, chief of staff to the Ohio Air National Guard, said the unit has had few objections in its various wings, some of which are now doing rotations in the Middle East and Asia.
Buyer, a Gulf War Army veteran and lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves who has taken the anthrax vaccine himself, was not sympathetic to the pilots.
"They are the most pampered in the world," he said. "If you don't get your air conditioning and your pizza on time you complain. I would have loved to have the conditions you had in the Gulf. I never showered in five months."
October 1, 1999
Last revised: February 2004