-Caveat Lector- SOLDIERS FOR THE TRUTH NEWSLETTER AUGUST 2, 1999 DEFENSE DEPARTMENT FACES HUGE PROBLEM OVER ANTHRAX VACCINATIONS Edited by Bill Rogers Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The controversy over the safety of anthrax vaccinations ordered by the Defense Department for all service members is heating up as more and more people either refuse to take their shots or quit the service. Anthrax is considered a major biological warfare threat. So far about 330,000 of the 2,500,000 people in uniform have received at least the first of six shots. But anthrax shots are becoming a serious morale and readiness problem, to say nothing of a health problem. CBS News interviewed more than 100 Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard pilots and reported on July 26 so many pilots are quitting over this issue that there are "huge holes in some military air units." Key units stand to lose up to half their pilots, and at just five bases more than 100 reserve pilots quit this year, CBS said. "The squadron is unable to do its peacetime and wartime mission, and this directly impacts the nation's readiness," Maj. Ramona Savoie declared. She is one who quit. The recent campaign in the Balkans demonstrates the need for Reserve and Guard forces whenever the Air Force makes any substantial effort, so the loss of many experienced pilots will have a serious impact on readiness of U.S. forces. The Defense Department insists that the vaccine is safe and effective and that the program is going smoothly, but memos obtained by CBS tell a different story. One squadron commander wrote, "Due to the controversy regarding the shots, compliance has been very low." Another commander acknowledged that "We are losing a lot of experience." Many Guard and Reserve pilots also fly for the airlines, and some have quit for fear that side effects of the shots would put their civilian flying career at risk -- or their passengers. "Would you want your pilot to have any problem with remembering, and tremors, seizures? This is all stuff that's attributed to the vaccine," Mike Angerole said. He flies for Southwest Airlines and is among those quitting the Air Guard. Two bills have just been introduced in Congress that would address concerns about the anthrax vaccinations. On July 19, Rep. Benjamin Gilman, New York Republican, introduced H.R. 2548, which would suspend the vaccination program until the vaccine is determined to be safe and effective and to provide for a study by the National Institutes of Health. The other, H.R. 2543, introduced by Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican, would make the shots voluntary. Gilman's bill directs the National Institutes of Health to see that an independent study is done to determine the types and severity of adverse reactions and long-term health implications. The study would also determine the effectiveness of the vaccine in protecting humans against all strains of anthrax pathogens that U.S. military personnel are likely to encounter. The Defense Department opposes requests to make the shots voluntary, is not granting exceptions to the requirement to take shots, and, as it finds itself getting deeper into this controversy, seems to be hardening its position. Defense Secretary William Cohen recently wrote in a letter to Army Times, "Just as soldiers must wear helmets, commanders must know all their troops are vaccinated against anthrax." And the Pentagon says the shots will continue no matter how many pilots quit. It launched a campaign to convince the troops that the vaccine is safe, but Mark Zaid, a Washington attorney who has represented at least two dozen service members who have refused the shots, said the education effort was handled poorly and backfired on DOD. He believes DOD is so embarrassed about the matter that it won't back away and thereby admit to mistakes. "They'll go kicking and screaming until the last possible second" when they are forced to change the vaccination policy, he said. Zaid, who had been working on Gulf War Syndrome issues, started getting calls right after the shots started in March 1998. He said at first people were usually just given a general discharge, then occasionally an other-than-honorable discharge, and now more frequently a court martial. The Marine Corps has been giving courts martial more than the other services. In the active duty forces, it is mostly lower ranking enlisted people who refuse, while in the reserve forces, captains, majors and colonels are refusing and quitting. He noted that emergency-essential civilians in DOD must also take the shots, and half a dozen senior civilians in the Military Sealift Command have been fired. What should service members do? "Tough decision. I don't know," Zaid answered. "I have never given anybody advice about what they should do. I always tell them they need to talk it over with family and friends. If you decide to refuse it, come back to me and I will do what I can to help. "The only thing I have given as far as advice was that if you are going to refuse the vaccine, and that is your final decision, then don't accept an Article 15 nonjudicial punishment. That makes no sense. Just ask to be administratively separated or request a court martial. You are going to end up at one or the other anyway, so why drag the process out? Why drag the process out, why get demoted, why get fined, why get ostracized in the meantime?" "We identified so many errors in the [DOD] public statements, in their literature where they are trying to convince people how safe it is." Zaid told SFTT he has internal documentation from the Defense Department that contradicts much of what was being said publicly. He accused public affairs officers of being deliberately deceptive in discussing the facts about the vaccine. Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera acknowledged the risks in a memo obtained and published by the San Diego Union-Tribune on June 29. The vaccine, according to a memo signed by Caldera, "involves unusually hazardous risks associated with the potential for adverse reactions in some recipients and the possibility that the desired immunological effect will not be obtained by all recipients." In September 1998 he agreed to accept the burden of potential liability claims made against the vaccine manufacturer by service members. At the same time DOD was conducting a campaign to convince the troops that the vaccine is safe. Rep. Gilman and five other members of Congress -- Christopher Shays, Sue Kelly, Mark Souder, Doug Ose and James Talent -- sent Secretary Cohen a letter on July 20 asking him to answer a series of pointed questions and noting that they were receiving "an increasing number of contacts from concerned constituents..." They wrote that Cohen had pledged that four specific conditions would be met before vaccinations would start, and charged that testimony in Congressional hearings has shown that "none of these conditions was satisfactorily addressed before the vaccine program was implemented." The conditions were: 1) supplemental testing to assure sterility, safety, potency and purity of the vaccine stockpile; 2) implementation of a system for fully tracking anthrax immunizations; 3) approval of operational plans to administer the vaccine and communications plans to inform military personnel; and 4) review of medical aspects of the program by an independent expert. They noted that the Defense Department had cited Food and Drug Administration approval of anthrax vaccine, but pointed out that FDA had approved a vaccine for workers in the woolen industry. A weaponized version of anthrax, meant to be inhaled by victims, is different and there has been little or no testing of the vaccine's effectiveness in humans against this form of anthrax for obvious reasons. Testing on animals had mixed results. The members of Congress said they have yet to see any evidence that this vaccine would be effective against altered or multiple strains of anthrax, which the Russians are known to have experimented with, and further noted "extremely poor performance of the vaccine against even individual multiple strains in the Ft. Detrick guinea pig studies..." Safety of the vaccine is another of their concerns. They argue that not enough is known yet to safely administer it to 2.5 million people. If only 2 percent of the people experience adverse reactions, that would be 50,000 people -- an unacceptably high number. And, in addition, it's "completely unknown what will be the effect of cumulative annual boosters, let alone the combined effects from 15 or so other biological warfare vaccines under development." They are also concerned about the plant that produces the vaccine, which has been repeatedly cited by the FDA for quality control problems and other violations dating to 1990. The facility closed "voluntarily" in March 1998 to make $1.8 million in renovations and a $15 million expansion funded by DOD. The letter to Cohen notes that at a briefing following an April 29 subcommittee hearing, it was stated that the vaccine "is dangerous enough the manufacturer demanded, and received, indemnification from the Army against the possibility that persons vaccinated may develop anaphylaxis or some unforseen reaction of serious consequences, including death." Why was DOD so quick to say the vaccine is safe? the writers asked. A point is also raised about several reports of troops receiving shots (during the Gulf War) from expired lots of vaccine, "to the significant detriment of their health as recorded in testimony and the media." Cohen was asked what is being done to prevent this from happening again. He was also asked about reports that persons giving the shots have failed to make sure they were not giving shots to people who shouldn't get them for such reasons as illness, pregnancy or previous adverse reactions. "Likewise, we are also concerned that the reporting of adverse reactions among troops who have received the vaccine, is being discouraged, so as not to cause undue alarm in those units which have not received their first round of shots." Cohen is asked about reports that when reserve component personnel express an interest in leaving the service they meet "with delays, instructions to not list the vaccine as a reason, and even threats of poor evaluation reports." He is asked to provide assurances that these repressions will not occur in the future. The writers conclude by expressing concern about the impact of all of this on morale and the need to ensure that the vaccine "is not itself a more real threat to our citizens in uniform." Another in a series of hearings in Congress about anthrax was held on July 21. Several military people who have suffered serious reactions to the shots testified before sympathetic members of the Subcommittee on National security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations, chaired by Rep. Christopher Shays. Their tales are disturbing. Captain Michelle Piel is an Air Force Academy graduate and C-5 pilot at Dover AFB, Delaware. She was healthy and actively flying last October when she received her first shot. Shortly afterwards while flying back from an overseas mission, "the right side of my head filled up with fluid," she said. When she landed, a flight surgeon grounded her. In about three weeks she had recovered and took the second shot and immediately felt ill again. She experienced fatigue, dizziness, nausea, and blurred vision, joint pain and colds. She missed weeks of duty and was examined by a dozen doctors who could not explain what the problem was. She is better now, but still suffering from something and has periods of regression. Doctors wanted her to take further anthrax shots to see what would happen, but she refused. Though she was too sick to fly, the Air Force did not want to file a report of an adverse reaction to the vaccination. After many months her wing commander got her to specialists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who were able to help her. The wing commander suspended the program at Dover, and that stirred tremendous repercussions, she said. "Everyone I spoke to at Dover AFB recognized that our wing commander sacrificed his career for us." The captain told the committee she was testifying because she firmly believes "that our military's health is critical to our nation's warfighting readiness." Another pilot, a reservist at Dover, Jon Richter, testified to severe health problems that started right after his shot. He said his hip joints cause great discomfort now and he never had any problems before. He told the committee he would rather walk away from the military rather than take another shot. "I have defended my country and I have obeyed the orders of the officers over me, but taking another anthrax shot is not an order I can carry out," he declared. A side issue involves freedom of speech for those who see a need to express their concerns. An Air Force nurse on Okinawa, Captain Debra Egan, wrote in Stars and Stripes of her concern as a health professional over the vaccinations, and now says there have been retributions against her for speaking out. The military paper has come to her defense. Other service members are claiming there is pressure not to go public with this issue. It is clear that refusal to take the shots is career-ending, no matter what else happens. Shays called taking the vaccine "a profoundly personal choice, whether or not to put something in their bodies they fear may do more harm than good. After military service, the uniform comes off, but the anthrax vaccine stays with you for life. It's just not the commitment many dedicated men and women made to their country when they volunteered for military service." He pledged to stick with this issue and other toxic battlefield concerns. "We will follow it until we are sure medical force protection means assuring the long term health of U.S. forces, not just short-term mission capability." "DoD needs to revise its policy and stop force-wide immunization," Zaid said. Whether the shots become voluntary or just for select, high-risk groups, he thinks they are unjustified for all service personnel. He said a lot of the 2.5 million people are permanently stationed stateside in areas that are not high risk, and don't need the shots. But then he offered an unsettling thought to the interviewer: " You and I should be inoculated before a lot of the military people for being here in the D.C. area." = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = BRITISH POST MORTEM ON KOSOVO FAULTS U.S. By Andrew Gilligan, London Sunday Telegraph Serious failings in intelligence, training, weapons and other hardware lay behind NATO's disappointing performance in Kosovo, according to extracts from a British Royal Air Force study seen by the London Sunday Telegraph. Intelligence reports about Serbian troop and equipment locations took up to three days to reach front-line attack squadrons, by which time the Serbs had changed position. Many pilots found themselves "bombing old tank tracks" or civilians as a result, the document says. U.S. Intelligence "bureaucracy" is blamed. Secure communications were sometimes inadequate, meaning vital information could not be passed to RAF attack units for fear of the Serbs hearing it. NATO believes the Serbs may even have intercepted some transmissions. Several RAF Harrier pilots had never practiced dropping live laser-guided bombs before the Kosovo crisis, the paper says. They dropped their first bombs only in combat. Some of the weapons developed "unexpected and extremely difficult" characteristics in flight, making it harder than anticipated to drop them accurately. There are also fears that none of the NATO air forces- - apart from the United States-has all-weather precision weapons of the type deemed necessary to avoid undue civilian casualties. RAF laser-guided bombs, although precise, cannot cope well with bad weather and smoke. The draft paper, compiled by a senior RAF commodore closely involved in the bombing campaign, is a contribution to a British Ministry of Defense study into the lessons of Kosovo. Commanders have been asked to submit final papers by September. The exercise has been given greater urgency by evidence that the ll-week NATO bombing campaign did almost no damage to Serbian forces in Kosovo. Even the widely quoted Serbian figure of just 13 tanks destroyed by NATO may be an overestimate, ministry insiders admitted. The true figure is believed to be closer to seven. Political factors, such as the slow start to the air campaign, the reluctance to permit low-level flying, and some governments' wish to approve all targets at ministerial level, are blamed indirectly in the paper, but the document appears reluctant to criticize politicians directly. One senior RAF officer at the Defense Ministry said: "NATO did all right on the strategic level (targets such as command centers, bridges and telecommunications buildings) but exceptionally badly on the tactical level (such as tanks and groups of soldiers.) "We were fighting under very serious political constraints about low flying and collateral damage, but much of the infrastructure and equipment we had to work with didn't do us any favors." Some of the precision weapons that the RAF lacked are already on order. The Sunday Telegraph learned that the RAF is highly likely to be allowed the American JDAM missile, the most sophisticated precision-guided weapon available, but previously rejected by Britain on grounds of cost. Other problems will be more complicated to resolve. The delays that made intelligence on Serbian forces "days behind" real events are blamed on the Americans whose spy satellites, drones and aircraft mostly supplied the raw material. "Everything had to be exhaustively processed and analyzed through this bureaucratic American intelligence machine, and it took far too long," said one RAF officer. "By the time target information came down to us the targets were often no longer there." The aerodynamic characteristics of some newer weapons will also need to be studied closely, the paper says. The most sensitive question will be the issue of political interference, which Ian Duncan-Smith, the Conservatives' defense spokesman, blamed for many of the failures of the bombing campaign in Serbia and Kosoro. "From this report it is clear that the military seems to have been fighting with one hand tied behind their back because of restrictions by politicians and bureaucrats," he said. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The President of Soldiers For The Truth, Col. Carl Bernard, can be seen on August 8, 1999, on the PBS Defense Monitor Series.. Bernard was interviewed for a segment on the Limits of Air Power. Please consult your local PBS station for the time. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Those of you who sent in email after the Combat Report issue on Readiness should know that the editor, Bill Rogers suffered a computer collapse. If you did not receive a response to your letter, please send it again to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Those of you who sent in email after the Combat Report issue on Leadership should know that the editor, Don Vandergriff, moved changed email servers and was offline for several days. If you did not receive a response to your letter, please send it again to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] .-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- .-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- THE PENTAGON IS WATCHING OVER YOU (This tidbit was received from a career Army NCO who recently attended instructor's school) In instructor's training courses we are taught that the proper way to erase a chalk board is with vertical strokes, not horizontal strokes. Horizontal strokes may cause a woman's breasts to jiggle. A woman, teacher for the past 20 years, remarked that if jiggling is such a problem, then women teachers should not be allowed to walk around a classroom, or bend over a student's desk. .-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- .-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- Soldiers For The Truth has the pleasure of introducing a new contributing member of our editorial group who will have frequent pieces either in the Newsletter or in Combat Reports. His name is Fred Reed. Fred write the police columns in Monday's Washington Times. Reed was a boy marine who left his university science training to enlist in the Corps in the 60s. The windshield of the 3/4 ton truck he was driving was hit by a sniper shortly after he arrived in Vietnam, leaving him with serious eye wounds requiring a year of repairs at Bethesda Naval Hospital. This left him unable to use a microscope, hence no longer a candidate for scientific work. Fred wandered the world as a free-lance journalist, spending the last years of the Vietnam War in Cambodia and Vietnam. He left Tan Son Nhut on one of the last aircraft, which the pilot had to pull up sharply to avoid RPG-7 fire from the end of the runway. THE REALITIES OF WOMEN IN COMBAT By Fred Reed Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sometimes it's a good idea to say things straightforwardly. So I will. Women have no place in ground combat. Probably not in any combat, but certainly not on the ground. They just get in the way, can't do the job, and will get men killed. We shouldn't put up with feminization of combat merely because the generals put their political futures ahead of the lives of their troops. Any man in uniform who supports feminization ought to resign and change his name. There. Was that straightforward, or what? Who are we kidding? Women are physically weak. They are not just slightly weaker than men. They are catastrophically weaker. Go to any gym and watch. The women will be pushing twenty, forty, maybe occasionally sixty pounds on the bench press machines. Lots of guys will be doing 250, 270. Stand by the chin-up bar for an hour. Or a year. Men will regularly do ten, fifteen, twenty. Rarely will you see a woman manage one. Weakness doesn't matter if a woman wants to be a brain surgeon, concert pianist, President or newspaper editor. It matters if she wants to be in the ground forces. The loader in a tank has to stuff 120mm rounds into that breech, and he has to do it now, not in fifteen minutes with lots of struggling and help from the tank commander. The North Korean infantry isn't into affirmative action. It's load or get killed. Feminists don't care. Maybe the guys in the tank do care. I remember having to change the tire on a six-by in soft sand near Danang. I was by myself and it was Indian territory. Know how much a six-by weighs? I don't, but I was your basic wiry Marine and could just barely do it. A woman wouldn't have had a chance. We all know this. I know it. You know it. Women know it. The National Organization for Women knows it. For political reasons, we are ignoring what we all know. Are we willing to let men die to satisfy the ambitions of female officers who want to get promoted? Are we so frightened of ratpack feminists who have probably never been out of range of a flush toilet? Yes. If the ladies at NOW want to argue the point, let's make a straightforward experiment. Let's take a hundred randomly chosen women at the end of boot camp, and a hundred randomly chosen men, and put serious packs on them. Give them all rifles and a full load of ammo, just like soldiers, bang, bang. Then force-march them through uneven terrain in mud (Camp Lejeune in October would do splendidly) until they all fall out. No affirmative action. No group norming. No special privilege or stress time-outs. Hump til you drop. And every five miles they unload an ammo truck. We know what would happen, don't we? Which is why we won't make the experiment, isn't it? Feminists wisely duck and dodge when such a trial is proposed. Well, they say, strength doesn't matter in combat today, because all you do is push buttons. Oh. Where exactly is the button that makes a seventy-pound pack carry itself? Women, say the feminists, are better at psychological manipulation than men, and so would make better platoon sergeants. Ah. And how do you psychologically manipulate a 155 round off the ground? Smile at it? Ages ago, when on staff at Army Times, I went to the headquarters of NOW to talk to some angry lady about these questions. What, I asked, if a woman medic had to carry a heavy man off the battlefield under fire? Well, said the lady, the woman could carry the light end of the stretcher. Really. I earn part of my living as a police writer for the Washington Times. Consequently I often see female paramedics working on horribly mangled crash victims of car wrecks. Know something? They are fine, just fine-cool, competent, caring, tough-minded, fast. They are every bit as good as the men. Except they can't carry stretchers. This isn't fantasy. A good friend of mine recently, when his father had a heart attack, had to carry the stretcher downstairs because the (perfectly competent otherwise) female ambulance crewman couldn't. Everyone in the military knows of similar instances. That women are lots weaker than men is common knowledge. A branch of medical science, exercise physiology, had documented the disparity in great detail, largely for the training of athletes. We all know it from daily experience. We also know, many of us, that combat, indeed daily life in combat zones, is often physically exhausting. Why doesn't anyone in authority have to moxie to say so? **COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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