Avian flu: Excuse for martial law?

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush said Tuesday that he was working to prepare the United States for a possible deadly outbreak of avian flu.

If an epidemic appears, he said, he has weighed whether to quarantine parts of the country and whether to employ the military to enforce such a quarantine. "I am concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world," he said.

Read the rest and weep here.

Our benevolent dictators are considering using the military against Americans for their own good, ostensibly out of fear of a disease the International Herald Tribune says has killed - horrors! - 65 people since 2003. It's not even a danger yet, but it might be, so we should have government troops standing by: "The virus has not thus far mutated into a strain capable of transmission from one human to another. If it did, scientists say, it could kill millions of people worldwide, like the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic, which claimed more lives than World War I."

Oh, and in case you're counting on the loyal opposition to balk at this shocking pending abuse of presidential power - sorry, the loyal opposition thinks Bush hasn't gone far enough:


"Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, said the vote and Bush's comment reflected 'some agreement that the United States is behind in getting prepared for avian flu and that the time to try to make that gap up is now.' More than 30 Democratic senators, including Obama, sent Bush a letter Tuesday asking him to release the administration's final plan for dealing with a pandemic influenza. The group expressed its 'grave concern that the nation is dangerously unprepared.'"

Dangerously unprepared for what? The Centers for Disease Control says in its FAQ about avian flu: "The risk from bird flu is generally low to most people because the viruses occur mainly among birds and do not usually infect humans. However, during an outbreak of bird flu among poultry (domesticated chicken, ducks, turkeys), there is a possible risk to people who have contact with infected birds or surfaces that have been contaminated with excretions from infected birds."

So yep, you heard right: The president is weighing whether to use the military against Americans to enforce a quarantine over a disease that doesn't usually affect humans, but did kill a whole lot of people in 1918.

And folks who point out the horrifying danger to our basic liberties are called extremists. Well, as a great American once said, extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.