What are you willing to die FROM?
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/09/international/09MILI.html
A couple of days ago I made a somber posting asking people to consider what they might be willing to die for. But now I'm wondering, what are we willing to die from? Or maybe I should ask, what is our government ready to accept in terms of American casualties from biowarfare?
Today we are informed by the NYT of how unprepared we are to fight biological warfare. Mainly, it seems, because our pharmaceutical companies won't make the vaccines we need to protect ourselves and our troops at the prices we can afford to pay. They want more money. The Army seems strapped -- but why? In time of war, shouldn't the president be able to call for sacrifice, and force these companies to do this important work?
I guess that would be, in time of REAL war. This isn't a real war, though. There's a lot of 'real war' rhetoric, but behind the scenes, there's no substantive preparation. That is, we are guessing, because there's generally not enough money to go around these days because it's all been sucked out of the economy into very rich people's bank accounts. These same people, some of them in the pharmaceutical industry, have the balls-out nerve to put up this attitude about needing more money to help the soldiers who will go to fight for "freedom." There is some really disturbing disconnect, here.
It just shows once again the callousness with which the elite will use our military personnel. Connect the dots? The pharmaceutical companies are friends of this administration. In order to keep their loyalty (and campaign contributions), it is willing to look the other way on this issue, instead calculating that losses of unprotected soldiers won't be noticed that much, won't really matter. We can afford to waste a few in order not to rock the boat with our drug company buddies.
Fiona is outraged.
9:04:34 AM 
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