Asa Hutchinson: “Today we are deploying our troops across the world to fight the war on terrorism, and it is clear our enemies have been…”

“Today we are deploying our troops across the world to fight the war on terrorism, and it is clear our enemies have been actively attempting to acquire biological weapons. We know Saddam Hussein has been relentless in his pursuit of biological weapons. Yet even with this knowledge, we continue today to deploy our troops without adequate vaccine protection. The shortage of anthrax vaccine, due to the failure of BioPort, has been well publicized. However, as we meet today, our military has no stocks of vaccines against a range of other pathogens that we know could be used against our troops. According to unclassified documents released by the Pentagon, there are at least 10 nations right now pursuing biological weapons programs. Based on media reports, we know these nations include Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.”