Nearly all of our forces operating in the Korean, Middle East and South Asian theatres have been vaccinated against anthrax. There are still problems with the program, but they continue to immunize our troops.
Of course we know that Saddam had anthrax, among other nastiness. IF..and this is a huge IF..Saddam was directly or indirectly involved in the anthrax letter attacks that occurred shortly after 9/11 for the purposes of sending a warning not to attack him, our vaccinated forces were certainly in a strong position to invade if necessary. The civilian population here would be left to treat further attacks with Rx Cipro, but we'd all seen that such treatment was possible.
So, if he did send the letters, was it a flop? Hard to say, but the Pentagon remains adament about continuing the program, even with Saddam sitting in jail. Other than Iraq, exactly which countries are we protecting our troops from?
As an aside, the program was started in 1998, which history will show as a seminal year in the as-yet declared Global War on Terror.
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