Alright so I'm not a fan of CNN and I don't consider them a reliable resource at all, but I couldn't find anything on a more reputable source right at this point, for this issue.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/04/bush.avianflu/

Basically he's asking to have power to use military enforcements across the USA, to enforce quarantines.

Now on one hand it does sound moderately reasonable, how else are you supposed to keep control of a situation like that, which could so easily get out of hand. However how would changing the current setup of Martial law affect the nation? Right now its a decision that is up to each State to implement if necessary, Bush is requesting the decision be his to make for all states, if he sees fit.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...articleId=1041

There's another link...

There's an awful lot that can be done, when people are made to live in fear. Publications like this can create that fear, and proposed legislation that can seriously infringe on citizens rights & freedoms can be turned into bills under smokescreens of "protection the homeland nation" that can have some potentially devastating longer term affects.

It seems guns & bombs are Bush's answer to everything, ...literally, everything. What are your thoughts on this? Good idea or no? I think he should be trying to figure out alternative means of handling a situation that hasn't yet arisen, and may (possibly) never arise.

Lets just take a look at another quick quote

That's a relatively small number, compared to some other causes of death.

That is a relatively small number, but the virus is only a few key mutations away from spreading between humans, and that will be another matter entirely...

Really don't see how Bush thinks he can use the military to arrest a Flu virus. The problem with the Flu is that it isn't incubated and spread by people who are lying in bed ill, it is spread primarily be people going about their daily business with no idea they are going to be ill in a few days, so military measures are not likely to prove effective against it, unless of course Bush plans to prevent everyone from leaving their own town for the entire Flu Season...

It's a paper tiger based on worst case scenario predictions.

Unless we act now, it's an immutable certainty within the next decade, despite the fact that our Governments, who have had clear warning from the WHO about this, are doing an admirable impersonation of an Ostrich at the moment...

I heard that if a flu pandemic hit today, like the one in 1918, 3 times more people would die from it.

Thats because we have 3 times more elderly and young children with weakened immune systems that would have been dead anyway in 1918.

I'm not all that worried.

I hope Georgie plans on cracking out his GI Joes cause the military is spread about as thin as can get.

Also I really don't see how you can quarantine in case of the flu when you can catch it from somebody berfore they even show symptoms.

Because humans are not usually affected by this type of Virus, Even a thirty year old athelete at the hight of his powers has inadequate resistance to an H5N1 Flu variant...

1874 --- (H3N8)
1890 --- (H2N2) .........................Pandemic
1902 --- (H3N2)
1918 --- (H1N1)..........................Pandemic
1933 --- (H1N1)..........................First strains isolated
1947 --- (H1N1)..........................Variation detected
1957 --- (H2N2).........................."Asian" Flu pandemic
1968 --- (H3N2).........................."Hong Kong" Flu pandemic
1976 --- (H1N1).........................."Swine" Flu, non-epidemic
1977 --- (H1N1) + (H3N2)........."Russian" Flu epidemic

This table illustrates the problem pretty well. With H5N1, we're looking at an antigenic drify that it outside the experience of our immune systems...