I learned from the Strib today that a U.S. company shipped thousands of vials of 1957 flu strain, to which nobody born after 68 has immunity, to labs all over the U.S., Canada, and 18 foreign countries. The experience with the last flu season shows us the limits of vaccine production.
I hate to beat dead horses, but it has to be said: there is no evidence I can see that the current U.S. military operation in Iraq is doing anything substantial to prevent terrorism. It seems rather to be inspiring the growth of new terrorist activity. Maybe it is doing other good things over the long haul, and surely it is preventing some nastiness, while creating other nastiness. HOWEVER, people were correct back in 2001 to say that the terrorist threat was real. (They focussed, I think, on the wrong evidence; the anthrax mailings were the real story.) And the war has made us simply incapable of devoting enough resources to the real terrorist opportunities to address that threat.