Bush seeks military option on bird flu

The president has already indicated he wants to give the armed forces lead responsibility for conducting search-and-rescue operations and sending in supplies after massive natural disasters and terrorist attacks -- a strategy that could require a change in law and that some in the Pentagon have reacted to skeptically.

For some, the idea raised the image of soldiers cordoning off communities hit by disease.

''The president ought to have all . . . assets on the table to be able to deal with something this significant," Bush said during a 55-minute question-and-answer session with reporters in the Rose Garden.

Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness, called the president's suggestion an ''extraordinarily draconian measure" that would be unnecessary if the nation had built the capability for rapid vaccine production.

''The translation of this is martial law in the United States," Redlener said.

Bush signed an executive order in April adding pandemic influenza to the government's list of communicable diseases for which a quarantine is authorized.

The key question he introduced into the debate yesterday was who would control it: the states, which by law now have the main responsibility for containing an outbreak within their borders, or the federal government, which typically has been in charge of keeping diseases from entering the country.

It was the president's first full-fledged news conference in more than four months, as the White House hopes to regain momentum lost amid sky-high gasoline prices, a rising death roll in Iraq, and a flawed response to Hurricane Katrina. Bush has seen a small rise in his approval ratings, but they remain near the lowest of his presidency.

Despite the polls and recent grumbling about his performance from some Republicans, Bush insisted he still had ''plenty" of political capital that he would spend getting lawmakers to go along with his proposed budget cuts, Iraq strategy, proposals to add to US oil refining capacity, and the reauthorization of the antiterror Patriot Act.