On the hospital ship, Comfort, in the Persian Gulf, evacuated Iraqi civilians die from bacterial infections resistant to antibiotics. Soon, the bacteria appears in injured U.S. soldiers all along the evacuation route from field hospitals in Iraq and Kuwait to the Landstahl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Fast forward a year-and-a-half. It’s November of 2004, and the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) releases a report that 102 patients at military medical facilities have the bacteria growing in their blood. Walter Reed Medical Center, District of Columbia, now has 45 of these cases; 35% are resistant to all but one antibiotic tested and 4% resistant to all drugs tested. The name of the bacteria is Acinetobacter baumannii.

The Iraqi war has come to American shores.