Scars from injections...

....lot of US military members will have this (they still give smallpox vaccines to military members when they are deployed to certain locations).

Do they ? - the reason I ask is that Smallpox has officially been declared as eradicated by the WHO.  It's not a virus that can remain dormant in the host and it was thought that the last known case of it was in Sudan/Ethiopia or such like in the late 1970s.  

Do they ? - the reason I ask is that Smallpox has officially been declared as eradicated by the WHO.  It's not a virus that can remain dormant in the host and it was thought that the last known case of it was in Sudan/Ethiopia or such like in the late 1970s.  

They do, my brother was a Marine in the early 2000s and received a SmallPox vaccination before he was sent to Iraq.  I couldn't tell you why they do it, nor could he probably, but they do still give it.

Yes I'm certain they do as I was given small pox vaccine in 2002 prior to being shipped off to Iraq (my ex also got his a few years earlier before he was deployed to somewhere - can't remember where though). 

I was told by our commander the reasoning is that almost all countries still have a strain of it and it could be used for chemical warfare.

They do, I managed to get out before getting that one, but Shrubbery is correct as to the reason.

Statistically speaking--and without seeing a picture--the scar you're talking about is very likely from the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine for tuberculosis.  Many countries use this vaccine, but it is exceedingly rare for it to be given in the US, as administration of the BCG vaccine renders obsolete the purified protein derivative (PPD) test to screen for tuberculosis exposure, and many relevant medical societies in the US recommend primarily an exposure-screening approach to primary prevention of tuberculosis infection.  My understanding is that the UK gave BCG to 13-year olds until 2005, when health services decided that the cost of the vaccine far outweighed the benefit.

As some people on this board have already mentioned, some select people still get vaccinated against smallpox (military, laboratory staff, etc.).  This citation shows you the two different scars:

http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/wDIJ6N5V/OcBsfw/Slide11.jpg