By Chris Floyd www.moscowtimes.ru
May 31, 2002

Let us return briefly to the question of Saddam Hussein's employment of the poison gas he developed with the help of those lovers of humanity, Ronald "Bitburg" Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush. Hussein is alleged to have bombarded Iraqi Kurds with poison gas in 1987 and/or in 1988, in the midst of his long and ferocious war with Iran.

There are conflicting accounts of the incident. Some say thousands were killed; some say hundreds; a few say none. Some say the Kurds were actually caught in a murderous crossfire of noxious fumes between the Iranian and Iraqi armies. Others say the Kurds -- long persecuted by Saddam, as they are persecuted by NATO stalwart Turkey -- were fighting alongside the Iranians and thus made themselves "lawful combatants." The official story is that Hussein simply gassed the Kurds in a paroxysm of ethnic cleansing (for which he was later rewarded by the aforesaid GHWB with even more American money and material).

Whatever the facts, the charge that Hussein "gassed his own people" has been the bloody shirt repeatedly waved by George W. Bush in his frantic bid to build support for an invasion of Iraq. Such an action, we are told, puts a nation beyond the pale of civilization and sends it hurtling into the abyss of ultimate evil. Any state that would "gas its own people" is, we're told, a rogue state, a terrorist state.

What then to make of the revelations last week that the United States "gassed its own people" during the Vietnam War? The Defense Department has admitted that the Pentagon sprayed more than 4,000 U.S. sailors with various substances, including the deadly nerve gas sarin and a gruesome biological toxin, in a four-year operation (1964-68) called Project SHAD, The New York Times reports.

The Pentagon said its records do not show that the sailors gave their "informed consent" to participate in the secret tests. (And how exactly would that consent process have worked, anyway? "Avast, ye swabs! Can we spray ye salty dogs with poison gas?" "Arrr, Cap'n, that ye may. We herewith absolve ye of all legal responsibility for this immoral act!")

The purpose of these terrorist attacks on patriotic Americans serving their country was to test defenses against biochemical warfare -- so said the Pentagon brass at the time. That would be the same Pentagon brass that two years earlier had sent a plan to President John Kennedy calling for a series of terrorist attacks to be launched against the American people -- by the United States government -- in a frantic bid to build support for an invasion of Cuba.

But we live in more enlightened times now, of course. For example, even though most experts say that the fatal anthrax unleashed upon the American people last fall was almost certainly developed by the U.S. military, we know that things like Project SHAD don't happen anymore. We know that the unelected "shadow government" headed by Vice President Dick Cheney in secret caves and undisclosed locations -- along with the cadre of Iran-Contra terrorist conspirators back in power in Washington, and the FBI chieftains mysteriously rewriting field reports to downplay the danger of terrorist attacks from Islamic radical groups once cultivated by the CIA -- will surely keep the American people safe from all harm.

Even from governments that gas their own people.

Shadow Warriors

On the other hand, Shadow Cheney and other Defenders have spent an inordinate amount of time lately insisting that they cannot keep the American people safe from all harm -- or any harm, evidently.

While President Bush was wowing Europe last week with endearing displays of sleep-deprived crankiness (him not used to staying up so late like Pootie-Poot do; that's why him got so grumpy, The New York Times lovingly reported), Cheney led a series of top officials in declaring that more terror attacks are "inevitable." In fact, Shadowman said they will be "even worse" than Sept. 11. The "great success" of the "war on terror" has apparently left the American people in far greater danger than before.

(But if the United States is even more threatened now, then what was all that fighting in Afghanistan about? Would Hamid Karzai, former consultant for Texas oil giant Unocal, have some idea? Just asking.)

In this atmosphere of leader-spawned national panic, imagine what would happen if a heavily armed, black-clad prowler were found planting a bomb at a civilian power plant. Surely the story would be 24-7 in the national media, right? Tabloids, networks, talking heads would be screaming the news to high heaven: "America Under Attack! Terrorists in Our Midst!"

Unless, of course, the heavily armed prowler happened to be -- wait for it -- a member of the U.S. military. And unless the incident occurred in Jeb Bush's satrapy of Florida. Then all you would see is small story in a provincial paper, the Savannah Morning News, which last week told the curious tale of Specialist Derek Lawrence Peterson, 64th Armor Division, who was nabbed for planting a bomb in a power station in Jacksonville, Florida.

Police spotted Peterson pulling out from the plant in his pick-up truck, which was laden with knives, guns, ammo and explosives gear. They later found the bomb he'd left at the plant.

Peterson said he'd been "practicing reconnaissance techniques." Or maybe he was just "testing defenses," SHAD-like, in the best Pentagon tradition? We'll probably never find out; he's being held incommunicado in one of Jeb's jails -- and the Army's not talking either.

Perhaps the Shadow knows?

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