See also:
– America’s Nuclear Guinea Pigs: Astonishing Film That Shows How Marines Were Used To Test Atomic Weapons
– From Gulf War I, Fully 75% Of Our Fighting Men Who Were On The Ground Are Now Dead, Dying, Or Sick From Depleted Uranium
“(Soldiers are) dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.”
(as quoted in Woodward and Bernstein’s “The Final Days”, ch. 14)
– Henry Kissinger
From the article:
“They’re hoping we die off, so you apply [for benefits], you get turned down,” Josephs said. “And it just goes on for years and years, and they just want to wear us down. They want to use young men as guinea pigs and throw them away.”
– Vets feel abandoned after secret drug experiments (CNN, March 1, 2012):
The moment 18-year-old Army Pvt. Tim Josephs arrived at Edgewood Arsenal in 1968, he knew there was something different about the place.
“It just did not look like a military base, more like a hospital,” recalled Josephs, a Pittsburgh native. Josephs had volunteered for a two-month assignment at Edgewood, in Maryland, lured by three-day weekends closer to home.
“It was like a plum assignment,” Josephs said. “The idea was they would test new Army field jackets, clothing, weapons and things of that nature, but no mention of drugs or chemicals.”
But when he went to fill out paperwork the morning after his arrival, the base personnel were wearing white lab coats, and Josephs said he had second thoughts. An officer took him aside.
“He said, ‘You volunteered for this. You’re going to do it. If you don’t, you’re going to jail. You’re going to Vietnam either way — before or after,'” Josephs said recently.
From 1955 to 1975, military researchers at Edgewood were using not only animals but human subjects to test a witches’ brew of drugs and chemicals. They ranged from potentially lethal nerve gases like VX and sarin to incapacitating agents like BZ.
Read the secret (now unclassified) Army document revealing BZ tests on soldiers (PDF)
The military also tested tear gas, barbiturates, tranquilizers, narcotics and hallucinogens like LSD.