the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 5, 2001
After 40 years, the Pentagon finally admitted in September of 2001, that it had subjected U.S. sailors to testing of methods of biological warfare. These tests involved thousands of sailors from at least 1960 to 1970. At least a dozen ships were sprayed with chemicals by Marine bombers in order to check out what happened to the servicemen. The Pentagon–after questions by veterans and the publication of a book in 1999 which described the project–finally admitted that biological weapons and nerve agents like sarin were used against U.S. sailors.
The admission is supposedly part of a new policy by the Pentagon to prove its willingness to be open and submit to investigation. They even have appointed a “director of lessons learned.” Of course, they still claim there are no health problems linked to the testing–a problem the vets who were victimized say was never investigated. This is the same U.S. military which can’t find anything wrong with Gulf veterans in the 11 years after that war, and which pretended that Agent Orange couldn’t hurt U.S. soldiers–not to mention Vietnamese civilians–in Viet Nam.
So what “lessons” has the Pentagon “learned”? Apparently, any lie can be palmed off, if it’s big enough.