Posted on 07/05/2008 3:52:37 AM PDT by Baron OBeef Dip
Top secret US military plans to test deadly nerve gas by dropping it on soldiers in a remote Queensland rainforest during the Cold War have been uncovered in Australian Government archives.
Newly declassified Australian Defence Department and Prime Minister’s office files show that the United States was strongly pushing the Government for tests on Australian soil of two of the most deadly chemical weapons ever developed, VX and GB — better known as Sarin — nerve gas.
The plan, which is disclosed for the first time on tomorrow’s SUNDAY program on Nine, called for 200 mainly Australian combat troops to be aerially bombed and sprayed with the chemical weapons — with all but a handful of the soldiers to be kept in the dark about the "full details" of the tests.
A former senior official with then Prime Minister Harold Holt, Mr Peter Bailey, tells the program that as far as he knows the tests never went ahead but the planning was very advanced.
He admitted the whole operation was to be kept secret because use of such weapons was almost certainly illegal under international law at the time.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.ninemsn.com.au ...
That a pretty niggardly thing for the US to be attempting.
Mc Namara is still alive; so is Bill Moyers. Maybe they can Nuremberg them two instead of the oil company execs, since the leftists are hankering for a show trial. But I can’t believe even they were dumb enough to want to try this.
What sort of a sorry excuse for a human wanted to try this?! We need to send them up on the shuttle and space them.
The article is awfully short on any context, particularly details about the Soviet Union and its nerve agent testing.
A similar one-sided story was regaled in a college class I once attended. When I pointed out the US activities during the Cold War didn’t occur in a vacuum, this was not well received by the faculty. So one has to ask what the point is in such, if only to make the US out to be the “bad guys”.
In early 1963 a survey team of Australian and US scientists reviewed sites in Australia for chemical warfare tests, suggesting the remote Iron Range rainforest near Lockhart River in far north Queensland as one such location.
In other words, this was a proposal for joint US-Australian testing - so why does the headline only refer to the US? Well, because that makes for a better anti-American story.
I'll have to watch the story tomorrow - but I'm betting what will actually emerge is that the planned tests were actually tests designed to see how well plans to protect soldiers from nerve gas would work - yes, if such tests went wrong, it could have very serious consequences, but there's a lot of difference between testing safety equipment designed to protect against weapons under real conditions, and testing the weapons themselves. And given where the tests were planned for - tropical rainforests - I'm guessing they wanted to see how well protection would work in something like a South East Asian jungle.
Finding isolated tropical rainforest on territory you controlled for testing purposes isn't going to be easy - while as an Australian, I don't like the idea of any weapon being tested here emotionally speaking, with cold hard logic, there are factors that make Australia an ideal test bed in some cases - miles and miles of uninhabited territory, great distances from major population centres. It's an asset - and sharing assets you have which others don't, is something an ally needs to be prepared to do.
“Well, because that makes for a better anti-American story.”
Hhmmmmmmm......1962, 1963, 1964 and no mention of Kennedy or Johnson. Gee, wonder why that is?
excellent point, thanks for making it.
Boy, if this true, this is a very sore black eye for the US government, even though it was many years ago.
All proved lies.
Then of course Jon Kerry and his ‘Winter Soldier’ dog and pony show.
Lies.
Then the Israel one about how they massacred a village.
Lies
The leftards just love to make up lies
By the way, protection from nerve gas in the early ‘60s would of required full rubber suits. Gee, as if the troops couldn't figure it out. Eh Mate ‘tis over a hundred, hundred percent humidity, all this kit. Whats the corporal got in mind, eh?
If true, it’s another Johnson administration fiasco. This is an example of what happens when a man who wants nothing but power becomes president. He never served the nation; he only served himself and his own ego. May God save us from any more of these enemies.
Well let’s just subpoena ol’ Robert Strange McNamara and his bootlicking sycophant Bill Moyers and have them testify about this, shall we?
The sumb!tch should have been buried in an Edsel.
Somehow it is his fault.
One must plan for everything.
1962 would be the Kennedy and 1963 would be Johnson.
But then again, it was a JOINT operation that was planned.
The other thing is that typically nerve agent tests involving humans are usually protective gear tests not “how-much-can-we-make-em-twitch” tests.
This story is probably just some liberal journalist trying to make something out of nothing.
People that propose this sort of thing should be at ground zero. Alone.
Now we know why they are the way they are.
BS - in spades.
thank you...
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