This morning, as I perused the excellent
CounterPunch website, I came upon a story entitled
Divine Strike in the Bible Belt; Will They Bomb Bedford?. At first glance I thought it would be another story about the evolution vs. ID debate, or perhaps a story about church-state separation, or maybe even gay marriage. The first paragraph quickly took me in an entirely different direction:
More than two tons of cyanide compounds, 1,535 pounds of phosgene gas, the primary chemical in "mustard gas" chemical weapons, 1,318 pounds of methylene chloride, a human carcinogen, 2,387 pounds of carbon tetrachloride, another carcinogen and 1,650 pounds of chlorine, a poison, will be released from the giant explosion being suggested by the United States Department of Defense for southern Indiana in 2007 in southern Indiana.
This "giant explosion", as I subsequently learned, is designed to
...mimic a nuclear bomb dropped on underground nuclear weapons facilities in Iran.
More on the flip....
It appears the Department of Defense is proposing to use a limestone quarry in southern Indiana to test the effectiveness of nuclear detonations on underground facilities and bunkers such as those they expect to find housing Iran's nuclear development facilities. The explosion, using a whopping 1,400,000 pounds (yes, you read that right, almost a million and a half pounds, that's SEVEN HUNDRED TONS) of explosives, will not make use of any nuclear material, thus enabling the test to circumvent existing test ban treaties.
The story goes on to relate how the test was originally intended to be conducted at the Nevada test site until local opposition scuttled the project over concerns of health risks to the local population from toxic materials released by the explosion and dispersed by a predicted 10,000 foot mushroom cloud.
Other details mentioned in the story include the fact that the DoD intends to burn over 300 buildings at the Indiana Army Ammunition Depot because burning is the least expensive option for demolition. The DoD apparently is only marginally concerned about the high levels of lead and PCB contamination found in those building.
And then there's the mention of the DoD's Jefferson Proving Grounds east of Mitchell, Indiana, where years of careless munitions testing has left a "no-man's land" of depleted uranium and other toxic materials and unexploded ordnance.
I can't tell you how incensed I am over this story. Certainly this isn't the first time I've heard of horrendous behavior by the American military establishment, nor would I be at all surprised to find something like this leading back to the doorstep of the current administration, but somehow this story just seems to put a final touch on a picture of a Department of Defense that is so focused on its role as a vehicle for agressive warfare that it can put at grave risk the lives of the very citizens its supposed to be "protecting", and, needless to say, of an administration that carries such disdain for its citizenry to new and ignominious heights.
I, for one, intend to call my elected representatives' offices on Monday to demand that such experiments be brought to a halt immediately, and that this out-of-control administration and its military attack dog be put on the shortest of short leashes before they carry us all down the shithole with them!!
(Sorry for that last lapse into vulgarity, folks, but, y'know, sometimes you just gotta vent.....)