Love bugs

 
Published: Tuesday 15 February 2005

-- (Credit: Mridul)Imagine us soldiers sacking rival towns while their opponents canoodle with each other. Does sound bizarre. But classified documents reveal that the Pentagon considered developing a host of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops. It had plans to develop an "aphrodisiac" chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among rival troops would cause a "distasteful but completely non-lethal blow to the enemy morale", the authors of the proposal noted. These startling revelations were published by the British journal, New Scientist ('Pentagon reveals rejected chemical weapons,' New Scientist, January 15, p 4) .

Other ideas included chemical weapons that attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats to troop positions, making them uninhabitable. Another was to develop a chemical that caused "lasting halitosis", making it easy to identify guerrillas trying to blend in with civilians. There was also the idea of making troops' skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight. The proposals, from the us Air Force Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, date from 1994. The lab sought Pentagon funding for research into what it called "bad guy-identifying chemicals". Clearly nothing seems impossible when it comes to the us' plans to impose its hegemony.

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