The US Government Declares War on America
Part 3 – The US Declares War on
its own Military
By
Larry Romanoff, March 11, 2023
(Left) A portrait of Louis Bessho from
1969. (Right) Military orders from April 1944 for Japanese-American soldiers,
including Bessho, who were part of the military's mustard gas testing at
Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland.
Left: Courtesy of David Bessho / Right:
Army Service Forces, Headquarters Camp Wolters Texas, Courtesy of Marc Bessho. Source
Covert experiments by the US government on its own military personnel are
not new. For at least the past 70 years, the US military has used its
servicemen as laboratory animals in conducting illegal and inhumane experiments.[1] From at least the 1940s
until today, ex-military patients in US Veterans Administration hospitals were
used as test subjects under many circumstances, without their knowledge or
consent. Millions of US servicemen have been deliberately exposed to biological
pathogens, nuclear radiation of various forms, medical substances and other
procedures, all without their knowledge or consent. The admission of these
appears only after many decades of secrecy and some are still denied. With the
extensive destruction of records, much of the truth will never be known. Among
the experiments conducted are the withholding of necessary treatment to see
what happens. In order to disguise what is being done to these American
veterans, authorities were ordered to substitute the words “investigation” or
“observation” for “experiment” when reporting the results.
In the 1940s, about 60,000 military personnel were used as human subjects
in chemical tests of mustard gas and blister gas.[2][3][4] These subjects were not
informed of the nature of the experiments and never received medical treatment.
For fear of publicity and a public outcry, these victims were threatened with
imprisonment if they discussed the experiments with anyone, including their
wives, parents, and especially forbidding mention to family doctors. For
decades, the Pentagon denied that the research had taken place, resulting in
decades of suffering for many veterans who subsequently developed long-term
illnesses. In the 1950s, the US Military conducted chemical warfare experiments
on more than 7,000 soldiers at its Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. [5][6][7][8][9]
For 20 years or more, the US military ordered about 250,000 servicemen into
very near ground zero to observe nuclear explosions, in addition to another
200,000 who were part of the US occupation force in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [10][11][12] In all cases, men were
ordered into the area almost immediately after the blast, the men receiving
assurance the radiation was not harmful. In some tests, the soldiers were
exposed in small bunkers only one mile from the actual blast, some observers
reporting the odor of burning flesh, and certainly some died. These tests were
much more powerful than those at Hiroshima, and even at several Kms from the
target everyone would receive third-degree burns and there would be almost no
survivors, yet US military reports claimed “the observers suffered no adverse
effects”, while refusing to release any documentation on the tests. There was
no scientific, or even military, justification for the forced exposure of these
men, especially in such large numbers. The Defense Department was simply
sacrificing soldiers in dozens of attempts to learn the incidence of illness or
death from exposure to nuclear explosions.
By late 2013, crew members from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan were
suffering serious radiation-related illnesses after conducting operations off
the coast of Japan in 2011. The crew members were apparently drinking and
bathing in heavily radioactive desalinated water with no warning and no
protection. Former Navy Quartermaster Maurice Enis said it was after more than
a month of radiation exposure that the ship was scrubbed down and sailors
offered radiation protection, but that the officers had received protective
iodine much earlier. In an interview with the Huffington Post he also claimed
“They had us sign off that we were medically fine, had no sickness, and that we
couldn’t sue the US government”, even though many displayed alarming signs of
radiation poisoning. The attorney representing these men says more than 75
sailors have testicular and thyroid cancers, leukemias, rectal and
gynecological bleeding, brain tumors, and some who had perfect eyesight are now
going blind. Some crew members have already died, and females have given birth
to infants with multiple genetic defects. The article claimed both the US and
Japanese governments are in a major conspiracy to conceal the true facts.
From the 1960s onward, as part of Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense
(SHAD), the US Military sprayed naval vessels with various biological and
chemical warfare agents, while thousands of US military personnel were aboard
the ships. [16][17] The personnel were not
notified of the tests, and were not given any protective clothing. Chemicals
tested on them included the nerve gases VX and Sarin, toxic chemicals such as
zinc cadmium sulfide and sulfur dioxide, and a variety of biological agents. In
1950, the CIA initiated Project Bluebird, later renamed Project Artichoke,
whose stated purpose was to develop “the means to control individuals through
special interrogation techniques”. Project Bluebird researchers in Maryland fed
doses of LSD to more than 7,000 US military personnel without their knowledge,
with more than 1,000 of these developing various psychiatric illnesses and
epilepsy as a result, and many committing suicide.
In Vietnam, the US military, in full possession of documented evidence of
the toxic nature of the chemical, exposed hundreds of thousands of its own
soldiers to the lethal dioxins of Agent Orange, persuading them it was harmless
to humans. [18][19][20][21] Being a liquid, soldiers
would spray each other with it to cool off on hot days. Countless thousands of
American soldiers returned from Vietnam suffering horribly from the effects,
with so many wives experiencing miscarriages and children born with birth
defects. True to form, the US government denied everything for two decades and,
when proof was irrefutable, offered these crippled and deformed survivors $100
per month for ten years – or until they died. Widows would receive a maximum of
$3,700. Monsanto spokesman Jill Montgomery, a lovely and sincere lady to be
sure, claimed Monsanto carried no liability for these casualties, saying “We
are sympathetic with people who believe they have been injured and understand
their concern to find the cause, but reliable scientific evidence indicates
that Agent Orange is not the cause of serious long-term health effects.” And US
judge Jack B. Weinstein dismissed a class-action lawsuit on the multiple
grounds that there was no basis for any claims and that the US government had
“sovereign immunity” in any case. To add insult to injury, the same court ruled
that the Chemical companies, primarily Monsanto and DuPont, were contractors of
the US government and therefore shared their immunity.
The US military also subjected many war veterans to undergo forced
lobotomies in experimental attempts to control what is today considered the
psychological trauma of war, many of these victims being very young men who
were having trouble dealing with the horrors they experienced. [22][23][24][25][26] In each case, the US
government assured the families these men would be returned to ‘normal’
behavior but who instead became vegetables, leading to generations of
recriminations and regrets. Lawsuits are still pending in many of these cases.
For the record, this wasn’t the first or last time the US government attempted
this procedure. As we will see later, lobotomies were a favorite method use by
the FBI for neutralising political dissidents in America in the 1970s and
1980s.
The US government has for many decades used the “state secrets” excuse to
cover itself from liability for its mistakes. In one famous case in 1953, some
widows whose husbands had died in a military aircraft crash sued the government
for negligence, but met a stone wall when the government refused to release the
accident report on the grounds that it would disclose vital information about
secret military equipment. When the report was declassified 50 years later, it
contained no mention of any military equipment, secret or otherwise. There are
many hundreds of these cases spanning 80 years or more, each involving a cover-up
of, occasionally, error, but most often to hide negligence or criminality.
There were also major issues when both military parents had died, leaving
orphaned children, who, to the US military, were now “free” test subjects and
who were often used in cruel medical experiments. Most of these small,
helpless, and already badly traumtised children were callously employed as
laboratory material by people completely devoid of a sense of either ethics or
humanity. Many of these children died, or committed suicide later in life.
Declaring War on the Gulf Warriors
Since the first Gulf War in Kuwait, hundreds of thousands of US troops have
suffered from exposure to various nuclear waste that was used against Iraq,
resulting in widespread cancers and leukemia, badly-deformed childbirths and a
variety of other illnesses resulting from the American use of biological and
chemical weapons. At a cancer center in Houston, Texas, a Dr. Garth Nicholson
discovered that many of these returning soldiers were infected with a
genetically-altered strain of Mycoplasma that was clearly man-made and commonly
used in the production of biological weapons. In spite of this, and other
overwhelming evidence, the US government denied the use of any of these war
materials, and refused either medical treatment or compensation to its
soldiers. There appears to be little question that the severely debilitating
illnesses and cancers these men experienced, were a direct result of this
exposure, but the US military denied not only responsibility but the existence
of the diseases themselves. The Internet has been totally scrubbed on
information on this issue. According to Google, Bing, and other search engines,
this never existed.
US soldiers during the Gulf Wars were forced under federal law to take
experimental vaccines, the law stipulating that soldiers cannot refuse
participation in the military’s medical experiments. Jessica Horjus, a member
of the US Air Force, refused to take an anthrax vaccine before being sent to
Kuwait, because the vaccine had accumulated thousands of reports of adverse
reactions ranging from headaches and vomiting to severe autoimmune and
neurological problems. [27][28][29] Despite this and despite
four years’ service and commendations and Good Conduct Medals, her commander
demoted her and cut her pay in half. When she refused additional orders to take
the vaccine, she was dishonorably discharged from the US military. Others who
have refused the vaccinations have been imprisoned, and many threatened with up
to 10 years in prison. Soldiers, citizen groups and members of Congress have
demanded that Defense Department officials cease the vaccinations, but to no
avail. The US military is determined to accumulate statistical and biological experience
with its weaponised anthrax, and requires test subjects, both for the disease
and for various treatments or immunisations.
The US is infinitely the worst country at using its own population, and
especially its military personnel for lethal experiments on humans, and has
exhibited little hesitation in “out-sourcing” these experiments to other
nations. In early 2014 the US (Jewish-owned) media totally suppressed reports
of the end of a long battle in which Jewish soldiers in Israel finally won compensation
from the courts for having been deliberately exposed to anthrax in military
tests. [30] Between 1999-2005, the Israeli Defense Ministry and the chemical and
biological weapons institute at Nes Ziona collaborated with their American
counterparts who apparently were unwilling to do live tests but found their
Israeli colleagues more than happy to oblige. The experiments were considered
so sensitive that the supposed volunteers, many of whom claimed to have been
pressured into participating, were not told what they were being injected with,
nor warned of the many side effects that included kidney failure. They were
further threatened with punishment for speaking about the project. The Israeli
Medical Association issued a scathing report of these violations, which it
claimed were done to serve US interests. According to foreign reports, Israel
shared the findings from these experiments with the US military in return for
hundreds of millions in additional “research” funding.
The recent American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have also taken their toll
in other ways. Since the US entered these wars, more than two million US troops
have been deployed. The reporting of American war deaths is now illegal, as is
all video showing American bodies returning home, and deaths are
under-reported. In addition to the deaths, more than 100,000 have been wounded
with another 1.5 million requiring medical care. And while 400,000 veterans
have sought mental assistance, more than 200,000 are living with Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder.[31][32][33] Over two million veterans are eligible for
benefits with 600,000 already receiving federal disability. The savage
barbarity that has engulfed American soldiers has also led to a massive
increase in suicidal tendencies. The US government claims to have rescued
20,000 suicidal veterans, while thousands of others have committed suicide from
their inability to live with the atrocities they committed at the instruction
of their own government.
In spite of the number of American soldiers receiving treatment, many
hundreds of thousands more have been studiously ignored, the US government
steadfastly refusing to recognise their illnesses or even admit the existence
of them. This applies to the severe mental and emotional disturbances resulting
not from battle stress but from atrocities committed. As well, the many
victims, certainly numbering in the hundreds of thousands, suffering from
exposure to depleted uranium, are not only ignored but the US government
flatly denies having used such munitions in the face of overwhelming evidence
of their guilt. Countless thousands of American soldiers have experienced the
same tragic birth defects in their own children as seen by people in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Kuwait, but are left to their own devices to cope.
The US fired millions of artillery and other rounds in Iraq that were made
of depleted uranium (DU). I won’t go into details here, but one effect of DU is
that since then about 25% of all births in Iraq exhibit the most horrible
deformities, babies born with no head, one head, two heads, or three heads.
Many infants are born with most of their internal organs outside the torso, and
many with the brain entirely outside the cranial cavity. Many have any number
of limbs emanating from any part of the body, and many with no limbs at all.
Some have no eyes; some have only one large eye in the center of their
foreheads, if the nose isn’t already there.
A UN report described many emerging fetuses as “unidentifiable lumps of flesh“. It was so bad that the midwives who still at that time delivered most births in Iraq, were refusing to assist at birthing because “We don’t know what will come out.”
Life Magazine ran an article titled, detailing how many American soldiers returned home with the same radioactive contamination and whose wives experienced similar defective births.[34][35] The article was touching, and focused on the fact that the US military adamantly refused to admit that its DU munitions were responsible, and disclaimed any responsibility for the welfare of these soldiers. But the real point is that Life was somehow unaware of the hundreds of thousands of similar frightening births in Iraq, focusing only on a few treasured American lives. The article, and the issue, have since been deleted from Life’s archive and totally scrubbed from the internet, as have photo images of the cover.
American servicemen who served in Afghanistan, and during the Gulf War in
Kuwait and later in Iraq, have consistently and in very large numbers claimed
to have been unknowingly exposed to large amounts of chemical and biological
pathogens as well as lethal radioactive dust from depleted-uranium munitions.
In spite of an enormous amount of direct and circumstantial evidence, the US
military continues to steadfastly deny having employed any of these munitions
or materials and has refused almost all medical care or disability pensions, or
indeed any compensation, to these people. One problem in receiving treatment is
that these veterans all claim, “We were lined up in front of the medical
facility and made to sign waivers attesting to “not having been exposed to
anything harmful” and these papers were PART of and KEY TO out-processing that
base, i.e., going home.”. In other words, the US military not only forced each
soldier to ingest unknown medications, but to sign a legal waiver of any
government liability as a condition for ending a tour of duty and being able to
return home. That constitutes coercion and extortion on a grand scale, and
leaves war veterans with no recourse.
This large collection of illnesses has been collectively catalogued as
“Gulf War Illnesses”, which the US military attributes entirely to “stress” or
“battle fatigue”, implying these are simply psychological disorders experienced
by the less than mentally fit. But the symptoms, according to the best medical
minds in America, do not fit any such categorisation and would in fact be
impossible as the results of stress. As well, virtually to a man, these soldiers
deny that their participation in these wars was at all stressful, and refuse to
accept that stress in any form played a part in their conditions. To further
underscore these claims, a great many of these Gulf War veterans have
transmitted their symptoms and illnesses to their immediate family members, to
the workplace, and to other civilians as well. Moreover, treatments with
medications that address exposure to chemical and biological agents have proven
successful in a large number of cases in eliminating the symptoms and the
illnesses, a result which would be impossible if the conditions were merely
stress-induced.
The symptoms, such as chronic fatigue, Fibromyalgia, and chemical
sensitivities appear to conform to chronic illnesses caused by exposure to
various chemical and biological agents. “In addition to chronic fatigue, the
soldiers have suffered headaches, memory loss, muscle pain, nausea,
gastrointestinal problems, severe pain in joints and lymph nodes, memory loss,
and other symptoms that included heightened sensitivities to various
environmental agents as well as enhanced allergic responses. None of these are
typically recognisable as stress-related symptoms, and none would be infectious
or transmittable to others if they lacked a physical and medical basis.” The US
military flatly denies that any symptoms have been transmitted to others, yet a
US Senate investigative report concluded that a large number of Gulf War
veterans do indeed have transmittable infections and that the families of these
veterans have developed the same chronic infections in about 45% of all cases.
The US sent nearly two million soldiers to the Persian Gulf for the Gulf
Wars, with a large percentage subjected to an experimental nerve agent which is
later believed to be one of the causes of Gulf War Syndrome. The Defense
Department at first attempted to lay the blame on Iraq’s chemical and
biological facilities which were destroyed during the wars and which, it was
claimed, released these toxins. However, it was later easily proven that Iraq
had no such facilities of any consequence and, in any case, more than a third
of all US soldiers suffering from these disabling illnesses had never left the
US during either war, leaving the entire liability resting on the medications and
vaccinations administered to the troops. Civilian medical investigators are
unanimous in concluding these Gulf War illnesses are the result of exposure to
multiple toxins from chemical, radiological and biological sources, which
category would include the forced experimental vaccinations applied to these
servicemen prior to their tours of duty. In fact, many servicemen who would not
have been in position to be exposed to the other toxins or pathogens, are
convinced it was the vaccinations themselves that induced the illnesses they
now face. The US military refuses to discuss this matter as well.
In spite of the military’s consistent denials, it is an established fact
not in dispute by the servicemen or the medical profession that vast numbers of
chemical and biological exposures occurred during the Gulf War, and that the
chronic and systemic conditions existing today are the natural result of these
exposures. One such agent consists of a group of intracellular pathogens like
mycoplasmas that affect a person’s immune system and trigger unusual
auto-immune effects very much like the Gulf War symptoms, and it is precisely
the mycoplasmas that the military is accused of having employed and dispersed
in large amounts. Medical experts believe the proven existence of large-scale
mycoplasma blood infections in these veterans, would explain most of their
symptoms and illnesses. Certainly, the US military had been working on enhanced
mycoplasma strains for many years, and clearly achieved some success since the
US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology obtained a patent on mycoplasmas in June
1991. And as early as 1975 or 1976, the city of Huntsville, Texas experienced a
serious outbreak of an apparently altered form of mycoplasma, that many
observers concluded had resulted from a covert government experiment
originating at a Texas military installation.
Dr. Garth Nicolson is one of the medical experts testifying in this arena.
He is the Chief Scientific Officer and Research Professor at the Institute for
Molecular Medicine in Huntington Beach, California, with a CV of credentials
too extensive to list here. It was primarily his testimony that opened this
matter to public debate, since his qualifications essentially placed him beyond
impeachment. In November of 1998, Dr. Nicolson testified before a Congressional
Committee on the matter of the Defense Department’s treatment of the Gulf War
Illnesses. It was Dr. Nicholson’s work that discovered perhaps half of Gulf War
veterans had been infected with “an altered strain of Mycoplasma incognitus”,
one that was commonly used in the production of biological weapons, and whose
molecular structure contained portions of an HIV protein coat, proving
irrefutably that it had been made in a lab and was part of a
genetically-engineered bio-warfare agent.
And this was where the lies began in earnest. The Defense Department
testified to Congress and stated to the media that this type of mycoplasma
infection was very common, not at all dangerous and would not even qualify as a
human pathogen. Dr. Nicholson stated that “These statements could not be
further from the truth”, that the US military Health Sciences “had been
teaching its medical students for years that this type of infection is very
dangerous and can progress to system-wide organ failure and death”, and that
“the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) has been publishing for years
that this type of infection can result in death …”.
Dr. Nicholson documented his success in treating these illnesses, stating
it was only those antibiotics active against mycoplasmas that produced positive
results, producing prima facie evidence that these biological organisms were
the source of the Gulf War illnesses. Dr. Nicholson stated flatly that the “DoD
is still trying to bury the issue of infectious diseases and GWI”, repeatedly
referring to military statements with comments such as : “This is not the
truth.”; “These are complete distortions and untruths.”. He also made the
point, as have many others that, during the rather brief Gulf War offensive,
chemical weapons alarms sounded more than 14,000 times, the military later dismissing
this with a claim that the equipment “produced many false positives” and that
no chemical or biological weapons were used.
Nicholson also discussed the vaccinations, testifying that soldiers were
given “multiple inoculations, in some cases with experimental vaccines in
unproved immunization schemes”, stating that the untested and unproven vaccines
given simultaneously could easily result in immunosuppression. He further noted
that these “experimental” vaccines were contaminated (whether accidentally or
deliberately, he did not specify) and that many lots of these vaccines had to
be destroyed due to the “microorganism contamination”.
Five years later, Dr. Nicolson uncovered evidence proving that the
biological agents used during the Gulf War, and to which hundreds of thousands
of soldiers were exposed, had been manufactured in Houston, TX and Boca Raton,
Fl and tested on prisoners in the Texas Department of Corrections. Finally in
1996 the Department of Defense admitted that Desert Storm soldiers had been
exposed to chemical agents dispersed by the US military, stating the US FDA
(Food and Drug Administration) had granted the US military a “waiver of the
Nuremberg Code”, thereby permitting the use of unapproved drugs (and
weapons) and vaccines that were used in Desert Shield. This was an
astonishingly ludicrous claim, since the FDA has no authority to waive
international treaties. A year later, about 100 members of the US Congress
presented a demand for an investigation into Gulf War Syndrome and the US
military’s bio-weapons use, a demand which produced no result of which I am
aware.
But even with the revelations and admitted complicity of the US government,
the military and CIA, and hundreds of prominent American hospitals and
universities, the victims have largely been left to fend for themselves without
treatment or compensation, the US courts generally ruling that the government
and all its agencies are immune to prosecution. And even to this date, not a
single individual has been prosecuted for participation in this immense
travesty of human rights violations.
There is one more aspect of this matter that the Western media have taken
extraordinary pains to bury, to prevent the topic from even entering public
consciousness. And this issue is the devastating horrors visited on the
citizens of those nations listed above, since it wasn’t only US servicemen who
were exposed to depleted uranium, dioxins and all the chemical and biological
pathogens. Iraq alone has millions of civilians who were exposed to a wide
range of these horrors, quite apart from the tragedy of the war itself, with
the US government and the entire Western world pretending this matter doesn’t
exist. But it does exist, even though the New York Times doesn’t care to tell
you about it. Once again, the value of free speech depends entirely on who
controls the microphone.
Not only have the victims not received compensation or treatment, in almost
all instances the government has refused to even acknowledge what was done to
them. This applies perhaps especially to members of the US Armed Services who
were not only used as unwitting subjects in an enormous variety of chemical,
biological and radioactive experimentation, but were knowingly subjected – en
masse – to debilitating and often lethal doses of chemicals and radiation on
the battlefield. This occurred after Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as during
the hundreds of nuclear test explosions conducted by the US military on
American soil and around the world, when American soldiers were repeatedly sent
in immediately following a nuclear test, without protection or warning. The
same occurred during the war in Vietnam where government and military
authorities were fully aware of the lethality and genetic horrors from exposure
to dioxins like Agent Orange, exposing potentially millions of soldiers to
these deadly poisons.
It occurred again in Operation Desert Storm and the wars in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, where soldiers were widely exposed to the effects
of depleted uranium and various biological agents that were proven to have been
man-made. In all the above cases, the cancers, multiple other serious
illnesses, hideous birth defects and much more, are simply denied even today,
the military refusing even to admit its use of depleted uranium in spite of the
overwhelming evidence.
Researchers using military patients in veterans’ hospitals as test subjects
for human medical experiments, were ordered to never use the word
“experiments”, but to describe their activities as “investigations” or
“observations” in all medical reports, to avoid future public recriminations.
One document classified as “Secret”, stated, “It is desired that no document be
released which refers to experiments with humans that might have an adverse
reaction on public opinion or result in legal suits.”, leaving no doubt the
government was aware of the risks to both military personnel and civilians.
This is a pattern to which the US government has steadfastly – and inexplicably
– adhered for many decades.
A great many US war veterans still suffer from various cancers caused by
the dioxins in Agent Orange that was used so freely in Vietnam, many even
becoming ill long after the war from flying in aircraft still contaminated with
heavy traces of the chemical. Most are still battling the US military and
government for treatment and compensation, which the authorities refuse to
provide. For Vietnam veterans, the Huffington Post reported in 2015 that of
900,000 Vietnam soldiers who applied for health care, about 300,000 have
already died without receiving any assistance.
In 1994 Senator John D. Rockefeller issued a report revealing that for at
least 50 years the Department of Defense had used hundreds of thousands of
military personnel in human experiments, with intentional exposure to a vast
array of dangerous substances that included mustard and nerve gas, nuclear
radiation, psycho-chemicals, hallucinogens, as well as drugs and vaccines used
during the Gulf War. Yet it was only in the late 1990s that the military admitted,
under enormous pressure from Congress and after substantial public exposure in
the media, that “maybe 20,000” Gulf War veterans “may have been exposed” to
chemical and biological weapons in Kuwait and Iraq, but that belated
recognition did not lead to either further disclosure or to medical treatment
or compensation. At the time, Congress demanded of the White House and military
a full public investigation into bioweapons used and the multiple resulting
illnesses of Gulf War Syndrome; Congress was ignored.
It was not only the US military’s use of biological and chemical weapons in
the Gulf, but of proven claims that the medications and vaccines administered
to hundreds of thousands of soldiers were responsible for much of the epidemic
of illnesses. But the military’s refusal to even admit, much less accept
liability, was based in part of a claim that the FDA had approved military use
of unapproved drugs and vaccines, and had “waived the Nuremberg Code” for the
US military during the Gulf Wars. This is one branch of the US government
disabling hundreds of thousands of its servicemen with biological, chemical and
radioactive material, then disclaiming liability on the grounds that another
branch of the same government gave it permission to do so. It would be
difficult to uncover a more perfect example of specious and deceitful
reasoning.
And this wasn’t the first time. In 1942, the US military developed a
vaccine for yellow fever that was also meant to protect soldiers against
smallpox, tetanus and typhoid. The vaccine was untested, unlicensed for use,
and a safe version of this vaccine would prove to be more than ten years in the
future. Moreover, the vaccine had been reported to cause jaundice and other
medical problems, but the military decided to use it anyway, unleashing the
largest single outbreak of Hepatitis B ever recorded, infecting hundreds of
thousands of soldiers.
The US government’s position on compensation and medical treatment since
the 1940s has been one of denying, ignoring, resisting and stonewalling until
all the claimants eventually die, and this has been as true with civilian
casualties as with military. Even in cases where virtually the entire medical
community has documented the causes and origins of these illnesses, and where
Congressional investigations have confirmed the liability, the White House and
military refuse to cooperate. Instead, they present innumerable roadblocks and
delaying tactics, often resorting to pressuring the judiciary and Department of
Justice to refuse claims. The White House and the military have relied heavily
on the judicial system to avoid liability. In one case, a US Army sergeant sued
the military for subjecting him to drugs without his consent or even his
knowledge, and the great US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the
final ruling that no serviceman had a right to sue the US military on the
grounds that these illnesses or injuries were “service-related”. This was
essentially the same excuse the military used after sending thousands of
soldiers directly into ground zero immediately after a nuclear blast. The
servicemen were being used in an abominable experiment to discover the
radiation effects on humans of a nuclear blast, but they did so in the line of
duty as a soldier.
*
Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and
his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics
websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language
platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman.
He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and
owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor
at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international
affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently
writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is
one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
His full archive can be seen at
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/and https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at:
*
NOTES
[1] Veterans Used In Secret
Experiments Sue Military For Answers
https://www.npr.org/2015/09/05/437555125/veterans-used-in-secret-experiments-sue-military-for-answers
[2] US admits guilt over
mustard gas tests
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13718561-000-us-admits-guilt-over-mustard-gas-tests/
[3] Why the U.S. military
exposed minority soldiers to toxic mustard gas
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/u-s-military-exposed-minority-soldiers-toxic-mustard-gas
[4] The Tragic Aftermath of
Mustard Gas Experiments in World War II. An NPR investigation is looking for
victims of the U.S. military tests
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/americans-who-were-exposed-mustard-gas-wwii-experiments-180957152/
[5] Edgewood/Aberdeen Experiments
https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/edgewood-aberdeen/index.asp
[6] Edgewood Arsenal human
experiments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgewood_Arsenal_human_experiments
[7] Secrets of Edgewood
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/secrets-of-edgewood
[8] Meet the Veterans Who
Survived the Army's Edgewood Experiments
https://www.military.com/off-duty/television/2022/06/07/meet-veterans-who-survived-armys-edgewood-experiments.html
[9] How Edgewood Arsenal
Carried Out Biological Warfare Experiments On Unknowing US Soldiers
https://www.ranker.com/list/edgewood-arsenal-human-experiments/melissa-sartore
[10] Atomic Veterans Were
Silenced for 50 Years. Now, They’re Talking. (Article and video)
https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/590299/atomic-soldiers/
[11] America’s atomic vets:
‘We were used as guinea pigs – every one of us’
https://revealnews.org/article/us-veterans-in-secretive-nuclear-tests-still-fighting-for-recognition/
[12] The Atomic Soldiers
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/opinion/atomic-soldiers.html
[13] Air Crews Measured
Radiation By Flying Into A-Bomb Clouds
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/11/14/air-crews-measured-radiation-by-flying-into-a-bomb-clouds/144332d9-bb86-4845-b4f0-db08a1ab48b6/
[14] Widow Claims RAF Pilot
Husband Was Ordered To Fly Through Thermonuclear Cloud
https://www.forces.net/news/widow-claims-secret-documents-show-nuclear-radiation-experiments
[15] What the mushroom cloud
from 1952 hydrogen bomb test revealed
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/what-the-mushroom-cloud-from-1952-hydrogen-bomb-test-ivy-mike-revealed
[16] Project SHAD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAD
[17] Exposure through Project
112 or Project SHAD
https://www.va.gov/disability/eligibility/hazardous-materials-exposure/project-112-shad/
[18] The Shocking Health
Effects Of Agent Orange Now A Legacy Of Military Death
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2018/05/28/the-shocking-health-effects-of-agent-orange-now-a-legacy-of-military-death/
[19] Veterans' Diseases
Associated with Agent Orange
https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/agentorange/conditions/
[20] The Victims of Agent
Orange the U.S. Has Never Acknowledged
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/magazine/laos-agent-orange-vietnam-war.html
[21] Fifty Years Later, Agent
Orange Still Kills in Vietnam
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/fifty-years-later-agent-orange-still-kills-vietnam-173463
[22] The VA's sad record of
lobotomies
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2014/01/10/daily-circuit-lobotomy-veterans
[23] After WWII, The Outdated
Medical Practice Of Lobotomy Permanently Damaged Thousands Of Horrifically
Traumatized American Veterans
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/soldiers-wwii-trauma.html?edg-c=1
[24] The ‘forgotten’
lobotomies on World War II vets
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/the-forgotten-lobotomies-on-world-war-ii-vets
[25] Congress Looks Into
Surviving Veterans Lobotomized After World War II
https://www.medicaldaily.com/congress-looks-surviving-veterans-lobotomized-after-world-war-ii-265634
[26] Thousands of military
veterans were lobotomized after WWII
https://www.advisory.com/Daily-Briefing/2013/12/13/Thousands-of-military-veterans-were-lobotomized-after-WWII
[27] Disability among US Army
Veterans vaccinated against anthrax
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22874851/
[28] Court ruling again stops
anthrax shots for US soldiers
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/anthrax/court-ruling-again-stops-anthrax-shots-us-soldiers
[29] GAO: Military anthrax
shots caused many reactions, prompted some pilots to quit
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/anthrax/gao-military-anthrax-shots-caused-many-reactions-prompted-some-pilots-quit
[30] Israeli Soldiers Felled by Secret
Anthrax Vaccine Experiment
https://www.wired.com/2007/05/israeli-soldier/
[31] Statistics on PTSD in
Veterans
https://health.usnews.com/conditions/mental-health/ptsd/articles/ptsd-veterans-statistics
[32] The Connection Between
PTSD and Military Service
https://www.verywellmind.com/overview-of-ptsd-and-the-military-2797443
[33] Post-traumatic stress
disorder in U.S. soldiers with post-traumatic headache
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24001181/
[34] Government Muzzled Media
on Birth Defects in Children of Gulf War Veterans
For more than 25 years, the VA and DOD have refused
to acknowledge the abnormally high rates of birth defects among children of
Gulf War veterans.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/birth-defects-children-gulf-war-veterans/
[35] The Tiny Victims of Desert
Storm
https://www.bellaciao.org/en/The-Tiny-Victims-of-Desert-Storm
Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Blue Moon of Shanghai, Moon of Shanghai, 2023
