Chemical Warfare.

Apparently, chemical weapons were used on US troops in the first Gulf War. Unfortunately, it was our own government who employed the chemical weapons on US troops. CNN reports on a study that was done for the "congressionally mandated Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses" finds two causal agents:

The report identifies two Gulf War "neurotoxic" exposures that "are causally associated with Gulf War illness." The first is the ingestion of pyridostigmine bromide (PB) pills, given to protect troops from effects of nerve agents. The second is exposure to dangerous pesticides used during the conflict.

While CNN doesn't identify who used the "dangerous pesticides," I can only guess that with our country's history of using chemicals to deal with naturally occurring hazards (see Agent Orange), that it was the US deploying the pesticides.


The US also has a fine history of experimenting on its own soldiers and civilians, as the early atomic bomb tests ably demonstrate:

Not to mention the fallout about 65 miles away in Las Vegas. Roll those dice, baby!

Notoriously, we also have the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, conducted over an amazing 30 years by the US Public Health Service and only stopped when it became public knowledge that the U.S. government was deliberately failing to treat study participants so they could study the effects of this fatal-if-left-untreated disease...of course, the participants were poor Black men, so I guess the government thought, "eh, who really cares."

So the idea the government would deliberately infect our troops with experimental medicines and expose them to poorly researched chemical pesticides isn't exactly a shocker. The only question is whether George H.W. Bush will be brought to justice for presiding over this act of chemical warfare.