US military planned nerve gas test on Aust troops

ABC News
Posted 10 hours 34 minutes ago
Updated 8 hours 16 minutes ago

Defence files have revealed the United States military was planning to test deadly nerve gas on Australian troops in a far north Queensland rainforest in the 1960s.

Australian Defence Department files obtained by Channel Nine show the US was planning to test Sarin and VX nerve gas on up to 200 Australian combat troops by aerial bombing areas around Lockhart River.

The plan never went ahead, but American survey teams inspected the proposed testing site.

The prime minister at the time, Harold Holt, vetoed the plan.

His former staffer, Peter Bailey, says the Australian government was concerned that its Cold War alliance with the US would be damaged if it did not acquiesce.

"If they weren't pretty good and pretty faithful to the Americans we would be dumped, so I think ministers were very aware that this was probably our one main support," he said.

Former Democrats Senator Lyn Allison has told Channel Nine the current Government should make the documents public.

"There's apparently a whole unit which the minister says didn't conduct testing but I think we need to know what they were doing and it is time for these documents to be released," she said.

"Let us have a look at what was being contemplated just 40 odd years ago - it's not the deepest, darkest history of Australia we're talking about."

Viewed 06/07/08 at 19:12 (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/06/2295601.htm)

Maybe it was the yanks who made holt "disapear"

this is a more detailed story about this but its from channel 9 which is a commertial station rather than the ABC

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=287260

Not only was this highly illegal but it puts an end to the myth that the US is our "great protector". If they were willing to do this then, what are they doing now?

Let us have a look at what was being contemplated

Many things are "contemplated" but few ever make it to reality. I doubt this ever got off the ground if it ever was brought up. As you well know the media always likes to make up shit about everything they can find.:(

Um i dont think you realise why i use the ABC as my main source. They DONT make up stuff, they dont NEED to sell papers or get sponsors. There closest equivlant is the BBC and they wouldnt put there name to something like this if it wasnt throuly checked. That being said we cant ask the PM of the time because no one knows what happened to him, he disapeard

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23976732-26103,00.html

this is the third artical on the same thing BTW i have found, so far i havent been able to locate the documents themselves but i will keep trying to find them. You do realise that one of the reasons for going after Sudam Husaine surposed to be his use of chemical weapons in war and this is a story about a plan to use them on an alies troops. It also apears that the US tried to bully australia into letting the US kill 200 Australian troops.

Now if this was an australian plan to kill 200 US solders what would your responce be?

Um i dont think you realise why i use the ABC as my main source. They DONT make up stuff, they dont NEED to sell papers or get sponsors. There closest equivlant is the BBC and they wouldnt put there name to something like this if it wasnt throuly checked. That being said we cant ask the PM of the time because no one knows what happened to him, he disapeard

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23976732-26103,00.html

this is the third artical on the same thing BTW i have found, so far i havent been able to locate the documents themselves but i will keep trying to find them. You do realise that one of the reasons for going after Sudam Husaine surposed to be his use of chemical weapons in war and this is a story about a plan to use them on an alies troops. It also apears that the US tried to bully australia into letting the US kill 200 Australian troops.

Now if this was an australian plan to kill 200 US solders what would your responce be?

Bull Shit! the media is nothing but fish wife gossip, here are some slect storys that the New's Media has falsified, Not just ABC, but BBC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Newsweek, Reuters, The Nework Times, Washington Post, Jimmy Carter, Ward Churchill, Maureen Dowd, Jesse MacBeth, Micah Wright.

There is not a reliable new source around the world, they all spin the news to their political view point, and their readership and advertising numbers show just that, they are in free fall, the only sources about the news that are gaining Advertising revenues and Listenership are the , Rush Limbaughs, and Sean Hannities, and they don't claim to be news, they just report the stories and tell you that they do it to their shows advantage.

And you get more real news, from those shows, than you get from the News Media.

The Dishonest 101

59. Mark Halperin, ABC News (2004). Admitted bias. He wrote a memo to news staff telling them to hold George Bush to a stricter standard than John Kerry: "Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and makes] mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win. We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides ‘equally' accountable when the facts don't warrant that."

62. Michael Isikoff, Newsweek (2005). False/unsubstantiated reporting. The Newsweek article claimed that a U.S. interrogator at a Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet (2005). "Anti-U.S. fanatics seized on the report to stir up riots that have left more than a dozen people dead in Pakistan and Afghanistan." There is no evidence such a thing ever happened, and most of us wonder how it would even be possible.

1. ABC, Food Lion story (1992). Fraudulent techniques and probable fabrication. Two ABC producers lied on their resumes to get jobs at Food Lion. They each wore a wig hiding a tiny lipstick-sized camera, and each carried a concealed microphone. It's possible they shot footage of mishandled food by doing the mishandling themselves. Food Lion sued ABC and a jury awarded it $5.5 million.

2. ABC 20/20 "Exploding Fords" story (1978). Staged footage. Similar to the later NBC "exploding" GM trucks episode, ABC aired "grossly misleading crash videos and simulations, withheld the same sorts of material facts about the tests, and relied on the same dubious experts with the same ties to the plaintiffs bar... viewers were shown a crash fire and explosion without being told it had been started by an incendiary device."

3. ABC 20/20, "Buckwheat" (of the Little Rascals) story. (1990). Fell for hoax. "In 1990 the ABC program 20/20 was hoaxed into believing that Billy "Buckwheat" Thomas was alive and working as a grocery bagger in Tempe, Arizona. (Thomas actually died in 1980.) A segment broadcast October 5 with narrator Hugh Downs featured an impostor."

39. Alexis Debat, ABC and Politique Internationale (2007). Lied. "Since 2002, [ABC] has employed Debat as a counterterrorism consultant and sometimes reporter." He "had faked an interview with Sen. Barack Obama that he published under his name in a French journal, Politique International [and] had published other alleged interviews in the same journal with Sen. Hillary Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. It turns out, ABC itself later reported, the interviews were apparently fabricated."

12. BBC and many others in the looted National Museum of Iraq story (2003). False reporting. The BBC stated on April 12, 2003, that "The museum's deputy director said looters had taken or destroyed 170,000 items of antiquity dating back thousands of years. ‘They were worth billions of dollars... The Americans were supposed to protect the museum.'" By May, the Telegraph (UK) was reporting "They now believe that the number of items taken was in the low thousands, and possibly hundreds."

52. Andrew Gilligan, BBC (2004). False/unsubstantiated reporting. He reported that the UK government had exaggerated the threat by Saddam to justify going to war. His report was largely based on an interview with weapons expert David Kelly. His story was found to be "defective" and his claims "unfounded" by Lord Hutton's investigation. Gilligan resigned and Kelly committed suicide.

57. Adnan Hajj, Reuters (2006). Doctored photos. He doctored dozens of pictures of the 2006 Lebanon-Israel conflict. Reuters later withdrew all 920 of his photos from sale. (See more on middle east "fauxtography", including blog-famous "Wailing Woman" or "Flat Fatima", "Islamic Rage Boy", "Green Helmet Guy", "Mickey Mouse" rubble, Israeli "missile" hole in ambulance, dead guy walking, etc., here.)

81. Reuters, Lebanon coverage (2006). Fake/staged photos.A burning tire dump as the scene of an Israeli bombing, Photoshopped bomb smoke, etc. during the Lebanon-Israel conflict.

82. Reuters Russia's North Pole coverage (2007). More fake photos/footage. "Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic." The mistake was caught by a 13-year-old Finnish boy.

24. Jimmy Carter, former U.S. President, Nobel Peace Prize winner and author of Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid. Lying, plagiarism, bias. His book was so full of errors, including doctored maps, that his chief collaborator, Kenneth Stein of Emory University, resigned his position with the Carter Center. Carter's book was condemned by Alan Dershowitz and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, among others.

25. CBS 60 Minutes, the "Runaway Audi" (1989). Fake footage/manufactured evidence. "... drilled a hole in an Audi transmission and pumped in air at high pressure. Viewers didn't see the drill or the pump -- just the doctored car blasting off like a rocket. The story starred a mother who had run over her six-year-old son. On the air, she insisted that she had had her foot on the brake the whole time. When her $48 million claim came to court in Akron, Ohio, in June 1988 the investigating police officer and witnesses at the scene testified that after the accident the distraught mother had admitted that her foot had slipped off the brake. The jury found no defect in the car."

26. CBS 60 Minutes, Illinois Power story (1979). Erroneous reporting. "The next day, the company's stock fell in the busiest trading day of its history. Illinois Power replied quickly to the story, however, producing a 44-minute videotape that served as a rebuttal to the show. The company sent it to customers, shareholders and investors, corporate executives and other journalists. It was a point-by-point reply to all of the assertions made on the show. In January 1980, CBS admitted to inaccuracies in the story."

27. CBS 60 Minutes, another phony Vietnam vet story (1995). Fell for hoax/lie. Largely because of this 60 Minutes piece that painted Joe Yandle as a troubled Viet Nam combat veteran, his prison sentence was commuted. In a follow-up story, Mike Wallace interviewed Yandle who admitted he had never served in Vietnam. A host of other phony combat veterans are uncovered here.

28. CBS, Dan Rather, The Wall Within (1988). Fell for hoax, liars. This documentary had Dan Rather interviewing six Viet Nam veterans who told stories of slaughter, cruelty and the horrors of war. "You're telling me that you went into the village, killed people, burned part of the village, then made it appear that the other side had done this?" Rather asked. "Yeah. It was kill VC, and I was good at what I did." It turned out that only one of the vets served in combat and their stories were false.

29. CBS, Dan Rather, Mary Mapes (2004). Fell for fake documents. CBS used forged documents from a non-credible source in claiming George W. Bush received favored treatment in the Air National Guard.

32. Ward Churchill, Chairman of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado. Lying and plagiarism. He lied about his credentials and ethnic background to get a job in the first place. His "research" was laden with fabricated evidence, plagiarism and referencing his own previous writings under pseudonyms. He is worthy of Mary McCarthy's quote about Lillian Hellman: "Every word (s)he writes is a lie, including ‘and' and ‘the'." He was fired.

33. CNN, Operation Tailwind, CNN NewsStand (1998). Lying/fabricating. The televised special claimed that the U.S. military used nerve gas in a mission to kill American defectors in Laos during the Vietnam War, but the story had no factual support. CNN later retracted the story.

34. CNN and Eason Jordan (2003). Admitted bias, slanting the news. Eason Jordan, CNN's news chief, admitted that CNN withheld reporting on Saddam Hussein's atrocities so as to continue getting favored treatment from Saddam.

41. Maureen Dowd, New York Times (2003). Serious misquoting. She cut words out of one of President Bush's statements, using quotation marks, to imply he said al-Qaida is no longer a problem. He was really referring only to those who were dead or captured.

69. Jesse MacBeth, anti-war star (2006). Lying/fabricating. "Jesse MacBeth stoked opposition to the Iraq war in 2006 when he spoke out about atrocities he committed as a U.S. Army Ranger serving as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. MacBeth, 23, of Tacoma, claimed to have killed more than 200 people, many at close range, some as they prayed in a mosque. He spoke at an anti-war rally in Tacoma and appeared in a 20-minute anti-war video that circulated widely on the Internet. Trouble is, none of MacBeth's claims was true."

99. Duff Wilson and Jonathan D. Glater , New York Times Duke Lacrosse reporting (2006). Flawed reporting. The NYT stories generally painted the prosecution as strong and the defense weak. As it turned out, the charges were dropped, the defendants completely vindicated and apologized to, and prosecutor Nifong was himself put in jail. The NYT's own "public editor", Byron Calame, stated "the article last August had left me concerned that Times journalists were not sufficiently skeptical in relying so heavily on the [prosecution investigator] Gottlieb notes." Calame does assure us, however, that "most flaws flowed from journalistic lapses rather than ideological bias."

101. Micah Wright. Author and anti-war activist (2003). Lying. Claimed to be a former U.S. Ranger and combat veteran. His book, You Back the Attack! We'll Bomb Who We Want!, was endorsed by novelist Kurt Vonnegut and historian Howard Zinn. He was never in the military.

Now if this was an australian plan to kill 200 US solders what would your responce be?
Where did it say the plan was to kill them?

Edit: From the video segment, the plan was to disseminate the agent within a designated area and the soldiers would conduct operations within that area while wearing chemical protective overgarmets to protect them from the agent. We used to do this sort of thing all the time in the old days, with American soldiers, British soldiers, Canadian soldiers, etc. It was a training and readiness thing. If the Cold War got hot, there was every chance that NATO forces would be facing the hazards of nuclear and chemical weapons on the battlefield, so we gave them the best training regime that we could. It isn't nearly as severe as you or the retards in that news segment are making it out to be.

, Rush Limbaughs, and Sean Hannities, and they don't claim to be news, they just report the stories and tell you that they do it to their shows advantage.

And you get more real news, from those shows, than you get from the News Media. You start out by reminding everyone of the necessity of doubt, and checking - the frequency with which bogus stuff gets aired as news.

Then you endorse someone like Limbaugh. You could have filled your list with nothing except Limbaugh garbage, had you wished. Instead, the dozens and dozens of flagrancies committed by him, Hannity, and the rest of the ranting crowd you left out of your list above, are somehow not worthy of your attention.

Do you think that lies and innuendo and false presentations make better news when they are delivered by admitted partisans ?

This is not new news. The United States Army used American civilians as unwitting guinea pigs for biological and chemical and nuclear weapons testing as well as US Military personel. It is a well established fact and well documented.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Study_of_Untreated_Syphilis_in_the_Negro_ Male

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/experiment.htm

My guess is that there was not intent to kill or harm them but rather test how chemicals effectively materials were dispersed. But that does not justify these actions.

The Army has been rebuked and should not be conducting these kinds of studies. This just goes to show the importance of oversite.

The difference is, from what i could tell by reading the article, is that these were not to be unwitting participants. IOW, a controlled experiment.

The Army has been rebuked and should not be conducting these kinds of studies. This just goes to show the importance of oversite.
Why shouldn't soldiers be prepared for the NBC battlefield? That was obviously going to be the objective of this exercise, had it been conducted.

See also: Operation Plumbob (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbob), where we actually did nuke our own soldiers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW5An5u2U70

Should soldiers be prepared for the battlefield, yes. Is it necessary to irradiate them as a test? I think not. And how about innocent civilians? It was an odd period in our history.

You start out by reminding everyone of the necessity of doubt, and checking - the frequency with which bogus stuff gets aired as news.

Then you endorse someone like Limbaugh. You could have filled your list with nothing except Limbaugh garbage, had you wished. Instead, the dozens and dozens of flagrancies committed by him, Hannity, and the rest of the ranting crowd you left out of your list above, are somehow not worthy of your attention.

I just pointed out that Limbaugh and Hannity have a better record of news reporting, and that they tell you that they are biased, something the news doesn't, and it show in the advertising revenues, Limbaugh has the number one rated show in the Industry, Hannity is Number Two, both are rising, and the traditional news outlets are in a death spiral.

And my list is from recognized News Sources, all of the major and a lot of the Minor.

Do you think that lies and innuendo and false presentations make better news when they are delivered by admitted partisans ?

List something that has been presented by Limbaugh that was a lie?

I just listed excerpts from 101 incidents from National and International News organs that were blatantly lies, plagiarism, falsified report.

Now lets see something that Limbaugh has lied about.

The biggest lie from the Media is that they are non-biased, and Limbaugh tell you up front that he is biased, so if some one tell me he is biased I check, and when some one claims to be non-biased I check ever further, Do You?

You wish to defend the Medias Reporting Recored? and claim the high ground from their past?

Really? go :wallbang:

The difference is, from what i could tell by reading the article, is that these were not to be unwitting participants. IOW, a controlled experiment.

When the story was first reported yesterday, the documents obtained from the Government archives showed that only a few knew exactly what they were consenting to. Others were not told of the true nature of the tests themselves.

Bull Shit! the media is nothing but fish wife gossip, here are some slect storys that the New's Media has falsified, Not just ABC, but BBC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Newsweek, Reuters, The Nework Times, Washington Post, Jimmy Carter, Ward Churchill, Maureen Dowd, Jesse MacBeth, Micah Wright.

Sadly, this is not the case with this particular story. The reporters had obtained Federal Government and defense documents from the archive, which detailed some of the tests the US Government wanted to conduct on Australian soldiers. The documents obtained (private memos to and from the Prime Minister for example, as well as some letters from the US Government) also detailed how the Prime Minister and those privy to the information felt and the discomfort they felt, as well as the fear they had that refusing would have a very negative impact on the US/Australian alliance. They also spoke to a staffer of the Prime Minister at that time, who knew and advised the PM on the matter.

The call now in Australia is to have all the documents regarding this issue to be made public. The program who first aired the story were not able to access all of the documents as a lot of it are still sealed. But the ones that aren't sealed revealed enough to scare most people to think that the Government back then were actually considering it because they feared of a breakdown in the relationship between the US and Australia.

When I watched that program yesterday morning, I thought it must be a fabrication. But it actually isn't a fabrication. The documents themselves are real and so was the proposition made 40 years ago.

One thing that needs to be stated here is that it's not just the issue that the US proposed it. Yes, they did run tests on people and I assume the soldiers themselves would have been made to wear protective clothing to ensure none of the chemicals used even touched their skin.. not that it makes it correct or justified.. but I hope that the soldiers would have had to wear protective clothing.. The main issue in Australia with this revelation is that the Government at the time were unsure about refusing the US's offer. The anger in Australia right now is that the Holt Government were actually considering it.

I guess we won't know the full extent of the tests proposed or whether protective clothing was a requirement until all the documents are made public and removed from the 'vault'. We are just seeing snippets of it at the moment. To clear it up, the Rudd Government needs to release it all so that the public can see exactly what the Holt Government was considering.

The US military has a long history of occasionally being caught doing or wanting to do highly unethical experiments. Any remember the Tuskegee experiments (http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmtuskegee1.html) or Radiation experiments (http://www.whale.to/a/cantwell9.html) or Project MKULTRA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA).

When the story was first reported yesterday, the documents obtained from the Government archives showed that only a few knew exactly what they were consenting to. Others were not told of the true nature of the tests themselves.


Guess we will have to take your word on it and exactly who the others were is anyone's guess.:)

Jacobs Ladder. What we see here is a case of fiction being stranger than truth.

Guess we will have to take your word on it and exactly who the others were is anyone's guess.:)

You can watch the report here (http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/cover_stories/article_2503.asp).

Click on the link that says "Watch our report".

Now we know 30-40 years later how bad these chemicals are. The purpose was to see what would happen if a chemical attack were to occur and to test the gear they had was effective. It says in the documentary that a number of each unit were to know what was happening.

I know that it is sensational and emotional issue but we are talking about decades ago when there was far less information available. The intention was for all of them to survive and that was the whole purpose behind the experiment which never happened and was only discussed by the U.S, British and Australians.

I am sure you hear it differently though.

Also, i am not even going to bring up the part about Saddam and HOW we know now how bad this stuff is. Maybe you should watch that part again.

Now we know 30-40 years later how bad these chemicals are. The purpose was to see what would happen if a chemical attack were to occur and to test the gear they had was effective. It says in the documentary that a number of each unit were to know what was happening.

I know that it is sensational and emotional issue but we are talking about decades ago when there was far less information available. The intention was for all of them to survive and that was the whole purpose behind the experiment which never happened and was only discussed by the U.S, British and Australians.

I am sure you hear it differently though.

You're right.
We had no idea what the effects NERVE AGENTS used to kill or incapacitate TROOPS ON THE BATTLEFIELD during WAR were going to do. When the UK illegally poisoned Ronald Maddison (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Maddison) to death with sarin gas in 1953, they still weren't clear on what the effects of this clearly deadly chemical weapon which was developed by Nazis to use in a world war. It was still up in the air. What sarin gas did. They had no idea that a warhead full of this stuff was dangerous. The military typically likes to load their warheads with rainbows and kittens.

Umm for all those idiots who dont get it

1) The first geneva convention after WW1 made use of chemical weapons illegal
2) The US was still testing them 40 years ago at the earliest (who knows what they are doing at pine gape NOW)
3) they wanted to use OUR solders as guniee pigs
4) if it was symple CBR training they would have been using TEAR gas which is standed practice for training for chemical weapons

Not only was this highly illegal but it puts an end to the myth that the US is our "great protector". If they were willing to do this then, what are they doing now?

Lighten up Asguard. Don't you think Australia also has all sorts of "contingency" plans? None of these will come to fruition. Nor will US's fruitcake ideas make it into reality. Remember, there are people who's sole reason for existence is to contemplate the unthinkable. That's OK, because in democracies like the US, UK and Australia, the people have the power...

Now we know 30-40 years later how bad these chemicals are. The purpose was to see what would happen if a chemical attack were to occur and to test the gear they had was effective. It says in the documentary that a number of each unit were to know what was happening.


Yes, only a few in each unit would know exactly what was going on. The rest would not know and not be told what they testing.

And no, the US knew full well that the chemicals that were to be dispersed were deadly and highly toxic. You can't test the effectiveness of gear using Sarin gas. Sarin is deadly and highly toxic. Your statement that they wanted to use Sarin gas and nerve gas to test the effectiveness of gear is downright idiotic. So, what? If one person or more keels over dead, they can say 'well that suit is not effective'? Do you realise how stupid that sounds?

I know that it is sensational and emotional issue but we are talking about decades ago when there was far less information available. The intention was for all of them to survive and that was the whole purpose behind the experiment which never happened and was only discussed by the U.S, British and Australians.
If their intentions were so good, why did they propose the tests be done on Australian soldiers in Australia, instead of doing the same tests on US soldiers on US soil? Intention is all well and good. For example, I could intend for everyone in the car to survive as I drive it off a cliff to test the effectiveness of their seat belts, but the fact of the matter is, most, if not all would most probably die as a result of that plunge.

No, the experiment did not happen. The issue in Australia at the moment is that the Government had actually considered it out of fear that refusal could end the alliance between the US and Australia. The issue was that the proposal was even made... I mean that's bad enough. But for the Australian government to have considered it out of respect for their American allies is even more terrifying.

I am sure you hear it differently though.
And you appear to live in a lala land where everything is pretty and perfect.

the only reason the australian goverment CONCIDED going along with this was that we had been betrayed twice by the british in WW2 and they were afraid that if they didnt go along with this the US would terminate the aliance with us

Kind of the same way the US is trying to put claws into trade trities exempting itself from the ICC and after watching this and lissioning to Senator Lyn Allison (the former leader of the democrats, not a journilist BTW) i dont doubt why they do it.

The US thinks that international law aplies to everyone but itself, what a surprise

1) The first geneva convention after WW1 made use of chemical weapons illegal
Geneva does not prohibit the research and manufacture of, or training with, chemical weapons. Which is why it is irrelevant here.

4) if it was symple CBR training they would have been using TEAR gas which is standed practice for training for chemical weapons
It wasn't "simple" CBR training. Returning to my earlier Plumbob example, early on, there was not the dearth of empirical evidence regarding the performance of these weapons - nuclear or chemical - upon which countermeasure tactics could be developed that there is now. Yes, we knew of the clinical effects of nerve agents, and their mechanisms, but we still had a rather poor understanding of how they could be used as a weapon on the battlefield. Nerve gas is not a "gas", but rather one of many different viscous, syrupy liquids (which have many dissimilarities to mustards so don't go there). A "nerve gas" weapon therefure needs to burst in such a way that its payload is distributed as an aerosol, in a way that maximizes its impact and persistence. CS is also not a gas. It is a crystalline solid that gets heated to produce "tear gas", so while it can be used to train individuals in CBR defense, it would not have been an effective comparison for teaching a brigade to fight a battle.

In order to figure out how to use nerve agent to our advantage on the battlefield, as well as how to defend against its use by an enemy, we needed to conduct large-scale exercises like this one that never happened. We learned to answer questions like "how long does GB persist in an arid or rainy environment?" or "how can we decontaminate porous surfaces like brick or wood?" We also learned when it does more harm to us than the enemy, and what to look for in an enemy attack for formulating an initial response.

A more correct name would be "systemic" CBR training. By the way, where do you think all of today's big cities got their contingency plans for dealing with a major CBR or HAZMAT disaster?

E3R you do realise im being trained in CBR responce and HAZMAT (though why you think HAZMAT came out of this i dont know, it came out of industry because its industrial chemicals they are working with):p

One of the things we are taught if you smell armonds and dont have atropine your already dead (at that point i would make a choice to inject all the morphine and madaz into myself i had)

You do also realise that one small tare in the CBR suit of a solder and its godnight.
If you watched the interview the proffessor of toxicology said quite clearly that even then the risks symply werent worth it

Bells,

We are talking about over 40 years ago. I am not saying i agree with it but i am saying that your getting excited and looking for the smoking gun because everyone knows how you feel about the U.S anyway. But as i said it was over 40 years ago, different times and different people and different problems.

From Wikipedia:

Students at the United States Marine Corps' Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense School (MOS 5711) at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri conduct a Mission Oriented Protective Posture (MOPP) chemical protective gear confidence exercise in an environment containing live Sarin (GB) gas, as well as VX nerve agent. This exercise is carried out inside of the heavily guarded Chemical Defense Training Facility (CDTF).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin

And another thing, it was tested on American soldiers ALSO. Search for it yourself and you may learn something.

Hundreds of American service men and as far as i know none of them died.

I have to say that I would not have wanted to face Nazi's with either you or Asguard.